The Big Cartoon Database claims that besides Foxy and Roxy looking a whole lot like Mickey and Minnie, a lot of the gags in this cartoon were plagiarized. It sure is fun, regardless. The hobos are just great.
Read more about this cartoon at the Big Cartoon Database.
It appears that this cartoon is available with a bunch of other miscellaneous cartoons from the 30’s on the DVD Return of the 30’s Characters.
Here’s an example I scanned of Glad Rags, the Corpulent Tramp by William F. Marriner and How Would You Like To Be John? by an unknown artist from 1905. Can anyone out there identify the artist of the John strip? If so, please let us know in the comments. Omne-bo-point?
UPDATE: Cole Johnson identified the artist of How Would You Like To Be John? as J.A. Lemon. Thanks, Cole!
Click the image to view the full strip.
Click here to read about William F. Marriner at lambiek.net.
Winsor McCay was a pioneer in both comic strips and animated films, and he did both disciplines more skillfully than anyone else attempting them at the time. This lovely cartoon was hand animated on rice paper and color tinted by hand on the film by Winsor McCay in 1911, if you can believe that. 1911!
Please be advised that like much of the popular culture of the era, it contains offensive racial depictions. If this sort of thing offends you, you may not want to view it.
Read more about this cartoon on the Big Cartoon Database here.
Read more about Winsor McCay at Lambiek.net.
Read more about Winsor McCay on Wikipedia.
There is a DVD that collects Winsor McCay’s cartoons that can be purchased here.
I think all his cartoons are available on the internet as well.
Here’s a wonderfully animated example I scanned of Gus Mager’s Hawkshaw the Detective. See previous entries I’ve made about Mager here. Notice how much the art looks like a Rudolph Dirks’ Katzenjammer Kids strip? That’s because Mager was Dirks’ assistant.
Can anyone out there name all the characters in the footer bar?
Note that this strip contains offensive racial depictions, as was typical of the comic strips of the era… if you are deeply offended by that sort of thing, you may not want to view it.
Click the image to view the full strip.
See examples of Mager’s Hawkshaw the Detective on Barnacle Press here.
See examples of Mager’s Monks on Barnacle Press here.
Read more about Hawkshaw the Detective on Don Markstein’s Toonopedia here.
Here’s one of the two cartoon adaptations of Milt Gross’ Count Screwloose. It isn’t a very good translation of the feel and charm of the comic strip, but it is fun and very well animated. The loony bin is nowhere to be seen. Why they decided to change Iggy’s name to J.R. the Wonder Dog I have no idea… and they stole his funny hat! You can see the other Count Screwloose cartoon, Wanted: No Master (also from 1939), here.
Note that this cartoon contains offensive racial depictions, and if this sort of thing offends you deeply you may not want to watch it.
Read more about this cartoon on the Big Cartoon Database.
I’m currently having my best day for traffic on this blog ever. In an attempt to keep folks coming back for more, I wanted to encourage visitors to subscribe to this blog.
A lot of people don’t know what it means to subscribe to a blog or rss feed. It basically makes it so, rather than having to visit a website to get new content, the new content is delivered to you via a newsreader. I recommend doing so highly… it will save you a lot of time if you visit a lot of websites and blogs with rss feeds, and it costs nothing. For a newsreader, I highly recommend the free, powerful, and easy to use web application Google Reader.
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO STWALLSKULL.
Jason Chatfield was nice enough to send me some rare scans to share with you all of a strip I was previously unaware of, but which is the longest running comic strip in Australian History, Ginger Meggs. Here’s what Jason has to say about the strip:
Ginger Meggs is the longest running comic strip in Australian History, and the longest running comic strip character internationally, after Schultz, Watterson,MacNelly etc. stopped drawing their respective strips. The strip has had five artists now, myself the fifth as of the last couple of months.
The two strips attached are from the Sun Herald in Sydney – one is from 1921, in a strip where Meggs first appeared called “Us Fellers” drawn by Megg’s creator, James “Jimmy” Bancks. The other is from 1951, a year before he died and passed the strip on to Ron Vivian.
Enjoy!
Thanks much for sharing these, Jason!
Click the image to view the full strip.
Click the image to view the full strip.
