STWALLSKULL

Amusements, diversions, whirligigs, geegaws, humbugs and comics, comics, comics.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Carl Barks’ Porky of the Mounties : February 17th, 2009

Posted on February 17, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

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Carl Barks is best known for all his fantastic work on the Disney Duck comics, but he did other wonderful kids comics for Dell as well. Today, Cool-Mo-Dee brings us his one Porky Pig comic book, Porky of the Mounties, which was Four Color issue #48. Pictured above is a small image of the Porky of the Mounties painting that Barks did for the cover of the 1977 Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Mickey’s Bastards : February 16th, 2009

Posted on February 16, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

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Thad at ThadBlog has found a hilarious and dark origin story of Mickey Mouse’s basta… um… nephews Morty and Ferdie by Wilfred Haughton from the UKâ€™s Mickey Mouse Annual #6, 1935. Dan O’Neill could have put this in Air Pirates and it would have fit right in…

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Jack Kirby’s 2001: A Space Oddysey : February 13th, 2008

Posted on February 13, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

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I’ve been on a Jack Kirby kick lately. I just wrote a Kirby homage my friend Danno is going to illustrate for the Minicomics Dumptruck project (to be called Phenomenal Tangents), and it got me rereading some of the Kirby comics I had in the basement.

A lot of people love Jack Kirby the artist… a smaller group love Jack Kirby the writer. I like Kirby’s writing as much as his art… he is endlessly inventive and bizarre, if often more than a little incoherent. In addition to all his other numerous achievements, he made some of the most dreamlike comics of all time.

Much of his writing seems almost like he is doing a jam comic with himself… rather than seeing a clear big picture, he constantly changes direction, introducing whatever new idea or plot element catches his fancy to talk about and to draw. He writes like a cross of Ed Wood and Phillip K. Dick… inventiveness and surrealism drips from every page of his best work.

One of his best and least-recognized accomplishments I’ve seen is his interpretation of Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oddysey for Marvel Comics in the 70’s. Divorced from having a single protagonist or defining concept beyond the mysterious obelisk through the series, Kirby just goes nuts. I’ve only read random issues of it… however, I’m going to download it and read the whole thing because both The Cross-Eyed Cyclops just posted it (here and here). This is highly unlikely to get reprinted, I think, since it is tied to the 2001 franchise. Don’t miss it.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Treasure Trove of Vintage Comics at Cool-Mo-Dee and The Cross-Eyed Cyclops : January 30th, 2008

Posted on January 30, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

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As I mentioned in the last post, I ran across some fantastic blogs yesterday, which you will see well represented in the links below. Notably, check out The Cross-Eyed Cyclops and Cool-Mo-Dee for vintage comics scans galore (among other goodies). Both sites had too many comics available to easily list here, although I listed a bunch of them. Also, note that Cool-Mo-Dee pointed out that the fantastic archive.org now has a lot of vintage comic scans to download. Pictured above is a page from the story Escape From Devil’s Island from Dynamic Adventures #9, one of the many great comics you can download courtesy of The Cross-Eyed Cyclops… click the image to go get it.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Mr. Satan at Tomb it May Concern : January 29th, 2009

Posted on January 29, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

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I just ran across a new blog full of fun horror comics… Tomb it May Concern. In addition to six episodes (1 2 3 4 5 6) of the above psychotronic Flaming Carrot reject, Mr. Satan (a character from the golden age title Zip Comics), they have a gorgeously illustrated Bruce Jones and Bernie Wrightson horror story from Creepy #63, Jenifer.

Boy do I ever love this panel from the sixth installment of Mr. Satan…

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Bill Everett’s Venus at The Johnny Bacardi Show : January 20th, 2009

Posted on January 20, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

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The Johnny Bacardi Show brings us Bill Everett’s bizarre character Venus in Where Gargoyles Dwell!

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Jack Kirby’s Black Magic Mutilated : January 19th, 2009

Posted on January 19, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

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The Jack Kirby museum highlights needless changes to Kirby’s artwork in 1970’s DC reprints of the 50’s horror title Black Magic.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : F.M. Howarth in Scribner’s at Unattended Baggage : January 16th, 2008

Posted on January 16, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

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Unattended Baggage brings us some rare F.M. Howarth (author of the wonderful Lulu and Leander strip which I have featured numerous times on this site) cartoons from Scribner’s Magazine. See them here and here. Both Howarth and Frederick Opper (Happy Hooligan) were magazine cartoonists who adopted a simpler style for their transitions to the newspaper comics page (not that Howarth’s style ever looks simple)… I wonder if this was a common phenomenon at the time?

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Tom K Tells it Like it is : January 14th, 2008

Posted on January 14, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

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Oy, another out of control long, long list. Been a while, huh? Anyone still reading? Well, welcome back!

Let me just dispense with the illusion/self-delusion that this blog is going to be updated on a regular basis. Starting now, it will be updated whenever I damn well feel like it, and only then, just as it always has been, only with no pretense of operating otherwise. It shall always be feast or famine in these waters. Are you with me, or are you against me?!?

Well, I hope you’re with me. I really do appreciate the fact that people choose to read this blog, in spite of my constant abuse of their expectations. Dear reader, I salute you!

In any case, to avoid the frustration of checking back for updates, I encourage you to subscribe to this blog with a newsreader, so the updates come to you. I use and recommend Google Reader if you need a newsreader… it is free and it works like a charm.

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On his Transatlantis blog, my friend Tom Kaczynski hits the nail on the head…

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : The Harvey Kurtzman Collection : December 19th, 2008

Posted on December 19, 2008 by STWALLSKULL

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Boing Boing points us to The Harvey Kurtzman Collection, where Joey Anuff is posting scans of his huge collection of rare Harvey Kurtzman art, including a ton of unpublished preliminary materials.