HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Carl Barks’ Donald Duck : December 15th, 2008

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“The Good Duck Artist,” Carl Barks excelled at both short humor comics (his ten-pagers in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories) and longer adventure stories… in fact he did both better than just about anyone else in comics at the time he worked (using the pseudonymn of “Walt Disney”).

I have examples of both types of stories today… on the adventure side of things, Rodney Bowcock’s Comics and Stories brings us the Donald Duck classic The Gilded Man.

On the short humor strip side, courtesy of the Fortress of Fortitude we have Donald Duck in Silent Night, doing battle with his ongoing next-door nemesis in the 10-pagers, Neighbor Jones. Although drawn in 1945, this story was initially rejected for violence, and was not printed until decades later.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Tom Kaczynski’s Transatlantis Blog : December 13th, 2008

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Boy, this has to be my most unwieldy list of links yet… so many links, I actually had to break it into two posts, as WordPress seemingly can’t handle one post that big. So much good stuff, I’m not going to even attempt to summarize the highlights. In fact, I’m going to start dealing with these huge lists of fun comics in a new way… rather than emphasizing the highlights, I’m going to choose one random item to talk about. This should prevent me from talking about Herriman, Wolverton, Kelly and the rest of my ‘usual suspects’ every time I see their work, and hopefully highlight some more obscure treasures.

Tom Kaczynski's Transatlantis Blog
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My friend Tom Kaczynski has been posting a lot of wonderful work from his sketchbook on his Transatlantis blog lately. I’ve been reading and re-reading a lot of back issues of the fantastic MOME anthology from Fantagraphics lately on the bus, and Tom’s work really stands out in there, which is saying a lot, as he is among excellent peers.

Going on a tangent speaking of MOME, boy is it a great anthology, and it keeps getting better… I’ve got to hunt down the issues I’m missing when I have the scratch. I’d put it somewhere in my top five comics anthologies of all time. It really sets a different tone from any other comic anthology series I’ve ever read… it is a rare thing for an anthology to really feel like it has a unique voice and aesthetic of it’s own besides the voice of its individual artists (Weirdo and Raw being two other examples of this), and MOME definitely does. It regularly features wonderful work from Tom, Eleanor Davis, Zak Sally, Jim Woodring, Paul Hornschemeier, Gabrielle Bell, Al Columbia and many, many other excellent cartoonists… and has introduced me to a lot of wonderful artists I was not previously familiar with, which is one of the best things an anthology can do. If you have the cash, it looks like you can get the first ten issues bundled at a deep discount from the Fantagraphics website.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS!: Feininger, Herriman, Capp and Much More at Tras Las Turquesas Cortinas: November 20th, 2008

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A lot of nice stuff linked to today from a Spanish blog I ran across called Tras Las Turquesas Cortinas, including Lyonel Feininger, George Herriman, Al Capp and a lot more. The best way to check it out is to just go to the site and explore. Above is a crop from one of the marvelous Feininger Kin-Der Kids strips reprinted there.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS!: Herriman, McCay, Hoff and Weird City: November 19th, 2008

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I’ve always liked Syd Hoff’s gag cartoons and his childrens’ books… Barkley, Oliver and Grizzwold are frequent reads with my three year old. Here’s a selection of Syd Hoff cartoons from his book Feeling No Pain (1944) at Hairy Green Eyeball.

Any day I can feature some George Herriman is a good day… and these days, between the Krazy Kat dailies reprints at Comic Strip Library News and Mark Kausler’s CatBlog, the Herriman Saturdays at the Stripper’s Guide, and stuff that just shows up miscellaneously, I’m happy to report that this seems to happen almost every time I post.

Note that in the news on their site, Comic Strip Library News reports they have now posted the complete pre-1923 Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay.

The Fortress Of Fortitude takes us on a trip to Weird City (published originally in Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror # 119).

