The Games We Play

Friday Comic Book Day.

What a year this was. Most of it was devoted to comics and I enjoyed it a lot. It is always nice to have succes, anyway. My book Behaving Madly was published in August at the Comic Con in San Diego and received pretty well. I am pleased to note that after Christmas a spade of new positive reviews appeared n facebook and other places, which lead to a new spike in sales on Amazon. In fact, they are now announcing that there are only 17 copies left. I have known for some time copies were running low, because we couldn't get ny to send to friends and reviewers for a couple of months now. They only copies remaining are at different stores and whatever is left undsold there will be what is left of the first print run.

One thing I hope for the new year is that the succes of this book will make it possible to do a similar one on the early issues of Cracked. I am not really very interested in Cracked after the first forty issues or so. It had started as a very well made satirical magazine, but devolved into a juvenile Mad imitation somewhere bewteen #15 and #45. The reason that this took so long, is th fact that some artists, most noticable Jack Davis, were allowed to do their own gags. But slowly Paul Laikin took over and started writing his trademark Mad knock-offs. Anyway, because the copyright situation for Cracked is unsure and because we already had to cut 40 pages from the originally planned 248 pages (to keep the price at $34/$26 at Amazon) and these early issues of Cracked alone could easilly fill a book on it's own.

As a sample, here is the onely Jack Kirby story in Cracked #14. Not typically his. Sp much so, that when an original page came for sale on eBay, I skipped it, not able to place the artist. My guess is there is a Cracked collector somewhere who got this page for $50 without knowing what he has.

Same Difference

Wednesday Advertising Day.

So it's one day later and I am already breaking my own rules. Because my book on Mad magazine imitations is coming out shortly I am sharing some stuff that is in there to attract attention. Today I have an advertising satire from Zany #3 by Paul Reinman. It is NOT in the book for several reasons. One is, that a proposed advertising section was scrapped due to the length of the book. Some ads did make it in, in another section, like one with Frankenstein by Howie Post in the Big Name Talent section. Another reason not to iclude it, is because although the book is not solely aimed at collectors I did not want to include material that was available elsewhere and this ad is one of the few samples from Zany that have been reused (and reprinted) in Cracked, also owned by Zany publisher Bob Sproul. In the book I go further into the relation between these two magazines and I offer an explenation why Cracked succeded where Zany didn't.

Anyway, the reason to show it here, is that I am currently selling a lot of Sunday Section magazines, including some late fifties issues of This Week. While photographic them I saw the original inspiration to the parody and I jsut had to share it here.

I See, I See, What You Doxsee

Monday Cartoon Day.

This article is a reworking of an earlier piece, with more illustrations and more information. After you have read this, you may want to have a look at th other samples by following the label.

Scanning a new set of Nero Wolfe Sundays I came across an interesting feature called Let's Explore Your Mind. I knew this strip before, it ran for quite a while as a daily and a Sunday between the thirties into the sixties. Written by Albert Edward Wiggam who is descried on the internet as a 'psychologist, lecturer and author', it was a series of psychological and biological observations framed in the for of illustrated questions and answers. In fact, many of the simple truths about men, women and behavior are still true today. For more than 40 years Wiggam produced one such qeustion every day and four or five every Sunday. They were always illustrated, at first in a solemn style, but in the late fifties a news artist took over, who added a bit of humor to the illustrations. In 1962 his work was taken over by journeyma artist Bill Legante who remained at the helm until the end of the strip in the seventies. Later Buck Rogers artist Rick Yager did a stint in the late forties.

But the indentity of the artist in the late fifties remains unknown. Even Alan Holtz, who has more information on the feature and even a beginning and end date, doesn't know anything except that indeed it is a seperate artist. And an artist I feel I should know. Every time I have come across his work, it struck me as someone whose work I had seen before, but I could never make out where.

