Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Bill Peckmann has sent me a stash of original comic book covers for the Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. There are 20 in all, and they all are beautifully drawn and colored. It’s a real charge to see them; for the most part they’re the work of Walt Kelly, and it’s great to see how his comic styling develops. Bill wrote the following about them:

The issues of “Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories” are in order of publication, it’s not a complete run but it is a fun one. Being the number one selling title of it’s day, it’s easy to see why some of the kids put their names on the covers, I’m guessing they didn’t want to lose them or trade them off by mistake. (Trading comics and bubble gum cards in those days was always going on, easy way to save money.)

All of the covers were done by Walt Kelly, except the very first one (August 1942, “Goldfish Bowl”), that was done by Al Taliaferro, long time Donald Duck newspaper strip artist.

Here are the covers from December 1945 to May 1947.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- At last, we’ve reached the final part of the Carl Barks Donald Duck story, “Sheriff of Bullet Valley”. This is one of the most treasured of the Donald comics, and thanks to Bill Peckmann‘s sending the book, we can get to see it all of a piece.
You can visit part 1 & part 2 on this blog in the past two weeks.

Let’s start with another oil painting by Carl Barks adapted from the cover of this magazine. It’s from “The Fine Art Of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck.”

“The Sheriff of Bullet Valley” (18″x24″)
The handling of this third version of Bullet Valley is close to the original comic book
cover and truly conveys the ominous atmosphere of the showdown scene.

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Now here’s the remainder of the story, The Sheriff of Bullet Valley.
We pick up where Part 2 left off . . . 1

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To fill out this post Bill Peckmann had sent another couple of one-page gags. Here’s his additional note:

Here are the two end page gags done in the original two color format which looks great as well as the back cover gag done in full color, which also looks terrific. When we were kids, all of us “Good Duck Artist” fans, (Remember at that time we didn’t know the name of the cartoonist who drew our favorite DD stories) would have loved to have seen a whole DD comic printed and colored on cover stock (like back cover gags) and not on the ratty, pulp newsprint paper. Unfortunately now, when comic book reprint albums are printed on quality paper, the coloring is so ham fisted, they loose so much of the essence of the original book, especially Barks’ beautiful line work. It’s probably better to see it in it’s original black and white but then something else seems to be missing. (There are some people you just can’t seem to please!)

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Thanks again to Bill Peckmann in sharing his library with us.

- Today we continue with part 2 of 3 from Carl Barks‘ brilliant comic story, “Sheriff of Bullet Valley.” Bill Peckmann who sent the whole thing to me for posting, starts with an oil painting by Barks which was based on this story. Bill writes:

Here’s Carl’s painting of the cover (caption to follow). It’s taken from “The Fine Art of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck” by Carl Barks. It was published in 1981 by Another Rainbow Publishing Co.

“The Sheriff of Bullet Valley”

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Bill Peckmann wrote:

Fortunately for us, “Bullet Valley” broke down nicely into 3 acts, but then again with the ol’ master, Carl Barks, at the helm, I’m sure luck had nothing to do with it.

One more note on the coloring. After rummaging through other colored reprinted (and original) versions of BV, I’ve come to the conclusion (IMHO) that this might be one of the best colored Barks story ever. I wish I knew who did the art direction on the the coloring, great job. Usually the colors are all slightly over saturated or are computer gradated, this version has all of the colors done nicely in a simple pale mode and boy, does that let Barks’ line work (one of the best in the business) superbly shine through!

- Bill Peckmann sent me the first installment of Carl Barks‘ comic story, “Sheriff of Bullet Valley.” There will be two other installments to follow. Here’s the note Bill sent with the scans:

“Sheriff of Bullet Valley” was reprinted in Another Rainbow Pubishing Company’s “Carl Barks Library” in 1984. Most of the “CBL” was printed in B&W, fortunately “Sheriff” was printed in color and what a beautiful job they did. The coloring is done in wonderful flat tones, no color gradients and that seems to be just what the doctor ordered for Carl’s style.

Barks’ was at the top of his game when he did this story and because of that, a great deal of enjoyable time can be spent studying each page and each panel. A lot of people have explained Carl’s art much better than I can, but to me, he always had the ability (and still does) to make a world on the printed page as real as the one outside your window. What he packed into those pages by way of writing, continuity, panel and page design, backgrounds and landscapes, his posing and the acting ability of his characters, wow,in this day and age it seems like such a super human effort.

Here then is the first installment of “Sheriff of Bullet Valley” by Carl Barks.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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To be continued

- Here’s an interview printed in Cartoonist Profiles Magazine in 1988. It’s Bill Watterson, of Calvin & Hobbes fame, of course, giving an appreciation of Walt Kelly of Pogo fame, obviously. It’s a gem of a piece sent to me by Bill Peckmann, and I’m posting it hoping you’ll find it interesting. Thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing his incredible archives.

Cover

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- Suppose we had a comic book version of The 3 Caballeros; wouldn’t that be fun to see? What if the artwork were done completely by Walt Kelly; would that make it a treasure? I think it does. Bill Peckmann made my week when he sent me the scans to the following comic book. As Bill wrote to me: “Beautiful stuff, like Barks’ art, it’s timeless, looks like it was done yesterday.”

Not only is the artwork out of this world, but the quality of the printing is brilliant. And the quality of the book, itself, is wonderfully well preserved. You only have to look below to read it. Take your time; this is great.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing this gorgeous material with us.

- The other shoe drops. A while back I posted the first half of the comic book, Clint & Mac, which was illustrated by Alex Toth from a Disney live-action feature. The book was sent to me by Bill Peckmann, and we’ve just put together the second half, for your amusement. The art’s all first rate, and the story adaptation isn’t that bad either.

