Hawaian Saturdays

Saturday Leftover Day.

I have been looking forward to posting this. I have been sold a lot of Sunday newspaper sections from the Honolulu Star Bulletin form the fifties. It wasn;t actually a Sunday, but came with the Saturday paper. In 1956 thye had a period where the Saturday daily strips were included in the Sunday section and I scanned all four of them. To make them readable here I cut them into four parts. Lots of interesting strips. Why they chose to have the title in the bottom of the first panel, when almost every strip leaves some room for that in te top, I don't understand.What are your favorites?

Get Your Goobers Now

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

As I understand it my new book Behaving Madly, about the rare and often unseen Mad magazine imitations of the late fifties, is printed and on it's way to the US. This means, pretty soon I will be starting a Facebook page to promote the contents there. I have decided on a format. I will show sample pages from the book and tell a little bit about them. Without reprinting complete stories, so you will have to buy the book if you want to see more. After a couple of months I will use that page (and probably some days here as well) to show you all the magnificent stuff that didn't make it into the book. I do not want to start with it, because I don't want to give you the impression that this is something that you will find in there (although all of it is mentioned in the accompanying article). I am excited to go an ddo this. And because this is comic strip day, let me open with this parody of Peanuts from Crazy Vol 4 #7, by Jack O'Brien. O'Brien was a cartoonist who packaged several later issues of Charlton's Crazy magazine, one of the longest running Mad imitations. It also has the most convoluted publishing history, which is all explained in a handy sidebar with the article.

Klein Grut

Saturday Leftover Day.

Found this in the online archives of a Dutch newspaper. I am in the process of finding out what it is, but here is what I have now. The strip ran from October 18 1960 (a tuesday) until April 18 1961. It was signed Droc and the copyright belongs to ABC Press, which was a photo syndicate in Amsterdam. The owner of that syndicate was a Hungarian refugee who had started the bussiness in 1939. So I am not sure if this is by a Dutch artist or bought abroad. The characters and concept are the same as Peanuts, but diferent. There seem to be quite a few 'feminist' gags, with the girl character talking about coming the president. Which is odd, because we as a country were (and still are) a monarchy.

Translation: This strip is politically neutral.

Translation: Will you come to my birthday party?/No/Why not?/I can't find anyone to look after my father and mother./They can be a problem, those parents.

Translation: I should go and see a docter for this stiff neck.

Translation: And then... they got married... and lived happily ever after./Not in the movies!

Translation:Thinks: Burglars!//I really should go and see a vetanarian for those nerves!

Translation: My doll is broken. Can you fix her?//Look Bennie, Simon fixed my Precilla. Isn;t that clever?/My, isn't the world full of clever technicians!

Translation:I'll throw it in./What do you mean, a fault? Throwing the ball back into the field is supposed to be done with your hands!