Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- In celebration of the new book about Alex Toth, Genius Isolated by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell, we’re posting some Toth work for Dell comics in the 60s.

Bill Peckman has an enormous collection of comics by Toth, and with the help of Dean Mullaney, we’d like to show how beautiful Alex Toth’s originals look in comparison with the poor quality printing of the comics. You can see how degraded the lines become in the final magazines when placing them alongside the original art.

Here are three comparisons to make from the comic, The Land Unknown.

This is the published cover.

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Look at the soft lines printed on the poor quality newsprint.

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This is the original from Alex Toth.

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Here are a sampling of other magazines done by Alex Toth.

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Alex Toth also did a lot of TV titles such as: 77 Sunset Strip, Sugerfoot, The Real McCoys’, Danny Thomas, The Lennon Sisters… to name a few.

Probably his best remembered title is Zorro from the Disney TV series. This was reprinted not too long ago – the first collaboration between Alex Toth and Dean Mullaney.

This material was sent to me by Bill Peckmann. Here’s Bill’s note accompanying it:

In a couple of days Dean Mullaney and and Bruce Canwell‘s Genius Isolated, a book about the work of Alex Toth, will be hitting the bookstores. This is certainly going to be a GREAT tome given the track record of dedicated work of the authors. (Early reviews bear this out.)

To celebrate the book here’s one of Alex’s Dell/Disney comic books. It’s the 1958 adaptation of the Disney movie Clint and Mac.

Alex was a big Robert Fawcett fan and I believe the 30 year old Toth had Fawcett on his mind when he illustrated this comic. There are so many beautifully designed panels on these pages. Sorry about the slap dash coloring of the book, but that’s the way Dell did it in those days, though the computer screen helps a lot.

One page of this magazine appears in the book. Here, you’ll get to see and read the whole thing. This is the first half of the book

The magazine’s cover

Inner cover

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for this rare piece of the Alex Toth collection.

- Harvey Kurtzman produced a piece for Pageant magazine back in 1960. It was a telling of Pinocchio with that distinctly Kurtzman touch. Bill Peckmann recently pulled his copy of the magazine off the shelf, dusted it off and sent scans to me. So all I have to do is take pleasure in posting it. Enjoy.

The cover of the magazine.

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- Bill Peckmann recently came upon a collection of New Yorker cartoons from 1937. Since we’ve been running some artwork by Peter Arno and Whitney Darrow Jr., we thought it’d be interesting to grab the cartoons by these two from that year. To put it in perspective, remember that 1937 was the year that Snow White was released.

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- Last week we posted a couple of “Bingbang Buster” stories from the “Black Diamond Western” comic books. These strips were done by Basil Woolverton. The Blacxk Diamond Western covers are by Charles Biro. Here are two more stories from June and August of 1950.

We’ll finish up with Jack Davis‘ story for “Mad” comic books. The “MAD” cover is by Harvey Kurtzman.

These, of course, come from the immense collection of Bill Peckmann. I’m grateful to him for the scans and the loan to post them.

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- The other day I received this note from Bill Peckmann:

Before there were Underground cartoonists and comic books in the ’60′s and ’70′s, there was Harvey Kurtzman and Basil Wolverton doing filler features in comic books in the late ’40′s and early ’50′s. Harvey’s “Pot Shot Pete” ran in western comic books and so did Wolverton’s “Bing Bang Buster”. “Buster” ran in a western series titled “Black Diamond Western”. The first installment was in issue # 16, Nov. 1949. Like Harvey’s very distinct style, Basil’s could also be easily spotted at twenty paces. Like “Pot Shot”, “Buster” would be very at home in the pages of an early “Mad” comic book. Wolverton did join the ranks of “Mad” artists in later issues of the comic book. This is one of many features and characters that Basil did in his lifetime but it’s one that usually falls through the cracks.

I’m including the covers of the comic to give the feature a time and place. These were done by Charles Biro who later wound up at the NBC TV graphics dept. I used to see him at 841 u-nion meetings and never made the connection he was the same Charlie of comic book fame, too bad.)

Without further ado, here are a couple of issues:

Cover 1

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Cover 2

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Cover 3

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- Harvey Kurtzman offers a wealth of golden cartoons. Here’s a reprinted selection that Bill Peckmann forwarded to me; I think you’ll enjoy it. Bill wrote:

This book of Harvey Kurtzman reprints came out in 1976. They are of three “filler” features that HK did for comic books in the late ’40′s. These pre-date the work he did at EC Comics. You can see the early seeds of MAD comics that came a few years later.

