More sometimes is more.

Thurday Story Day.

Since starting this run of Jeanie Sundays (from the Heritage Archives) I have recieved some more New York Herald Tibune Sundays with color versions of this strip in them. Since my run is broken anyway, I will now show you a couple from throughout the whole of 1952. I have also gone back and inserted them into the run of originals (and corrected the fact that I had skipped a whole week of october 1952 strips).

This first one is from Feb 3 1952 and dates from the period when Jenaie was still a one tier strip instead of a daily and Sunday. Gill Fox had a bit more time to do the inking and Selma Diamond didn't have to bother with storylines, so all in all I prefer this earlier version of the strip.



This sample is from may 11, 1952 and is not represented in my run of originals:


This sample from June 1 1952 is only two tiers, but the original I showed a month ago is three. This mkes me suspect that the strip was syndicated to other papers as well, allowing the Trib to drop the bottom tier (a newspaper strip first as far as I know) when they didn't have room for the full version:


This is a big day for me. I finished up an article about Mad imitations for Roy Thomas' Alter Ego magazine (after two years work) and tonight I am going to attend the premiere of an Alan Aykbourne play I translated for the Dutch Nationale Toneel. So I didn't have time to finish my scanning. Here should go the Jeanie Sunday for Oct. 5 1952, but I do have the one after that ready:

I'd walk a Mile if I wouldn't be out of breath so quickly

Wednesday Advertising Day.

I have been scanning some earlier ads. These three are from 1948. The first one is a late installment in the Postum series. Mr. Coffee Nerves started in the late thirties and at one point was even drawn by Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles. At this point others had taken over, but the result is equally impressive.



These two Camels ads are some of the earliest samples I have ever seen of the 'illustrator style' that was later made famous by Stan Drake, Leonard Starr and Neal Adams. Others who worked in this style are Tom Schreuer and Nick Cardy, but I don't think any of the last three was involved. Which is curious, because the last one looks as if Neal Adams drew it... years before he picked up a pencil.

What's a Coogy?

Tuesday newspaper strip day.

For a couple of weeks I have been highlighting the comic book work of cartoonist/animator Irv Spector on Fridays. The reason for this is, that I came across a fantastic strip of his in some of my copies of The New York Herald Tribune. I had bought The Trib to get more of Jeanie, but was surprised to find many treasures in there. Like the New York Post, the Tribune made use of the hordes of free lance artists that were living in New York in the late forties and early fifties, to create all sorts of special features for them. Some of these were short lived, like Harvey Kurtzman's Silver Linings, others even got distributed to other papers by the Herald Tribune Syndicate. Some were Sunday only, like Jeanie, others also had a daily version, such as Ray Bailey's Tom Corbett and Jerry Robinson's Jet Scott, both of which I will be showing later.

Coogy seems to have started as a single tier strip in 1951. The Tribune had more of these, most by cartoonists who don't mean anything to me. Jeanie also ran as a single tier for some time, before expanding into a full daily and Sunday strip. Coogy is supposed to have ran from 1951 to 1954. Unfortunately, I have very little of the 1951 run and have never even seen a strip from 1954. When I announced that I was going to run some of Coogy, I was contacted by Irv Spector's son, Paul. He told me that he had a whole box of originals from 1952 and 1953. He used to have a similar box from 1951 but that seemed to have gone missing in a move some years ago. Too bad, because the 100 or so originals he has, would form the basis of a nice little reprint. In fact, I would wholly support any such reprint project. I think Coogy is a tremendous strip, which would fill a nice little book. That's why I am going to share all my copies and maybe some of Paul's material as well. Because of the size of the originals, Paul has only been able to make photo's of them. But he has complete runs of some of the more interesting four week parody series Spector did later on in the series.

So what's a Coogy? Well, it seems Coogy was started as a imitation of Pogo. Only the main characters are bears and it is set in a sort of deserty Indian country instead of a swamp. But the parallel is obvious. Even the comical swamp-speak of Pogo and Albert has been replaced by some sort of pigeon Indian. The fact that the strip remains so succesful is a tribute to Spector's talent as an artist and his sharp wit. Towards 1951 Coogie starts to find his own tone and subjects. Spector even includes some trips away from his main charcaters, doing parodies of The Mlatese Falcon, The Old Man and the Sea and George Bernard Shaw. There also was a parody of Mary Worth long before Al Capp did his famous version.