Now that I had a longer run, I was able to have a better look. I immediately knew where I wanted to look. The grotesk style used for the characters here is similar in a lot of ways to one that was used around the same time by ome of the artists working for the early years of Cracked magazine. Before John Severin and Bill Ward (McCartney) became the resident artists filling the magazine almost on their own for twenty years, a lot of artists from the Timely Atlas pool were used. This must have something to do with the Carl Burgos/Sy Shores connection and also with the fact that in the late fifties most artists were scrambling for work because of the slow deterioration of the comcis industry. Among the artists used by Cracked (and other Mad imitators) were Al Jaffee, Bill Elder, Russ Heath, Bill Bailey, Joe Maneely, Carl Burgos, Joe Sinnot, Angelo Torres, Bill Everett and Jack Davis. Joe Maneely and Bill Bailey were two of the artists who working in this big face style, but the most visible one was a Richard Doxsee.

Doxsee (whose name is sometimes spelled Doxee in the cracked masthead) was an adaptable (and possibly young) artist, who could work in several styles. He is on my blog, doing some sort of fairy tale horror story in a very nondescript humor style in some of his oldest known work, but when he turns up at Timely, he is wokring in the Angelo Torres/Al Williamson style (also known as the Fleagle Gang style), although he seems not to have been part of their circle. The humor style he uses for his work in Cracked has nothing in common with those moody horror stories.

But I do see an obvious conection to the cartoons in Dr. Wiggam's columns at that time. The manic grin, the way the cheeckbones are drawn, the dotted pupils... it all seems the work of the same artist to me. I know the Cracked worked is more grotesque (and there is a definite Jack Davis influence going on) but if you look closely to the X-Ray article, for instance, you do see a similarity in the women's faces and the line quality as well. Still, it's no exact science. Best would be to have someone from that time confirm it.

And that is not easy. All my efforts to track Richard Doxsee down have gotten me nowhere. I ahve one or two more leads to follow, but after doing his cartoon stuff for Cracked (and possibly turned Explore over to Bill Ligante), he seems to have dropped of the face of the earth. Clearly a competent artist, he must ave found another outlet for his talents.

I went and had a look when this artist first appeared on Let's Explore Your Mind and here is what I found. In the early fifties, there was an artist who signed his name Ray Chatton. His only known credit on the internet is for the cover of a Buck Rogers comic (#9), which ties him in with the later RBuck Rogers artist Rick Yager in a strange way. He stops signeing towards the end of 1955 and the last column I have that seems to be illustrated by him is from november 1955. The first I have of the 'new' artist is early in January 1956. As I said, he satyed on until Bill Ligante takes over in 1962.

By the way, I was just contacted by Fred Doxsee, who told me that Richard was his father's brother (so his uncle, I guess) and he indeed went into adverrtising, making the first moving billboard for Times Square. Let's hope we will find out more.

Exploring Every Option

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Let's Explore Your Mind was a long running daily and Sunday feature that answered questions about human behavior in a quiz form running from the thirties into the sixties. The writer, Arthur Wiggam, was the same all the way through, but the art was handled by several artists. Some of these artists are known (and mentioned in Allan Holtz' reference work American Newspaper Comics), but many rmain unknown. I have come across the strip a few time and I always felt that the artist on the strip in the late fifties was someone I should recognize. Sadly even Albert Beccatini (an expert in such matters) did not come up with more than a few names. Looking through my new set of strips to scan it suddenly hit me why I felt I knew this artist. Apart from the oblique Milt Caniff influence, the satirical look and faces reminded me of the work of several better know realistic artits working in some of the Mad magazine imitations from the late fifties and early fifties. At least I have narrowed it down. This style, or something like it, was used by Richard Doxsee, a young artist, who did not seem to have a style of his own yet (at some point he started drawing like Al Williamson and Angelo Torres of EC fame), but when he did satire (in magazines such as Loco and Cracked) he allowed a Jack Davis influence. Similary, the great Joe Maneely (of Timely/Atlas fame) had a similar style when he was doing satire or humor. But the artist whose satiric style would fit this semi-realistic halfbreed the best would be Bernard Baily. Baily was an important artist in the forties and fifties, working for all the big companies, from DC to Marvel and back to DC. His funny work is best visible in the early issues of Cracked (when John Severin was still ne of many artists instead of the one who filled more than half the magazine on his own). The only nagging thing is that he never used those thing tripple lines this artis used for bags under the eyes. I will try and look up a couple of samples from Cracked, but I want to get this thing going again, so here are some of those Explore Sundays in advance.