Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Seeing my post of Bill Peet‘s storyboard for Ben & Me, Bill Peckmann followed up with this note and artwork:

I remember as a kid when “Ben and Me” came out it was “big doin’s”, those were the years where you had to wait 5 years between Disney features, a long time for a youngster. The short was great, it had feature length quality and it seemed that Amos the mouse just stepped off of the back lot of Cinderella.

Needless to say when the comic book adaptation came out it was added very quickly to the stack of Disney comics at home. It was done by Al Hubbard, one of my favorite Disney comic book artists (like Carl Barks and other Disney comic book gents at the time, we did not know his name then). With his wonderful brush line, Hubbard was the next best thing to Walt Kelly. (He had successfully taken over Kelly’s “Peter Wheat” bakery character.) He also did the “Mary Jane and Sniffles” feature in the Looney Tunes Merrie Melodies comic books.

The comic book coloring was done in the simplistic style/way of it’s day, so unfortunately, the color richness of the film is totally missing.

Cover

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This is the first half of the magazine. There are another 16 pages to go. Tomorrow.
Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for scanning and sending the images to post and for sharing his collection with us.

- There were a number of other early Jack Davis pictures that I didn’t post last week (here). These were all sent courtesy of Bill Peckmann. Note that a couple seem to have reflection coming off them; presumably they were in frames.

As Bill wrote in the first post:

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Animals

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Pole

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putting Judges

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Barrons

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Golf report

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Under the Rainbow

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Ladder and Hat

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Fine wine

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4 Bucks

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Hunting Dogs

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Hunting Hog

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All Stars

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Cowboy

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Jack Fishing

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Jack in Rocker

Jack at Work

- It was a treat to open Bill Peckmann‘s email scans of the following Carl Barks material. It’s always fun to read a Donald story, and here we have two. I’ve posted Bill’s comments just under the images.

As kids, a Carl Barks Donald Duck comic book story or comic book
cover never, ever disappointed. (True, we didn’t even know Barks’
name at the time, but even friends not into art could tell the
difference between a Barks Duck story and a non Barks piece.)
Disappointment came when there was a Barks comic book cover
and no Barks story inside the comic.
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Such was the case with the first two issues of Dell’s “Duck Album”,
but the covers are still a treat because here are the eight Ducks
that Carl gave life to for about half a century.
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The first cover was published in 1951,
this second issue cover came out in 1952.
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It was wonderful in a Barks Duck story when the story’s location
was one of the key parts of the tale. Carl would pull out all of the
stops and give that locale all the tender, loving care it deserved.
This 10 page Duck story “Donald of the Coast Patrol” is from 1948.
(The story shown here is a Gladstone reprint.)
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The story takes place at the seashore and the background scenes
are so beautifully done, (you can smell the salt air) especially this
second page. It’s the introduction to the beach and IMHO one of
the best realized comic book pages ever done.
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Barks always delighted himself and us annually with his seasonal
winter Donald Duck stories and their beautiful snowy landscapes.
Originally printed in 1950 and reprinted here by Gladstone, in the
“Mission to Codfish Cove” story he masterfully plumbed the
snowy depths and heights to new levels.
(The story also has a madcap Al Capp or Harvey Kurtzman feel to it.)
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- Bill Peckmann sent the following collection of art by the incomparable Jack Davis. Many of these pieces are from the very early career of Mr. Davis. At this point, I’ll let Bill take on the writing in his own words:

I came across the program guide for Jack’s exhibition of work at the Society of Illustrators in 2002. It’ll be 2 pages: The cover, a B&W illustration from Field and Stream magazine titled “The Hunters” and the second page which is a heartfelt intro by fellow MAD staffer Nick Meglin.

Program cover

Here is a pencil drawing of the Society of Illustrators cover illustration,
“The Hunters,” printed on the cover of the program, above.

Intro by Ned Meglin

The rest of the Davis dinner will be images from the discs that Jack sent me. They are untitled and undated, ranging from the beginning of when he first put pen and brush to paper, up to recent endeavors. So, we’ll just have to sit back and enjoy what’s going to served up in front of us without rhyme or reason. I don’t think anyone will have a problem with that. 99% of the art was new to me, as I hope it will be for the rest of his fans.