His style is timeless, like that of Mary Blair or Bill Peet*. These could have been done yesterday. Love those animated poses. Fortunately he did do a new cover for the book when it came out. There’s also an intro by Robert Crumb.

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The front cover

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The back cover

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing.

- This is the comic book FRONTLINE COMBAT (#12). It was sent to me by Bill Peckmann, and he best delineates what makes this issue so important. In Bill’s words:

Here’s the worn, torn cover and imperfect pages* of FRONTLINE COMBAT (#12) comic book from 1953.

Harvey Kurtzman (Age 29) – Editor, writer and lay-out artist.

Jack Davis (Age 29) – Cover (Before he was famous for his TV Guide & Time covers.) and one story.

Alex Toth (Age 25) – One story.

It doesn’t get much better than this. Would be hard to find a bunch of comic book artists from this time period who could do a better job at setting mood, time and place. And, look at those ages, WOW… them, there young whipper snappers!

Alex’s graphic design of those pages is a wonder. At that period in his early career the story is really something to behold. He and Harvey battled (neither one had pleasant memories of this) over how this story should be done/told and unfortunately they never worked together again. If you look at AT’s other aviation stories (not done with Harvey) at this time, they’re good, but do not reach the level of great art that “F-86″ breached. So, even though they couldn’t/didn’t agree, without their collaboration, we would never have had this keeper of a story!

-Bill

ps: Pages are a little off register and some of the ink bleeds through from the other side of the page but there’s still a wonderful softness that’s there, kinda like 4 strip Technicolor movies.

I couldn’t agree more. Here’re the scans:

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It just so happens that I received an email from Tom Hachtman today, and I thought I’d post it here since it’s somewhat appropriate:

I just got a copy of ‘The Art of Harvey Kurtzman’ – because I am an artist and a humorist and not much of a musician I find Harvey more important than the Beatles and Harry Shearer, in an intro, says, ‘…no Harvey no Simpsons’ and ‘no Harvey no SNL’.
I’d like to add ‘ no Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein’ and probably no David Letterman – hard to say – ALSO – I think it is in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ that there is a scene where John Lennon is reading a MAD paperback and those were all Harvey – so, maybe NO HARVEY NO BEATLES haha – and I think it was George at a press conference when they arrived in the USA, when asked what they call their haircut responded, ‘Arthur!’ – ‘Arthur’ was the name of the potted plant mascot that often appeared in the early MAD.

And of course ‘no Harvey no Crumb’ and if no Crumb – well, “NO HARVEY NO ME?”

I guess I am trying to say, “Thank you Harvey!”

Yet again, many thanks to Bill Peckmann for this treasure.

- Arthur Burdett Frost (January 17, 1851 – June 22, 1928), is considered one of the great illustrators in the “Golden Age of Amerian Illustration.” He was an early American painter, illustrator, graphic artist, and comics writer. His illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s “Tangled Tale,” “Phantasmagoria and Other Poems,” and “Sylvie and Bruno,” are considered classics, and every bit as wonderful as Tenniel’s for “Alice”. This is also true for his illustrations for Joel Chandler Harris’ “Uncle Remus Tales”.

Bill Peckman has sent me a third batch of his sequential cartoons for the “The Bull Calf, and Other Tales”. Thanks to these scans we can see another funny side to the artist’s work. Many thanks to Bill for taking the trouble to send this artwork.

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Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,
Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown,
Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,
Are the children in their bed, for it’s past ten o’clock?
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- I don’t suspect that Lyonel Feininger took anything more than the title from this famous, old Scottish poem. Nor do I suspect that the Shirley Temple/John Ford feature, Wee Willie Winkie, owes anything to Feininger.

However, it stands that this is the second comic strip the cartoonist/artist inaugurated in 1906. That was also the last year he worked on a strip, choosing to remain an artist/painter for the remainder of his life. I’ve already posted a piece on Feininger’s first strip, The Kin-Der-Kids, in the past month. I’ve also posted three pieces on Feininger’s artwork (1, 2, 3).
These have all been loaned to me courtesy of Bill Peckmann‘s gracious kindness and his amazing archive of artwork. Many thanks to him.

Here are strips of Wee Willie Winkie’s World straight from this book edited and introduced by Bill Blackbeard.

The original book cover.

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We’ve already seen Feininger’s love of trains in some of his watercolors.

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I think a trolley also doubles as a train.

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Suddenly a format change.

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Another format change.