Monthly Archives: September 2008

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Kurtzman, Woodring and Herriman : September 29th, 2008

Posted on by
Reply

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS: Here’s a rare Harvey Kurtzman comic on Marlon Brando from Esquire courtesy of Those Fabuleous Fifties…

Another brilliant Jim Woodring Frank image…

And Herriman Saturday at Allan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide…

INTERESTING LINKS : Fits in the Palm of Your Hand : September 29th, 2008

Posted on by
Reply

STWALLSKULL'S INTERESTING LINKS

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: In his Pop! column, George Khoury at Comic Book Resources brings us a couple true tales of kids who ordered monkeys out of the backs of comic books. Yes, that’s right kids, for less than 20 smackers, and as recently as in the early seventies, you could buy an actual live monkey from the back of a comic book, shipped in a box to your door half-crazed and covered in its own shit. Amazingly, this went on for years. I wonder how many of these were shipped to the wrong addresses. Click the image below to read the story.

STWALLSKULL’S CARTOON CRYPT PRESENTS: Vintage Spooky Cartoons

Posted on by
2

STWALLSKULL'S CARTOON CRYPT PRESENTS: Vintage Spooky Cartoons

In eager anticipation of Halloween, here is a directory of the vintage spooky cartoons that have been compiled on this site so far. I’m going to be adding a lot more over the next month or so, so please do check back. Please note that you can subscribe to this site here to keep up with the latest posts.

CRUMBLING PAPER: The Strange Adventures of Pussy Pumpkin and Her Chum Toodles (strip #2)

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s an example I scanned of The Strange Adventures of Pussy Pumpkin by Grace G. Wiederseim/Drayton from 1903.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read Turr’ble Tales of Kaptain Kiddo by Grace Drayton at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read an example of Grace Drayton’s The Eternal Feminine at The Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to read about Grace Drayton at lambiek.net.

Read a short biography of Grace Drayton here.

Read an article on Grace Drayton here.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Jim Woodring, Mattias Adolfsson, Walt Kelly and Crazy Charlie : September 26th, 2008

Posted on by
Reply

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED LINKS:

Good golly I love the work of Jim Woodring… he is one of my all time favorite artists. Click the below brand new image from his blog to go see it in spectacular full size, and then check out the rest of his eye candy. Note that Mr. Woodring has a new book he has made with author Paul Di Filippo coming out imminently called COSMOCOPIA that will be limited to 500 copies, and includes a jigsaw puzzle. $50, but I imagine they will go pretty fast.

Swedish illustrator Mattias Adolfsson has been posting images from his sketchbook for a long time, and they are always absolutely spectacular. His buildings remind me of early R. Crumb crossed with Dr. Seuss. Fantastic stuff… click one of his latest images below to go check out his blog.

Those Fabuleous Fifties brings us a beautiful silent Walt Kelly kids comic strip from Animal Comics #22. Once again I plead into the void… PLEASE, someone out there reprint all the Kelly kids comics! If a book like this was well-designed and aimed at the kids market rather than the comic collectors’ market, I think it would clean up. Click the image below to go there.

Finally, Allan Holtz at The Stripper’s Guide gives us two examples of H.E. Godwin’s Crazy Charlie. Click the image below to go there.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Summertime (1935)

Posted on by
Reply

THE CARTOON CRYPT

Summertime is one of the weaker Ub Iwerks ComiColor cartoons, in my opinion, but it features the return of Old Man Winter, who was in the cartoon Jack Frost that I posted the other day. It was definitely influenced by the Disney series of season-based Silly Symphonies… because Iwerks directed Springtime (1929) Summer (1930), and Autumn (1930) for them. It also features a very racy scene for the time of silhouettes of trees turning into silhouettes of rotoscoped dancing ladies. In spite of some very good moments, this cartoon is greatly weakened by having only one design for a centaur, and reusing the animation of him relentlessly.

Read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database.

This cartoon, along with almost all of Ub Iwerks cartoons made for his own studio, are available on the excellent DVDs The Cartoons that time Forgot Volume One and Volume Two. This cartoon is on Volume 1.

INTERESTING LINKS: Bob Staake’s LINGO: September 26th, 2008

Posted on by
Reply

STWALLSKULL'S INTERESTING LINKS

TODAY’S FEATURED LINK:
Drawn! points us to LINGO, an amusing looking take on the game BINGO by illustrator Bob Staake designed to deflect some of the pain of watching this season’s presidental debates. Print them out if you’re the sort of masochist inclined to put yourself through watching presidential debates.

CRUMBLING PAPER: The Strange Adventures of Pussy Pumpkin (strip #1)

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s an example I scanned of The Strange Adventures of Pussy Pumpkin by Grace G. Wiederseim, aka Grace Drayton, the creator of the Campbell’s Soup Kids, from 1903.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read Turr’ble Tales of Kaptain Kiddo by Grace Drayton at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read an example of Grace Drayton’s The Eternal Feminine at The Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to read about Grace Drayton at lambiek.net.

Read a short biography of Grace Drayton here.

Read an article on Grace Drayton here.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Salesman Sam by C.D. Small, Milt Gross, Old Manga, In This Corner by David Steinlicht and Mrs. Bumps by Dwig : September 25th, 2008

Posted on by
Reply

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS: The Marc Deckter challenge is over at the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive, but they have a bonus day today… a generous helping of the very inspiring Salesman Sam by C.D. Small and more Milt Gross (plus a Chic Young Blondie Sunday)! Boy, I’d like to see a book of those Salesman Sam strips. Click the image below to go there.

Salesman Sam by C.D. Small

My friend David Steinlicht‘s weekly In This Corner comic is one of my favorite things on the web (it also appears in the St. Paul Pioneer Press print edition every Thursday)… click the below image for his latest.

In This Corner by David Steinlicht

Shaenon Garrity brings us a bunch of pages of beautiful, obscure and forgotten manga in two different posts here and here.

Obscure old manga

Finally, The Stripper’s Guide brings us a lovely example of Mrs. Bumps’ Boarding House by Dwig. Click the below image to view it.

Mrs. Bumps' Boarding House

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Everready Harton in Buried Treasure (1929)

Posted on by
Reply

I recently saw this cartoon on The Panopticist via Boing Boing. It is likely to be the first pornographic animated cartoon, and it is a doozy… boy is it funny.

Read more about this cartoon at The Panopticist. There they quote Wikipedia quoting Ward Kimball…

The Wikipedia page includes this backstory quote from Disney animator Ward Kimball: “The first porno-cartoon was made in New York. It was called ‘Eveready Harton’ and was made in the late 20’s, silent, of course—by three studios. Each one did a section of it without telling the other studios what they were doing. Studio A finished the first part and gave the last drawing to Studio B. … Involved were Max Fleischer, Paul Terry and the Mutt and Jeff studio. … A couple of guys who were there [at the party] tell me the laughter almost blew the top off the hotel where they were screening it.”

WARNING: This is a hilariously pornographic cartoon. If smut offends you, you may not want to view it. If you are under the age of 18, don’t watch it until you are, because you could probably get me in trouble, you naughty little imps.