HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Russ Heath’s Brain at Pappy’s Golden Age Blogzine : March 5th, 2009

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Pappy’s Golden Age Blogzine has a couple of great, over-the-top silly Russ Heath horror tales… The Brain, and its sequel The Return of the Brain. Click the image to go check them out.

INTERESTING LINKS: Jack Kent’s King Aroo to be Reprinted by IDW : March 5th, 2009

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On a thread on comic strip reprints that people wish would happen on The Comics Journal Message Board it was noted that in their Terry and the Pirates V.6 reprint, IDW mentioned they will be doing a reprint of Jack Kent’s wonderful strip King Aroo as part of their increasingly impressive Library of American Comic Strips (along with Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby and Neal Adams’ Ben Casey). This is the first time I have heard this mentioned anywhere. Here are some examples of King Aroo from Cool-Mo-Dee and Cartoon Snap, if you aren’t familiar with it.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Header Strips and More Courtesy of Hogan’s Alley : March 3rd, 2009

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Hogan’s Alley has a wonderful gallery of full-color topper strips courtesy of Bill Blackbeard as a supplement to the latest issue of their always wonderful magazine (#16)…. there are some other great supplements at the link as well, as usual. Topper or header strips, for those who don’t know, are secondary comic strips that used to be published in conjunction with the main strip back when cartoonists were afforded an entire page of a Sunday newspaper to practice their craft on.

Most of these wonderful strips are largely forgotten today, and many are quite wonderful… examples of some of my favorite header strips are featured… Otto Messmer’s Laura (a header of Felix… which they have attributed mistakenly, although understandably, to Felix credit-stealer Pat Sullivan) and Segar’s Sappo (a header of Thimble Theatre) notably. Cliff Sterrett, Billy DeBeck, Rube Goldberg and many other greats are featured as well. There are no examples of Sterrett’s wonderful silent Dot and Dash topper, unfortunately (another of my favorites), but multiple examples of his variously titled marriage-lament topper strips (all headers of Polly and Her Pals).

INTERESTING LINKS: Brian Sibley on View Master Reels : March 3rd, 2009

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Brian Sibley has a nice post on View Master reels
with some nice examples of the craft and artistry that went into making them.