Here’s a note Bill sent me with the scans:

This book has been a real pleasant discovery and surprise. I’ve got to confess because of its innocuous title, it’s always been on the bottom of my pile and until recently hasn’t got the kudos it deserves. I know for me it was seeing the recent publication of Manuel Auad‘s very fine Robert Fawcett: The Illustrator’s Illustrator that made me realize just how much of a Fawcett fan Alex was and it really shows in his “Clint & Mac”.

Here’s the rest of the story, starting where we left off with pag. 19:

The magazine’s cover

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Inside Back Cover

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Back Cover

Here’s an additional treat: it’s the original art of the “All American Western” cover, #107, 1949. Dean Mullaney had printed this art in the book Genius Isolated which he co-authored with Bruce Canwell. They were kind enough to send it to Bill for posting here.

The original art

Here’s the color cover as it appears in the Magazine.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for arranging and passing along this rare bit of comic art.

- Bill Peckmann forwarded the following material from Mad magazine taken from the collected Mad For Keeps. Here’s to Bill’s comments:

Here’s a little something for all Harvey Kurtzman (writing and unseen rough lay outs) and Jack Davis (finished art) fans.

In 1958, Crown Publishers came out with the best of MAD collection. I believe this is the first hardcover collection of EC Comics to ever come out. Most of the book is comprised of MAD Magazine (started in ’55) stories and a few MAD Comic Book (’52 to ’55) stories.
Some of the comic book stories are printed in their original color, others without their original color. As far as I can tell, all of the work in here was written/rough laid out/edited by Harvey Kurtzman, MAD’s founder. It’s all copyrighted by EC Comics.

By the time the book came out it must have been a very bittersweet moment for Harvey because he had already left MAD, and MAD was just starting to become a commercial success. MAD went on to become an industry, rightfully so, but IMHO it never again was the “class” act that Harvey shepherded in. Also in retrospect, Kurtzman couldn’t have sustained that level for ever. After all, how many “Starry Nights” could Vincent paint?

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We’ll start off with the cover, comprised from one of the issues,
which has Harvey’s great MAD logo, Bill Elder’s border and probably
Norman Mingo’s first Alfred E. Neuman illustration.

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This is the back cover which Jack Davis embellished.

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Here’s the book’s introduction by Ernie Kovacs.

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I thought with this book we would be able to show Jack Davis’ neat
transition from “comic book” art to “magazine illustration” art.
Again, during this time period, Jack is working over Harvey’s rough layouts.
Man, what a team! Sans coloring, you can really see Harvey’s storytelling and Jack’s beautiful brush & pen line work and his masterful spotting of “blacks”.

So here is the whole comic book story.

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On to the “magazine” part. Look how sweetly Harvey laid this out,
add Jack’s hilarious art and you have perfection. Harvey always
compared Jack’s art to best strawberry ice cream sundae; I’ve
always seen it as the best sparkling jewelry ever, either way,
what eye candy!

ps: It doesn’t seem like baseball’s changed that much in 55 years.

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We’ll end on one of the early advertising spoofs and you can see
Jack is well on his way to becoming one of our national treasures.

- Bill Peckmann sent some fresh Alex Toth material and with it came some notes. So, I’ll turn the blog over to him today:

In keeping with the celebration of Dean Mullaney‘s book, Genius Isolated, I thought I’d scan some of Alex’s early 1950′s and early 1960′s comic book art.

The first three are DC Comics’ “All American Western” covers from 1949 to 1951. (Wonderful house/publisher coloring.) The character he was doing for the book was called “Johnny Thunder”, a western hero with a Clark Kent duel personality. Alex was only 21 years old at the time of the first cover.

(#121 has been reprinted in “Genius”)

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The following is the back cover of issue #121, it’s an ad, non Toth, I just thought you’d get a kick out of it. . . .

. . . As an 8 year old I remember this premium/give away very well, Donald and Mickey were the prized ones of course. To all us little cookie snappers at that time, anything Disney was few and far between, unlike today!

The following complete story is from EC Comics’ “Two-Fisted Tales”, issue #22, 1951. (This scan is of the cover done by book editor Harvey Kurtzman.)

The story “Dying City” was written, layed out and outstandingly inked by Harvey Kurtzman. The beautiful tight pencils were Alex’s. Both gents were in their best Milton Caniff mode, wonderful job of a very grim story.

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In 1963 Alex was doing “Mad Magazine” type pages for “cartoon car” type magazines coming out of the west coast. It looks like he had an easy time slipping into the skins of Jack Davis and Mort Drucker and seemed to enjoy doing it for a while. These 2 stories are from “DRAG CARtoons” #2. They are take offs of the then popular TV series, “Dr. Kildare” and “The Defenders.

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Both these stories plus all of the rest of this type that Alex did for the “cartoon car” magazines were lovingly and handsomely collected by Manuel Auad (publisher of the new, excellent Robert Fawcett book) in his/this Alex Toth, One for the Road, published in 2000.

Cover – “One for the Road”

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for all the great material in this post.

- The following piece was sent to me by Bill Peckmann. Here’s his introduction to it:

Here’s something that might not be accessible to some of your readers.
It’s the program booklet of the 1972 EC Comics Convention that was held in NYC.

I’ve scanned the pages pertaining to cartoonists of the early MAD comic book. The caricatures were done in the early ’50′s (EC at it’s peak) by a very young Marie Severin. (EC colorist then, went on to fame at MARVEL comics later.). The comments of the cartoonists are made by their compatriots for the Convention. Twenty years had passed but the good memories were still there.

So here we have editor/artist Harvey Kurtzman. Artists – Jack Davis, Bill Elder, Wally Wood, John Severin, colorist Marie Severin (sister of John) and last but not least, publisher of EC Comics, Bill Gaines.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing the material,