Quality Colanonscopy

Friday Comic Book Day.

I have shown some of the early stories Gene Coan did for companies such as Quality in the late forties and early fifties, but more and more keep popping up. Thankfully, most of them are entered into the Grand Comic Book Data Base as well, which is starting to show how much Colan drew in these few years. He alsways was prolific, but I had the impression that it was something that grew during the fifties. Now it seems, ir was there from the start. Of course, here he was not inking his own work, which he started doing at Atlas (Marvel). During the fifties he developed his own style of inking which in my opinion was better than anything ever did on him drom the sixties onwards.

Sunday Fillers

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Two oddities today. First of, a couple of Sundays from The Saint from 1956. Earlier I showed the whole of the replacement run by Bob Lubbers from late 1959. Researching that, I found an online source that stated that Lubbers had helped artist John Spranger out before in the midfifties. I wonder if the two Sundays from April and June might be samples of that. The first one here, from February, is in what I would call John Spranger's style at that time. The second one I am not so sure. The third one is not by Spranger and could be by Lubbers, if you look at the background figures. Still, that would make it awfully close to his replacement run on The Heart of Juliet Jones in September of that same year...





After that four Sunday Scorchy Smith's I had to dig out. When I wrote about Al Hollingsworth, I said I might have a couple of his Scorchy Smith Sundays from 1953/54, which were so bad I didn't scan them the first time around. After I dug them out, I saw there was another reason I didn't scan them: they aren't by Hollingsworth, but by his predessor on the strip, Rodlow Willard. And they are pretty bad indeed. Still, they are far better than Willard's work on the dailies and they are extremely rare. I don't know how many papers had the Sunay version of this strip, buthe must have done them for years and yet I have never seen any, except for these (which came on the back of Patsy in Hollywood, another strip that was once drawn by a famous artist, from the same syndicate, Associated Press). I hope to one day find some of Hollingsworth's samples, if there are any. I think there are, I recall seeing an original page somewhere...






Thanks to the contibution of my commenters I am able to show two actual Hollingsworth Sundays, taken from the original art website comicartfans.com and a bit of searching also gave me one more from the Heritage Auction site as well as a slightly later produced `sunday for Marlin Keel. The first one shows how Hollingsworth, wrking in his own style, did take over Willard's design of the character.

Plugging A Hole In The Bugg

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Last December I uploaded all I had of Bob Bugg's series of ads for Camels featuring Sgt. Bilko. Since then I found one more and a couple of Camels ads Buggs drew before taking on Bilko. These are possibly the best newspaper strip ads from the late fifties. Not only are they delightfully drawn in Bugg's unique style, but they also feature some spot on caricatures. If you haven't seen the December post, I urge you to have a look. After this he did another series for Weston, which are quite remarkable as well. And I found and added another one.

Beetle Bailey Special

Speciaal welkom voor alle Eppolezers!

Als je deze pagina leest, dan ben je hier waarschijnlijk gekomen via de speciale Layar applicatie, die bij het nieuwste nummer van Eppo is aangebracht. In feite gaat het hier om een 'easter egg', want de link bij Flippie Flink is de enige, die niet op de pagina zelf is aangegeven. Dat hij toch actief is, komt door de speciale manier waarop het Layar systeem werkt. In tegenstelling tot het QR systeem, dta je soms wel eens in bladen of op posters ziet en waarmee je via je een gescrmabled zwart-wit blokje naar websites geleid wordt, is bij Layar de pagina zelf de herkenningscode. Je hoeft je iPhone of Ipad alleen maar boven de pagina te houden om de speciale content te ontsluiten. Maar waarom zou ik dat nog uitleggen? Je bent er, dus je weet hoe het werkt.



Op deze pagina's vindt je een grote hoeveelheid extra strips van Flippie Flink. Of van Beetle Bailey, want dat is de echte naar van deze oorspronkelijk Amerikaanse krantenstrip. Velen van jullie kennen Flippie nog van de Eppo (en daarvoor de Pep), mar in feite is de strip nog ouder. Beetle Bailey begon in 1950 als krantenstrip over een Amerikaanse student. In 1952 meldde hij zich aan bij het eger en toen ontstond de strip zoals we die nu kennen. Toen de eerste vertaalde afleveringen in Pep verschenen, bestond de strip dus al bijna 15 jaar.

De strips die je op mijn blog zult vinden, komen voornamelijk uit die eerste vijftien jaar en ik kan dus vrij zeker zeggen, dat je ze nog nooit gezien hebt. Ik ben een grote fan van Amerikaanse strips en cartoons uit de jaren vijftig en heb daar al vier jaar een blog over, wat ik dagelijks aanvul met nieuwe strips en informatie. De strips van Beetle Bailey die ik hier heb afgebeeld behoren tot het beste uit die tijd. Hoe leuk Flippie Flink in de latere jaren ook was, voor mij zijn de eerste jaren (en dan met name de periode van 1957 tot 1963 veruit de grappigste. Waarom dat is, weet ik ook niet zeker. Maar in ieder geval is dit de periode dat Mort Walker de strip samen maakte met Jerry Dumas en tussen die twee klikte het wel.