It's been long reported that Harvey Kurtzman may have asked Spector to join him at Mad. The source of this information seems to have been Spector himself, who liked to repeat it to everyone he worked with. When this got out, his most visible comic book series, Lucky Duck more than doubled in price. People wanted to check out what Spector was doing at the time Kurtzman asked him and Lucky Duck was the only thing around. It seems obvious to me that if Kurtzman was interested in recruiting Spector, Coogy would have been the trigger. As a New York artist, he was familiar with the Tribune and all it's comics. In fact, most of Kurtzman's targets seem to have been taken from that paper. He himself had a short lived series in the Trib. And they worked for Stan Lee in the same period. I have not yet been able to see if Kurtzman had any contact with Spector in the war, but he may have as they both worked in the Signal Corps (but possibly not in the same unit). Still, if Coogy started in 1951 (as a Pogo imitation) there is very little reason Kurtzman would have been interested in Spector when he was starting up Mad. It is more likely, that he asked Spector if he was available during the run of Mad, possibly when John Severin left in early 1952 and Mad was going from two-monthly to once a month to compete against all it's imitations. On the other hand, here in Europe the myth goes that Kurtzman also asked later Lucky Luke creator Maurice de Bevere (who signed his work Morris) to join him on the strength of his caricatures (also on view in Lucky Luke). The connection there is writer/cartoonist Rene Goscinny, who stayed at Kurtzman's place in the late forties, so when this exchange must have taken place is unclear as well.

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy this strip as much as I did. I'll start with the three samples I have from 1951. Some of my later samples are two tiers, which makes me suspect that Coogy was syndicated as well. Maybe some of you who are subscribing to newspaperarchives can have a look to see what turns up.

The first one is from Januari 28 1951, so either the strip started in 1950 or there are at the most three before this:


July 22 1951:


Sept 23 1951:

Bringing up Dennis

Monday cartoon Day.

Today some more attention for the cartoon work of Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketcham. I am starting with the best Ketcham piece I have found so far. I am a big fan of cartoon journalism and this is the earliest sample of the genre I have ever seen. The fact that it is by Hank Ketcham makes it extra sweet.

There are three sort of cartoon journalism. First there is the simple carnet de voyage, when an artist of a cartoonist draws scenes for the places he visits. These are usually done in some sort of diary form. If there is a story attached to the trip, it has to be told in a separate text. Secondly, there is the cartoon article, where a subject is chosen as an excuse to throw in as many gags. Often the cartoonist doesn't have to visit the place he is drawing and can use his memory. This is the case in articles such as A Mad Visit to the Zoo. I expect this type of articles can be found earlier than this 1951 sample in any of the cartoon magazines of the thirties or the forties. And finally there is the mix of the two, a true journalistic piece by a cartoonist who is sent on an assignment. This sort of thing is in vogue at the moment in Holland (and probably in other places in the world, as I don't think our editors are particulary origional or visionary). For a long time I thought this particular genre started and ended with Harvey Kurtzman, who sent out cartoonists to do reports from various locations in his magazine Help. It all started when Robert Crumb was visiting Russia and offered to open up his diary. Kurtzman himself had done location reports such as this for the TV Guide and Esquire, so he knew what he was getting. After that, he sent Paul Coker to Cuba, Gloria Steinem to a Spa and ~Jack Davis to a ballgame. He went to the historic taping of Rod Serling's live television play Requiem for a Heavyweight himself and did a spectacular piece combining drawings and photographs. Last year Playboy Press published a compilation of Shel Silverstein's cartoon trips abroad and I realized that he probably was the first to do this sort of stuff in a big way. Since Kurtzman worked with Hefner around the time these pieces first appeared, they will have been an inspiration to him.

