Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- With great excitement and anticipation, comic lovers learned this week that Paul Murry and Dick Huemer‘s Buck O’Rue comics compilation would be available in June. Bill Peckmann sent me the following note and material:

Buck O’Rue was a short lived comic strip I didn’t know about; it was done by two Disney greats, Dick Huemer and Paul Murry. The new book is a real labor of love by the author, good friend Germund Von Wowern, and in celebration of the new book due to come out soon, I thought I’d send you a small 21 page, Whitman Sampler box of some of Murry’s comic book work.

Perhaps best known for his wonderful Mickey Mouse comic book adventure stories, he also deftly handled any assignment that Dell Comics threw his way. Here are some outside the adventure story box examples of single page gags, a Donald Duck story and a Disney film adaptation. All of his pages are always bursting with well designed and drawn life!

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This Donald Duck comic contained
the following stories.

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- Of course, we all recognize the style of Paul Coker Jr. if only from all the Rankin-Bass animated shows he designed. Bill Peckmann has sent me two stories Coker did for HELP magazine back in Jan. & Feb. 1961. Here’s Bill:

Here are two Paul Coker Jr. story assignments that he did for Harvey Kurtzman’s HELP magazine in the early 1960′s. Harvey always had a great eye for new talent and Paul did not let him down. It’s very nice to see Coker in continuity form, beautifully designed characters and panels!

Issue #6 cover

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Issue #7 cover

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- Since I’m well into the book, When Magoo Flew by Adam Abraham I thought it an appropriate time to take a look at this comic book I have. From 1953, it’s a Gerald McBoing Boing / Mr. Magoo mash up, a Dell comic book. The artwork is wildly off model from the animated cartoons and is wild enough to look like a Jim Tyer impersonator trying to do 20th Century graphics, just the way UPA would do them.

I don’t know who the artists were, and wonder if anyone out there has a clue. Please to leave a comment if you can figure it out. Here are two of the three stories in the magazine – one McBoing Boing and one Magoo.

The comic book cover

The inner cover

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Story #1 – McBoing Boing

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Story # 2 – Mr. Magoo

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Inner Back Cover

And the Back cover

- Bill lPeckmann has sent a stash of beautiful cartoons by Rowland B. Wilson from the pages of Playboy Magazine.

Before getting into this artwork, let me point to a brand new book on the market. Rowland B. Wilson’s Trade Secrets: Notes for Cartooning and Animation. This is a book that was put together by Suzanne Lemieux Wilson, and it looks to be as much about animation as about cartooning.

The book is available for pre-order from Amazon, and you should line up for a copy. You’ll remember that I posted lot of Mr. Wilson’s Disney and Bluth art for the animation art direction he did. I expect to repost a lot of that material again soon, perhaps when this book gets closer to hitting the market for real.

But, now we’re talking about Playboy. They did well by their artists and cartoonists; the printing was always first class and the amount of exposure was high. Rowland’s cartoons always jumped out at me as among the more sophisticated ideas, and the artwork was always top notch. I think you’ll enjoy these, and thank Bill for sharing his collection, yet again.

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You might check out some of these spot cartoons posted by Leif Peng.

- Here we have Walt Kelly finally htting his stride. The Pogo Comic Book finally appears. Bill Peckmann‘s amazing collection includes some of these beautifuls works of art, and he’s sharing them with us. These are a numbaer of the Front and Back covers with the B&W illustrations within those two covers. Many thanks to Bill for sharing. Enjoy.

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Front Cover of issue #1

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Inner cover

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Inner Back Cover

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Back Cover

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Front Cover

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Back Cover

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Front Cover

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Back Cover

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Front Cover

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Back Cover

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Front Cover

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Back Cover

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Front Cover

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Back Cover

The Pogo covers that are in the excellent
“The Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books.”
We have six of the eleven that are in the book.

For a Kelly/Pogo bio, what better place to go to than to
Michael Barrier and Martin Williams‘s boffo book
“A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics!”

(Click to enlarge to read article.)

Today and tomorrow we’ll focus on some of the early and brilliant art of Walt Kelly.

- Bill Peckmann has forwarded some of the covers from Walt Kelly‘s Dell comic books, the “Our Gang” series, dated 1946 & 1947. Also included in this stash are a couple of the interior stories.

Bill writes:

I certainly wish I had more than these 7 issues of Walt Kelly’s “Our Gang” comic books published by Dell, but looking at these covers, they will give you a sense of what Kelly was up to.

Each issue contained a 14 to 16 page “Our Gang” story done by Kelly, a “Tom and Jerry” story, a “Flip and Dip”, a Carl Barks “Barney Bear and Benny Burro” piece and ended with an appearance by “Wuff the Prairie Dog”.

I’ll include one “Our Gang” story and one “Barney Bear” to round out the post and save the “Pogo” comics for a post by themselves.

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August 1946

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September 1946

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December 1946

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January 1947

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February 1947

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June 1947

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back cover
All the back covers have basically the same subscription ad,
but I thought I’d send one along for the “currency” shock of it.