A very, very early piece, either an art school exercise
or a portfolio sample.

Another fishing theme but quite a few years later.

Another early piece.

Another early fascinating piece.

Here’s another drawing done by very young, budding cartoonist
Jack Davis. I recently found out that Jack was and has always been
a big fan of illustrator, Albert Dorne. Interesting, because I believe
you can see Dorne’s influence in these early pieces by Jack.

Abe

Abe with newspaper

Bar

Caveman

Carter and money

- A note from Bill Peckmann on Tuesday, and we have a pleasant way to say “Happy Thanksgiving” today. Here are a couple of Donald Duck stories from Carl Barks. A nice way to get into the day’s adventures, by seeing what another fowl is up to.

Here’s Bill:

Happy Thanksgiving!


The cover is the Dec. 1951 issue of
Dell’s “Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories”.

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The 10 page story “The Terrible Turkey” is a Gladstone Pub. reprint.
It was originally printed in Dec. 1947.

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This Nov. 1952 cover is more Halloween than Thanksgiving
but there is that pumpkin pie!

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This Gladstone reprint “The Charitable Chore” is originally Dec. 1952.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann.

- This was a packed week. I saw a lot of films; I mean a lot. Here are some short short comments.

Sunday: My Weekend with Marilyn The movie was good; Michelle Williams was out of this world. She’ll definitely be nominated. B+

Monday: Saul Bass Tribute The film titles were brilliant (though I would have had a larger assortment.) The logos were magnificent. All of the speakers were dull. B+

Tuesday: Puss in Boots Some brilliant design work, a few nicely animated scenes. Tiresome plot with an exhausting sound track. C-
Tin Tin The same problem as Puss in Boots. Go Go Go Go Go, then it’s over. LOUD sound track and never resting camera. Spielberg has it constantly moving around and over and under the characters. For no purpose other than to show that he can. Zero character development. C

Wednesday: The Descendants This was a very fine film. A seemingly relaxed pace to a somewhat chaotic story. George Clooney was fine in the lead role, and others around him were equally good. A-

Thursday: The Artist A fun and very romantic film. The 10 mins where they steal Bernard Herrman’s soundtrack from Vertigo was my favorite. Nice acting. B+ Harvey Weinstein threw a great after party.

Friday: Dinner with friends. A large contingent of Academy voters came down from Canada and are staying with Candy Kugel and George Griffin so they can attend the voting today. I joined Candy and the others at dinner and had a good time catching up. Three cheers for Candy for coordinating events with this group (Last night, there were 11 of us out to eat.)

- Today there’s the Academy screening of animated shorts in NY – 45 of them. This is the first vote on the full list of those that have successfully qualified for the competition. It certainly doesn’t mean that any of them are good; it just means that they’ve followed the rules.

Today’s voters will select a group of 6 to 10 films to make the short list. These will be open to another voting in January to narrow it down to the five nominees.

45 shorts will probably take about six to seven hours to screen. All in one sitting with a one hour break for lunch. Usually, the lunchtime conversation isn’t about the films but about general conversation. You have to be careful not to insult any film makers who might be there.

The full list was laid out on Cartoon Brew this week. It was only two years ago that I listed those competing and received severe warnings from the Academy for having done so. Now, they release the titles, themselves. It’s something they should have been doing all along.

Hopefully, the films will be a better assortment than last year’s selection.

December 16 to Thursday, January 12 will be Studio Ghibli time in NYC. G-Kids will present a retrospective of Miyazaki‘s feature films at the IFC Center in New York this Christmas. The titles to be shown include: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, Ponyo, Howl’s Moving Castle and Kiki’s Delivery Service. All will be shown in both dubbed and subtitled versions.

- The brilliantly funny Xeth Feinberg has been posting Reasons 2B Happy on a daily basis. It’s the only way to get through that first cup of coffee. Check it out . . . DAILY.

- Leif Peng has posted four storyboards for Cheet-o’s Mouse commercials done by Bill Peckmann. They’re on the site: Storyboard Central. They were done in the style of Paul Coker Jr. for PK&A (Phil Kimmelman & Ass.)