Hank Ketcham's piece falls somewhere in between. On the one hand it is a true report based on an actual visit, on the other hand it is nothing more than a collection of gags. Still, I like it and it predates the others mentioned here by at least half a decade.




Additionally, I have a Ketcham illustrated piece for Colliers from 1949. Although this is a straight illustration job, the illustration with the girl twirling her cigarette holder, could be seen as a 'live' study...



To round things of, I came across another Ketcham oddity... an article about his succes with Dennis the Menace written just before the television series started. Ketcham was never shy about being interviewed or mentioning the fact that his son had been the inspiration for the real Dennis. Still, as I am working on the television version of a Dutch newspaper strip myself at the moment, I sympathize with the writer of the television series, who doesn't get mentioned once, leaving the impression that Ketcham himself is doing the television adaptation. Well, he didn't and he wouldn't have had the time.

More Spector Speculation

Sunday Leftover Day

I am still trying to get a handle on Irving Spector's career as a cartoonist. I know he worked at Timely in 1945, one source has him working as an edior at Gleason in 1947. In the early fifties he turns up at Standard, doing Mugsy Cat and Lucky Duck and at ACG doing all sorts of stuff and he starts his four year run on Coogy in the New York Herald Tribune.

So I went to www.goldenagecomics.co.uk, subscribed and downloaded as many as I could find of the relevant titles. I know nothing about these companies, but I have learned to recognize Spector's work in the early fifties (my faux pas on the Eisenberg mix-up aside, but that was ten years earlier). I think I came across two more Spector efforts. From Scott Shaw I gathered Spector worked for ACG's Teepee Tom, so I downloaded the two issues they had... and was surprised to find both have a possible Spector cover and one possible story. Here are the cover and story for Teepee Tom #101.

The cover is clearly by Spector to my eyes. The angular design and the hastily drawn landscape in the background give him away. The story is less clearly Spector's work. In Coogy he showed some affinity to stories about indians, but I am not quite sure if these stories were written by the artist. There is a signed Teepee Tom story later in the book by a different artist, called Lynn Karp. That is in a different style.

Melvin of the Apes

Saturday leftover Day.

Scanning in some ads, I found one my fellow-blogger Joakim will like. A rare ad by Mel Graff, one of many artists to work in a Caniff imitation style.

Spectator Sport

Friday Comic Book Day

Today I am continuing my look at the work of Irv Spector. Next week I will be starting with Spector's masterpice (before he went on to do much good in television cartroons) Coogie. In the mid-forties he did couple of stories for Stan Lee, along with several other new artists that were introduced at that time at Martin Goodman's Timely.

The first story is one I wanted to show last week, but after a computer crash I had to rescan them. It's a Super Rabbit story from the 12th issue of his own title. Super Rabbit was one of the major starts of Timely's funny animal books all through the forties. He started life early in the forties as a secundairy character in several books. All books were anthology books at that time, so this is not a very strange way of doing things. He graduated to a title of his own. Artists working on this series were Al Jaffee and Dave Berg. In fact, the cover for Super Rabbit #12 was probably by Berg, as far as I can see.

I am not quite sure if this, the second story in the book, is drawn by Irv Spector. If it is, it is very probably that he didn't ink it. And as Super Rabbit was a frequent visitor in Timley's animal comics, I am pretty sure the script was not written by the artist, but by one of Timely's many writers (maybe even Stan Lee). I had feeling the art might be by Spector and when his son showed me a couple of other 'assignment' stories (stories about Timely's regular characters) his father probably had drawn, I was ready to take on board the idea he might have actually done this story too. For starters, it is by another artist than many of the other Super Rabbit stories. Certainly those in this book (or the ones before and after that). The art is more lively and the bear character that shows up in it, makes me think Spector was invoved. He had solo stories in the issue of Super Rabbit before and after that, so that might fit in too. Things working against this attribution are the bouncing panels on many of the pages, that I have never seen in any of Spector's other work, the kid characters who don't remind me of anything and the dragon, who doesn't lok like any Spector character I know. Bottom line... it's a great story and I hope Spector was involved.