What happens when you pour deceptively simple and totally charming into a bottle and shake ‘em up? Why out pours Walt Kelly’s “Our Gang” comics of course! What a touch he had for combining “cartoony” and “straight” in those stories, not an easy thing to pull off, he and Roy Crane were masters of it! Norman Maurer of “Boy” and “Daredevil” comics also had that wonderful ability.

This story is from the September 1946 issue.

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Here are two Walt Kelly single page gags from the same issue.

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- On Tuesday, comic book artist John Severin died at the age of 90. It’s only appropriate that we get some representation of his artwork out to you, so I’m posting this piece today that Bill Peckmann has sent me.

With the very sad passing of comic book artist John Severin this week, here are four of his EC Comics war stories that were done with the collaboration of fellow “historian” editor, writer, Harvey Kurtzman. Both gentlemen are at the top of their game in these early 1950′s stories.

The combination of Harvey’s writing, cinematic rough lay-outs, animated poses and John’s dead on photographic, rendered, researched art gives you historic moments frozen in time rarely seen in comic books. All four opening splash panels are worth the price of admission.

The time period goes from the battle of the Alamo to the battle of Iwo Jima.

This first story is from Two-Fisted Tales No. 28.

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The following story is from Frontline Combat No. 9.

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This story is from Two-Fisted Tales No. 29.

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This last story is from Frontline Combat No. 7. All of the exceptional coloring was done by John’s sister, fellow cartoonist, Marie Severin.

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- The following are a collection of rough sketches that Rowland B. Wilson did in creating illustrations for TVGuide. These come from the extraordinary collection of Bill Peckmann. I’ve been searching for final, colored images to match these but haven’t successfully found any as yet. You’ll have to look at them for what they are: rough prep drawings for finals. In the past I’d posted a number of these with some of the final cartoons, so you can go there, if you like, to see how he built up from the initial sketches.

In all, I find it enormously informative to see the process from the beginning from such an artist as Rowland B. Wilson.

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Here is a self-caricature from 1987. (It’s from R.C. Harvey’s wonderful book
“A Gallery of Rogues: Cartoonists’ Self – Caricatures”

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This card shows a number of the TVGuide illustrations
that were done by Rowland B. Wilson. Notice #14
is the last one on thias card. Unfortunately, this
is the largest size I have of the color version.

To close it out, I have this image from Suzanne Wilson, from an original of a RBW TV Guide illustration:

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for the hard work in putting this post together, and thanks to Suzanne Wilson for the final image.

Bill Peckmann continues to open up his collection of Rowland Wilson artwork. These are illustrations he did for a couple of magazines, predominantly, TV Guide. Bill’s comments follow with the images.

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This is a self caricature, circa 1970.

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When Rowland came back to NYC after his stint at Richard Williams in
1975, he did this mailer when he was at Phil Kimmelman & Associates.

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Here are the first of the TV Guide spreads

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Sadly, I should have craved/saved a lot more of Rowland’s TV Guide illustrations
than I did but alas, when you’re young and stupid you just assumed there would
always be a TV Guide and there would always be a RBW illustration in it.

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A slight break in the RBW action to give then TV Guide art director, Jerry Allen,
kudos for using the great illustration and great cartoon talent that he did.
(Applause, applause!)
Here are a few of them.

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First Charles Saxon. (After seeing this illo, you have to
wonder what a Sesame Street book would have looked like if Saxon had
illustrated it. The characters wouldn’t have been 100% on model, but that
book would have been one of the most beautiful on the bookstore shelves!)

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This is Bob Weber

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This is a Jack Davis spot.

The following are 8 of Rowland’s illustrations for the second New England Life campaign.

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This is for those of us old enough to remember -
Unfortunately with their second ad campaign New England Life switched from
selling life insurance to pushing financial planning and the gags lost a lot their edge.
Combine that with stifling “hands on” art direction they also lost a lot of Rowland’s
design sense. RBW didn’t have an easy time of it but he persevered.

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Even though Rowland did this New England Life illustration long before
he worked at Disney, I always felt it had a Disney charm about it, and
it was around this time that he was setting his sights to get a gig at
the mouse factory. It just didn’t happen right away.

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For Popular Mechanics Magazine.

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Logo design for animation studio.

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Tomorrow, a number of rough sketches for TV Guide spot illustrations.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann.

- Jerry Van Amerongen is a cartoonist whose work seems to be unfamiliar to many people. However, those who do know his work search out his cartoons. Bill Peckmann sent me this CARTOONIST PROfiles article about him and followed it with select cartoons from the pages of his book, Ballard Street. Bill wrote:

Because of not having access to a newspaper that ran Jerry’s “Ballard Street” comic strip, this great talent flew under my radar for way too long of a time. Fortunately a good friend of mine sent me this book/collection a while back and I’ve been a fan ever since.

Here’s a sampling of the way that Amerongen can freeze hilarious moments in time as only he can.

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Book Cover

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Back Cover of the book