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Opper, Herriman, Woodring, Barks and Tendlar : November 18th, 2008

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More rare Opper strips from Allan Holtz at The Stripper’s Guide! One particularly interesting item features most of Opper’s characters that were current at that time in one strip… a panel from it can be seen above. See the strips here and here.

Also, another of Mr. Holtz’s wonderful Herriman Saturdays, reprinting some of George Herriman’s extremely rare early editorial cartooning work. This week includes more coverage of the previously mentioned Shriners’ convention.

Another beautiful monstrosity from Jim Woodring.

The Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories Donald Duck 8-pager Gopher Goof-Ups by Carl Barks courtesy of Rodney Bowcock’s Comics & Stories.

A rare, beautifully drawn comic to sell kids shoes by Walt-Kelly-influenced animator Dave Tendlar courtesy of Cartoon Brew.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Dr. Seuss, Arch Dale, more Opper and “Graphic Novels” courtesy of the New York Times : November 14th, 2008

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The New York Times has an overview of most of the “graphic novels” they have featured in their publications so far. I guess that the Times calling these graphic novels should be expected from a paper too clueless to have a comics section for the entire twentieth century. Chris Ware’s comic is notably absent. Although it is a large stretch to refer to these as graphic novels, it is an excellent bunch of comics, including Dan Clowes Mr. Wonderful, Seth’s George Sprott, Rutu Modan’s Murder of the Terminal Patient, Jason’s Low Moon and Megan Kelso’s Watergate Sue.

More Frederick Opper at the Stripper’s Guide here and here.


John Adcock gives us an updated biography of Arch Dale with many illustrations and comics at his Punch in Canada Blog.

Finally, here’s some rare Dr. Seuss courtesy of Mystery Hoard.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : The Complete Peanuts is Online, Opper’s Red Rig-A-Jigs at the Stripper’s Guide : November 12th, 2008

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United Features just made a huge amount of content available online for free at their comics.com site… including the complete Peanuts! Good grief!

UPDATE: Browsing some more, I noticed that in addition to all that Peanuts, they also appear to have a whole lot of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner on there! Unfortunately, Nancy only goes back to 2000, long after the death of the strip’s genius creator Ernie Bushmiller.

Allan Holtz’s excellent Stripper’s Guide blog has some great Frederick Opper strips to celebrate the release of a new Happy Hooligan book from NBM, including a wonderful rarity called The Red Rig-A-Jigs.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Wolverton’s Powerhouse Pepper : November 11th, 2008

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TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: I can’t seem to keep up these days… thus, another huge link list of comic treasure to pore over with one random featured item… can’t go wrong with Wolverton! Here’s some Powerhouse Pepper from Comicrazys.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Addams, Wolverton and Godwin’s Crazy Charlie for Halloween : October 31st, 2008

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Way too much great stuff listed below, as usual… I’m only featuring Halloween oriented items today (there are a ton more in the list below)…

What could put you more in the mood for Halloween than some Charles Addams cartoons, courtesy of Hairy Green Eyeball.

The Fortress of Fortitude presents Basil Wolverton’s They Crawl By Night! (plus some of his fantastic Plop! covers can be seen at Diversions of the Groovy Kind).

Barnacle Press brings us the complete run of H.E. Godwin’s Crazy Charlie.

Even more Halloween oriented comics can be found linked at The Comics Reporter here. and here.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse in The Gypsies at Rodney Bowcock’s Comics and Stories : October 29th, 2008

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I haven’t had any time to blog lately, so boy did this list get out of control… way too many treasures to feature this time around (including a ton of Herriman, and even a Segar Herriman parody), so I’ll just feature one of them.

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Rodney Bowcock’s Comics and Stories brings you the Mickey Mouse comic strip adventure The Gypsies by Floyd Gottfredson (inked by Al Taliaferro) from 1931… with that scoundrel Walt Disney taking all the credit, as usual. Apparently, this one has never been reprinted in the US. Part one here, part two here. He thinks it will be presented on his site in a total of five parts.