John K. informs me that this story must by by Harvey Eisenberg, who is best knon for drawing the Tom & Jerry comic books for Dell. He als worked with Joe Barbera on some lesser know strips, which are shown everywhere on the web. I have added a link to Cartoons, model sheets and stuff, where you can see and read more. John K. himself does a great appreciation of Eisenberg's qulities on hisblog, which I shall take to hard (to learn and spot his style better). There is also some information at http://www.animationarchive.org/index.html. Eisenberg is noted as an artist who worked for Timely in 1945 at the Timley/Atlas index site Atlas Tales, but this story isn't menioned there. At the Dutch comic artist information site Lambiek he is mentioned to have worked on the Chrlie McCarthy books at Dll as well. I am a big fan of those and will show some later on, though I am curious now if Eisnberg was the sole artist or just one of a group.

I am closing with a couple more of Harvey Kurtzman's work for Timely at the time. Of course he did Hey Look!, which any aspiring cartoonist should see even though the Denis Kitchen collection is long out of print. He also provided a few cartoons for a floating carrtoon page for some of the girlie titles. Most of these were used several times and almost all of them have been noted in Glen Bray's excellent Kurtzman biography (another Kurtzman necessity for the collectors). The last one I am showing somehow escaped Glen's notice. It's from the long running title Miss America, which was more of a girls magazin ein comic form than anything else. They had fashion tips and stories and comics and the occasional cartoon. A special treat for the collectors!






After doing Rusty Kurtzman tried another 'quiet' strip to replace the too outrageous Hey Look. This series, which he wrote himself, was better suited to his talents.

Lady of color.

Thursday story Day.

Not much of a story today, as my run of Jeanie dailies is running out. As a bonus I have the color version of the next Sunday.




As another bonus, here is another of those Fox/Browne ads from februari 1952. I think it's by Dik Browne, but I still can't rule out Fox's involvement. The bottom tier is by Ronald Coe, who as I wrote in an earlier post was a Saturday Evening Post cartoonist of some fame and clearly well known enough to be signing his work. After that, I have another of his ads from 1948, now even signed in the first panel. It is more of an old fashioned style, but pretty nonetheless.

Grapenut Flakes Post

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Last week I showed you some early fifties Blondie Sundays that were a lot more lively than the later years of that strip might have made you expect. This weekend, I showed a couple of pages of Harvey Kurtzman imitating that style. Here are two 1948 instalments of a 1948 ad that goes with it.

Fireball Twigg was a series of ads done in 1948 for Post's Grapenut Flakes, a well know cereal at the time. I believe they also sponsored some big radio show. The ads featured a couple very much like Blondie and Dagwood and were either done by Chick Young, making a bit of extra cash on the side or by someone imitating his style. When I showed a example from the same series, I figured it was the latter. I would even say it might be by Gill Fox, as I see some of his touches. Certainly the dog in the last panel isn't very much in Blondie's style and the vagrant in the first strip owes more to Jimmy Hatlo than to Chick Young. These are from May 1948 and both have a line saying 'to be continued', indicating this was a series. The one I showed a couple of weeks ago, was from Augustus, so the story might even have run for a couple of months.

May 5 1948:

Back to my roots.

Tuesday comic strip day.

Last week John Kricfalusi told us (over at his blog) that the essence of cartooning is 'funny pictures'. Here's Johnny Hart doing what he did best. It helps to reliaze that these cartoons were done more than 40 years ago.

July 3 1965: For me the point where any strip 'jumps the shark' is when the cartoonist starts doing golf jokes. It means he is spending more time at the golf course playing with his buddies than working on his strip. Still, this is a good one.


Aug 14 1965: I only had to slightly change the wording of this gag to make it topical.


Dec 3 1965:


Dec 24 1965:

True Cartooning

Monday Cartoon Dy.

Four more Ketcham cartoons, this time from the monthly True magazine in 1950 to 1952.

Two of these are also shown in Fantagraphics Where's Dennis. Although that book has some color, the cartoon with Mrs. Richmons has no color there. I have provided the dates as well.

Feb 1951.


March 1951.


June 1951.


June 1951, second cartoon.