Cartoon Selfies

Monday Surprise Day.

In the late forties Collier's magazine did a series of biographies of famous newspaper strip artists. All were written by the artist himself and had a one page autobiographical strip with it. These samles are from an online source, although I believe I have one or two of them in the actual magazine form.

It Is A Man's Work

Sunday Review Day.

Before Stan Drake was asked to do The Heart of Juliet JOnes, he worked mainly in advertising and as an illustrator. One of his regular clients was Blie Book magazine. I have shown some of his work there before, which you will see if you follow the link. You'll also find his work for the King Features soap opera serial in Pictorial Review, which I believe is what got him the Juliet Jones job. These are all from the September 1952 issue of Blue Book.

Nervous Disposition

Saturday Leftover Day.

In the late thirties Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles collaborated on a couple of Sunday newspaper ads under the pseudonymn Paul Arthur. In fact, you can find most of them on this blog if you follow the link. Recently I came across two unsigned ads from the same time period that look oddly similar. All evidence point to them not being by Caniif and Sickles, but I am not 100% sure.

Let Me Bend Your Ear

Monday something New Day.

Otto Soglow was one of the most influential cartoonists of the thirties. His modern style encourage many others to follow their own path. His own style did not change that much during his working life, which stretched to the sixties. It may even have become a little bit old hat. His main work was on the Sunday only Little KIng, of course. But he also kept working as a cartoonist and did a lot of advertising work as well (some of which you can find here if you follow the link). He also did magazine features, such as the illustrations for George Dixon's Well, That's Washington column in King Features Pictorial Reviw Sunday magazine. Recently I came acros another feature he illustrated,

I'll Be At The Barracks For Christmas

Sunday Repeat Offender day.

I think I have the actual dailies upstairs, but finding them in an online paper put together six a week, saves too much time. Here are the three months leading up to Christmas 1953. Beetle had just joined the army. For some reason Mort Walker never did a lot of Christmas gags with Beetle Bailey. The first year he was in the army, he did not even go hime.

Star Performance

Saturday Leftover Day.

When I was in New York in 2014 I did some on site microfiche research (which now sadly has been removed from their central location, I understand). I especially looked at their files of the New York Star, a one year only continuation of the liberal PM paper. The Star had the benefit of having Walk Kelly on staff, who used this period not only to start the first newspaper strip first of Pogo (later repeated and redrawn for National distribution) but also did several political cartoons a week. Unfortunately the microfiche files of that paper were heavily scratched and the photocopies got from that unusuable. Last weeks, I have been taking time off to repair those and I am quite pleased with the results. Still not really publishable clean, but I think they work online - and they are alomist never seen. The best I ever saw were sample collections. I hope to finish what I have one day, but here is a start.

Show 'M What You Got

Monday News Day.

I am not really a fan of Machamer's cartoon style, which is too fussy for me. And his Gags and Gals type of humor is a little bit outdated for me. BUt for a short period het included a gag in each of his full pages Sunday pages and that's fun, don't you think?