One Froggy Sunday

Sunday Surprise Day. I was out for two weeks (but prepared last weeks entries beforehand). Just back, I just have time to share these two Sundays of the first of political cartonist Bill schorr's two comic strips. In a period of the eighties and nineties, follwoing the succes of Shoe, almost every political cartoonist tried his hand on a newspaper strip. Stilistiscally they were all special but only a few sirvived (such as Wiley's strip). I have a whole month of dailies I have to scan and clean, but these are nice too.

 

Hacked Out

 Sunday Surprise Day.

Yesterday I shared a photo of the promotional poster of David Gantz' newspaper stripproposal Moxie I took on my visit to the Billy Ireland Museum in Columbia, Ohio. While there, I also took pictures of this rare cartoon series by Arnold Roth, one of the great satirits of the sixties and seventies (and still with us, as far as I know). If anyone knows where it ran, please tell me.

In the same folder, there was also a small note from Arnold Roth to his agent, with a rare self portrait.

Proxy

Saturday Leftover Day. 

 Due to a heatwave I have not been able to go upstirs and prepare some new scans. I did come across these original color guides to David Gantz's Moxie. Moxie was a failed proposal for a Pogolike strip in the early sixties, probably just before he sold Dudley D. (which you can see if you follow the link in the wordcloud). Moxie was featured in the short run Family Comics fake newspaper comics section that ran for only eleven weeks as a give-away for a Californian supermarket chain (again, a full sample is shown behind a link). I don't know if that was before or after the newspaper proposal (which actually made it to a complete syndicate offering) or if he was still developing it. Some of the strips in Family Comics look aas if they were failed proposals (by top talents, by the way). The syndicate offering is at the Billy Ireland Museum at Ohio State University and consists of a complete first daily storyline as well as a couple of promotional posters and ads. I have shown some of those earlier (again, follow the link in the word cloud). I like Pogo imitations almost as much as I like Pogo, and this one is a lot of fun.

 

Here is a photo I took of the promotional poster: 

 

Clarity

Sunday Surprise. Just a single new page today, but it took me a while to clean it properly. Clare Briggs is best known for his last comic strip creation, Mr. and Mrs., a staple of the New Yiork Herald Tribune. Or at least so I thought. After his untimely death at the age of 55 in 1930, it seems to have been continued by several artists, inlcuding Clarence's Frank Fogerty and Kin Platt (who was finally allowd to sign his name). I've seen Briggs' name on several early newspaper ads as well, whic is confirmed by an image at the Lambiek Comiclopedia (although they add a note that he had a dauhter also called Clare, who also did comics - I'd love to see her signature, as Dwiggs' own is pretty identifyable). The second one was the only color one I could find online, scan done by the unimitable Cole Johson, one of the attributors to the excellent Stripper's Guide and a scolar of early comic strip art. Furthermore on the net, there are quite a few black and white pages collected at the Comicbook Plus site (https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1958) and there is a collection available through Amazon. I'd be wary about the last one, though. I have bought a Polly and Her Pals collection from the company and it was just collected microfiche material, sometimes in such low resolution that the pixels were visible. My guess is their Danny Dreamer repackages the freeely available material from Comic Book Plus. About Danny Dreamer himself very little can be found. Alhough I do remember him popping up in an article somewhere, probably either Hogan's Alley or the old Nemo magazine.

 

Clean Sweep

Saturday Leftover Day.

Some months ago I shared a set of Charles A. Voight daily ads from the early forties, in his humorous style. This week I came across two earlier and more serious ads for Rinso, for a daily paper as well. There were more of those daily ads than I would have thought. All through the forties most papers had one day a week that a daily ad was added to the comic page. This one, was larger and on a normal page even.

Not everything Is Black and White

Sunday Surprise Day.

In the late forties Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles did a series of newspaper comic strips ads together under the pseudonymn Paul Arthur. They had two clients: Mr. Coffee Nerves and Fels-Naptha. I have shown most (if not all of those, if you follow the links). Hre are two ads that are never mentioned, but I think they (or either of them) are involved with it as well. I have seen a lot of ads from this period and there are a lot of similarities between all of them. But these have that modern look of Caniff and Sickles in more than one place. I am putting them up here, so I can refer to them elsewhere, There done before the Paul Arthur ones, so I don't think it is someone aping them.

Angel The Jangel

Saturday Leftover Day.

Some time ago I shared the first and the last months of Gene Hazelton's rare Angel Face daily panel which ran from late 1953 to early 1954. Hazelton is a much admired artist and designer, who is probably best known for his work as the primary designer of The Flintstones as well as long runs as the artist on the Flintstones Sunday strip. In 1953 he started a Dennis the Menace style daily gag panel about a troublesome little girl, called Angel Face. The look and feel was very similar to Hank Ketcham's Dennis, but if you look closely you'll see he never imitates his style. It is a beautifully designed panel, though. Just as Dennis the Menace was. Recetly I came across another source, which allows me to fill in most of the issing months. I am starting with January, but there is more. I know that there are a lot of cartoonists whom I doing a favor. Please leave a message if you want me to get the rest.