De kleurenstrips die je hier vind, heb ik zelf ingescanned uit Amerikaanse zondagsbijlages. De strip als genre is meer dan honderd jaar geleden in Amerika begonnen als kleurige bijlage van de daar sinds jaar en dag ook op zondag uitgegeven kranten. Die krantenbijlages waren in feite wat bladen als Pep en Sjors en Eppo voor ons waren - een compleet stripblad met komische en vervolgstrips, die één keer per week op je deurmat vielen... maar dan op krantenformaat. Grote toppers uit de stripgeschiedenis als Prins Valiant, Krazy Kat en Little Nemo werden in eerste instantie op die manier gemaakt. In de jaren vijftig begon de omvang van de zondagsbijlages en de strips die daarin stonden te krimpen, maar het was nog steeds indrukwekkend (zoals je op mijn blog kunt zin). Door de papiercrisis in de jaren zeventig werden de stripmakers gedwongen om steeds kleiner te werken en de laatste paar jaar zijn de krantenstrip (die nog steeds gemaakt worden) nog slechts een schim van hun vroegere glorie.

Maar genoeg geluld. Ik hoop dat je hier veel moois zult vinden. Als je uitgekeken bent op Flippie, kun je op de balk aan de rechterkant naar andere strips zoeken. Fans van Flippie moeten vooral Hi and Lois proberen (van hetzelfde team) en ook de strip B.C. is een must voor alle liefhebbers van komische strips. Maar er zijn ook serieuzere strips, zoals The Saint of Johnny Reb en veel cartoons. Flippie fans moeten vooral ook even op zoek gaan naar de twintig unieke ongepubliceerde cartoons die Mort Walker maakte voordat hij Flippie Flink tekende en die ik heb ingescanned uit mijn eigen verzameling.

Camp Swanson

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

This week, Paul Tumey turns fifty. Paul's blog on Jack Cole (which you can find through the link on the right) is one of the best researched and well written comic strip blogs on the web. His articles on Jack Cole's work in the thirties, forties and fifties is written without preconseptions and he often comes to great thoughts and insights, just from the material. Also, in doing his research, he has found many hotherto unknown Jack Cole pieces. Some of his research has prompted me to look in similar places I am glad to have been able to add to those finds as well.

Last year, he started a new blog with Frank Young called Comic Book Attic, which featured similar articles on other forgotten comic book artists, uch as Jim Thompson. Again, the level of scholarship in these articles make them a pleasure to read. This year Paul expanded again with a new blog on screwball comics. A less popular subject than Jack Cole, maybe - but one that is also not explored a lot and the isights in the articles alone makes you want to read and like this subset of newspaper comic strip art.

So to celebrate Paul's happy week, I am showing here a run of George Swanson's Elza Poppin'. Signing Swan, Swanson was one of the great screwball artists, whose Salesman Sam is duely celebrated on Paul's blog. In the fifties he turned his attention to a more sedate strip, the Flop Family.Though lively drawn, this strip lived far past it's sellby date and did little for Swanson's reputation.

In the forties he had a very rare oddity with Elza Poppin'. Trying to cash in on the succes of the chaotic stage extravanganza and film Helzapoppin' it was supposed to be written by the film and stage hit's stars Olson and Johnson, but I don't think they even spent a second on it. the original idea behind the strip seems to have been that it was about a girl called Elza, who works at an army camp (maybe as a WAC). I showed some of these earlier strips a couple of years ago. The later samples I am showing here the subject seems to have shifted to a WWII version of the later Beetle Bailey. No connection to the play or film is made and it certainly isn't as wildly funny as either. Still, it is a weird little strip which ran for over two years.

Many happy returns, Paul.

Leftover LOL

Monday Cartoon Day.

Two more Mort Walker cartoons from the early fifties, I accidentally left out last time. There is more to come. He did thousands of ths in a couple of years, all of them funny.

A Short History of Relatives

Sunday Meskin Measures.

An interesting sidestep, I think. I coupl eof years ago I wrote an article for a Dutch magaine about the origins of the worldbuilding concepts that seem so normal now. Thesedays, when you have a comic or a television or a movie or even a game platform, the essential elements of the series can be remixed in several ways to show other aspects of that world. Sidestories about incidental characters, ancestors, mirror worlds, sequels, prequels and behind the scenequels... everyonde does it. Even novels are exploited that way. But it didn't start all that long ago. I think. Where did the idea of exploring the world of a series start? The very first comic strips often didn't have a wold that was larger than the one joke they repeated every week or day.

Writing the article I tried to follow back the line of sries doing this. Buffy the Vampire Slayer seemd a good example of this. Writer Josh Whedon has said he was inspired in doing Buffy by the X-man written by Chris Claremont. Claremont obviously took some of his worldbuilding efforts from Star Trek. The orginal Star Trek's Mirrorworld episode was a very early example and very influential. Before that, there was the crosspolination that Stan Lee did for the early Marvel books, although he used crossing characters more than sjowing earlier relatives or mirror worlds.

All in all, there probably is a large element of creative people having the same kind of idea at different times. Still, some ideas are so lare that once they are out there in the world, they sort of replicate themselves. All in al, I would be curious to know if there are earlier examples of this creating a world behind the world.

Well, in this story we have a very early ezmple. Not an influential one, because I have never seen it mentioned or reprinted. But still a signficant one and at the very least an idea that would have seemed a lot more original back then than it would these days.