Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Lyonel Feininger was most famously known for his artwork done in Germany as part of the German Expressionist movement. Interestingly enough, he didn’t start his serious art until the age of 36. Born in the United States in 1871, he created two early comic strips which were commissioned by the Chicago Tribune in 1906. They were trying to compete with the best strips of the day and chose to look to their own German-American community. The Kin-der-Kids and Wee Willie Winkie’s World. Both strips stand up with the best of Winsor McCay’s comic strips and, in some ways, is even more graphically daring than McCay.

Bill Peckmann has loaned me an excellent book collecting the strips of Feininger. In this first post, I’ve selected some samples of The Kin-der-Kids strip.

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The paper started the strip off with a big bang.

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A detailed introduction to all the characters.

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To give an idea of Feininger’s art after the comic strips, I’ve culled these few images of his paintings from various sites.

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Oil on canvas

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Oil on canvas

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Watercolor

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Oil on canvas

- A couple of weeks back I started posting some cartoons by George Baker from his collection of Sad Sack strips done while in the Army. This small book was introduced to me by Bill Peckmann. I immediately ran out and bought an old used copy, and now continue posting some of those strips.

I was a fan of the strip when it was a comic book in the early 60s. Looking back on the earlier artwork, as can be seen here, the original strip has a stronger look. The thick-thin outline makes it feel, in some places, like German Expressionist art, as we might’ve seen under Otto Dix’s pen. (This is particularly true in some panels on #6, 7 and 10.)

The front cover of the book in all its worn glory.

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- Last month I posted some Part 1 of strips of Alice In Wonderland taken from from the excellent book Bill Peckmann owns: Animated Features and Silly Symphonies.

The strips are dated 1951, and each page contains 2 Sunday strips. I believe the artwork is by Manuel Gonzales, penciler, and Dick Moores, inker. Gorgeous stuff.

Here we continue with the next 8 strips of the series to conclude the story.
Many thanks go out to Bill Peckmann for the scans and loan of the material.

Enjoy.

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Polly and Her Pals: the Complete Sunday Comics 1925-1927 has finally arrived. Dean Mullaney has written what may be the finest book on Polly and Her Pals, gathering many many examples of the Sunday strips and adding some excellent essays at the head of the book. It’s a gem and should adorn any collector’s shelf.

Dean sent me a copy of the uncorrected proofs a while ago, and I’ve been so embedded in the strips that I haven’t written a word about it, as yet. I hope to correct that delay.

Until now, we’ve had the fine books edited by Rick Marschall: The Complete Color Polly & Her Pals 1926-1927 and 1927-1929. Both provide beautiful reproductions of the Sunday strips for those years, but offer only short essays as introduction. This new book edited by Dean Mullaney provides an extended and extensive essay with a lot of solid information about Sterrett and the strip by Jeet Heer. It’s an important document, in its own right, but then the wealth of material in the book beyond that is enormous. What a job! A delight for any lover of the strip.

The essays include:
AN ARTIST’S ARTIST by P. Craig Russell and
THE MOST MUSICAL OF CARTOONISTS, CLIFF STERRETT by Jeet Heer.

There are plenty of ads, trivia and the earliest examples of the strip, giving us a full picture of the birth of Sterrett’s comic and the popularity in its day.

This book is magnificent and deserves all of your attention if you love comic art and especially if you have any fondness for Cliff Sterret’s Polly and Her Pals.

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The original strip.
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Polly appears.
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I’m always blown away by the incredible graphics in the strips. I didn’t want to give away too many (though there are plenty in this book) so I’ve pulled some panels from a few other strips to give you an idea of what I mean.
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June 8, 1917
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Even early on there’s a lot of black with the tree silhouetted.
The rain takes over right from the start even with all the black.
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December 14, 1924
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This strip seems to use a lot of white space. This is just
the opposite of most of the Polly strips. Black and black
silhouettes usually take over . . .
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December 13, 1925
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. . . like this strip where the silhouette of the desk takes stage center.
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June 20, 1926
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Here’s a strip that uses black for the night sky
as well as the car being driven. Very effective.

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Take a look at this book. It’d make a great Christmas present for yourself.

Happy Thanksgiving

Here’s Tom Hachtman‘s Thanksgiving drawing of Gertrude and Alice feasting with two children. What more to say? Have a grand day.

- Ted Key was a prolific cartoonist whose principal cartoon character Hazel lived in the weekly issues of the Saturday Evening Post from 1943-1969 before going wide with syndication at King Features once the Post went out of business.

Hazel, in my childhood, was also a weekly TV series starring the inexorable Shirley Booth. I’m not sure this is who, at first, I imagined Hazel to look and sound like, but once you saw the series you bought it.

The strip ran in papers until 1993 when Mr. Key retired. He died in 2008 at the age of 95.

He was also responsible for a couple of cartoons that led to three Disney live-action films: “The Million Dollar Duck” (1971), a pet duck that laid golden eggs, and “Gus” (1976), a mule that kicked field goals and “The Cat from Outer Space” (1978) starring Roddy McDowall. He also created “Peabody and Sherman” for Rocky the Flying Squirrel. Apparently, Jay Ward was a good friend of Leonard Key, Ted’s brother.

However, I’m interested in Hazel, here. The cartoons Mr. Key did with this character seem so effortless. The line work looks very natural and relaxed, as if the cartoons just flowed from the pen.

Here, thanks to Bill Peckmann and his contribution from his library, are some cartoons from the book of Hazel spots: If You Like Hazel. Enjoy.

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I’d thought the post last week of Santiago Cohen‘s auto-biographical opus had come to a conclusion. After telling Santiago I’d gladly continue it if more came, he actually produced another large continuation of the story. Great for me!

So it will go on for this and, at least, another week. The comments have been quite favorable, and I’m enjoying it. So on with the story.

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To see prior parts of this post:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

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- Following the posts of the Cinderella Sunday strips, and taking a cue from the Milt Kahl Alice scenes I’ve posted, I am offering these Sunday strips of Alice In Wonderland. They were sent by Bill Peckmann from the excellent book he owns: Animated Features and Silly Symphonies.

They’re dated 1951, and each page contains 2 Sunday strips. Cinderella features artwork by Manuel Gonzales, penciler, and Dick Moores, inker. More of the gorgeous line work by Dick Moores.

Two Sunday strips per page:

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Once again thanks to Bill Peckmann for scanning these pages.

- George Baker‘s comic strip The Sad Sack appeared regularly in the Wartime publication, Yank, The Army Weekly. I grew up reading the comic book version of this strip, many years after WWII, and I had no idea, as a kid, that the comic had such a history. I only knew that I thought it was funny and well drawn.

The strip started in Yank, and, after the war, was syndicated by The Bell Syndicate. The strip was ultimately sold to Harvey Comics in 1957, and they produced the comic books.

This collection of strips, here, in book form, shows us the evolution of the character and we can see his growth. It’s a collector’s item of a book and another gem contributed here by the inestimable Bill Peckmann from his library. Many thanks to him for the loan and the scans.

The front cover of the book

The back cover.

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The book’s short introduction.

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- A couple of weeks ago, I posted the first half of a Cinderella comic strip that Bill Peckmann sent me from the book, Animated Features and Silly Symphonies.

This is a hard-to-get book, so it’s a treat to see these strips. They’re dated 1950, and each page contains 2 Sunday strips. Cinderella features artwork by Manuel Gonzales, penciler, and Dick Moores, inker. Moores, of course, took over the Gasoline Alley strip from Frank King. His line work was always beautiful and these strips show it off.

Here, we finish out the story started on October 14th. many thanks, again, to Bill Peckmann.

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