More Than You Can Gag

 Sunday Surprise Day.

Last Saturday I shared a run of cartoonist Reamer Keller's newspaper strip Kennesaw. I remarked that the hillbilly subject was bebeath Keller's more far ranging talent, as show in his many cartoons between the forties and the eighties. That talent is fully on show in the Sunday cartoon feature he did in the late forties called Friends of the Family. A new subject each week, that's more like it. Before those, I have a shorter set of samples from Today's Laugh, a rotating daily cartoon service by the Chicago Tribune/New York News syndicate, which would also buy a Sunday feature similar to Friends of the Family in the late fifties - which they used as a filler page until at least the seventies. . Friends of the Family was from the McNaught Syndicate, which ran the daily cartoon panel This Funny World 9which also used Reamer Keller a cartoon at least once a month). The last set is from This Week, who had a half page by a different cartoonist every issue.

Goings On At The White House

Wednesday Illustration Day.

So here I thought I had a rare (albiet dull) example of Noel Sickles' illustration work, for an issue of This Week which I am selling soon(probably Next Week). Turns out is is not by the famous chiasura illustrator who helped Milt Caniff invent his style on Terry and the Pirates and went into magazine illustration, by Leslie Saalberg, a fashion designer who adopted a similar style in the early sixties. Only Sickles could do it better.

Leftover Columnists

Wednesday Illustration Day.

Here are three more illustrations from This Week, one of those fifties entertainment sections with stories, gossip and gags. I particulary like the Ralph Stein illustration, who usually worked for that otehr section, the Pictorial Review.

Sixty Years Ago This Week

Monday Cartoon Day.

This is where I left off, I think.

A truely remarkable series that represents American cartooning in the fifties at it's safest (but still well drawn).