MTV has put up 20 episodes of The Head on their video website. If you’re a fan of this Eric Fogel show, you can now watch the online for free. The Head is the 5th series, joining Aeon Flux, The Maxx, Wonder Showzen, and Liquid Television on the site.

- And Bill Benzon continues with his assessment of Fantasia’s Pastoral Sequence. He’s just finished his fifth piece and has one more left in him before wrapping up the entire film.

- Bill Peckmann received a host of Time Magazine ruffs from Jack Davis. Bill has forwarded them to me for the blog, and he’s added a few final covers with that. It all makes for a fun posting, and I hope you enjoy it.

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I just love this image. Great caricatures.

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This one’s a ruff for the next image.

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This is a ruff for the next image.

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The remaining images are from the final covers

Oh, yes. One last thing, a self caricature by Jack Davis:

Many thanks to both Bill Peckmann for the loan and scans of the material and
to Jack Davis for graciously allowing us to post it.

There was a reuniting of MAD Magazine artists in Savannah, GA. Here’s an Associated Press Article about the meeting. In attendance were: Jack Davis, Sergio Aragones, Al Jaffee, and Paul Coker Jr.

Jack Davis (L) and Al Jaffee (R)

Sergio Aragones (center) and Jack Davis (R)

Autographs

- We seem to have run out of pieces that Kurtzman and Davis have worked together in creating. So this week, Bill Peckmann has supplied me with two pieces. Today we have one on Harvey and tomorrow we have a special one from Jack.

- Here’s a story by Harvey Kurtzman that Bill Peckmann recently contributed. Bill writes:

Here’s a Kurtzman collection that could be called, “10 years, what a difference time makes”. The first piece of work was done in 1949 and the second piece was done in 1959.

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In 1949 Harvey did a comic book story titled “Lucky Fights It Through”.
It was the first piece of work he did for EC. It was a 16 page educational
comic done for the public by EC Comics when they were in the process of
transitioning from “Educational” to “Entertaining” comics.

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Even though it wasn’t done for one of EC’s main titles, it did get Harvey
through the door, he was able to show his prowess, the editors noticed
and the rest is history.

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The scans are from a reprinted version that appeared in
John Benson’s fanzine “Squa Tront”, issue No. 7.

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The End

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The year is 1959. MAD magazine, TRUMP magazine and HUMBUG
are all history for Harvey Kurtzman. He had to turn to free lance work.
Fortunately at that time, Harold Hayes editor of Esquire magazine was
a big Kurtzman fan and gave Harvey this story,
“Assignment: James Cagney In Ireland”, to do.

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Hayes sent Harvey to cover the shooting of Cagney’s “Shake Hands With The Devil” movie. The film set was in Dublin and this is Harvey’s take on the whole experience. It’s one of the best things he ever did.

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Here’s Harvey’s rough for the last page of the Esquire story.
It’s taken from “The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, The Mad Genius
Of Comics” by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle.
The book contains the whole Esquire Cagney story plus all of
Harvey’s roughs for the story. This alone is worth the cover price
of this excellent/outstanding book on Harvey and his work.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for assembling this post.

- Today is Veteran’s Day, and what a way to celebrate than to let Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis supply us with a few good War Stories. To that end, Bill Peckmann contributes #6 in this series of a collaboration between the two. Over to Bill:

- Here is the first Harvey Kurtzman cover for his very ambitious “Civil War” series that was supposed to run in EC’s FRONTLINE COMBAT and TWO-FISTED TALES titles. In 1952, Harvey’s creative juices knew no bounds, this war series debuted just before MAD No. 1 came out some months later. As kids in those days, way before there was colored TV with the History Cable Channel, we were very lucky to have Harvey at the helm of his war comics to give us a slice of history that wasn’t as dry or dusty as it seemed to be in our school books. The series was to run seven issues to cover the whole Civil War. Sadly, only three issues were completed before both FRONTLINE and TWO-FISTED titles folded.

Just as Jack Davis did the very first story in MAD No. 1, he also did the first story in the first “Civil War” issue. Jack was a great opening act, what better way to get someone to buy the comic book than to see his first page, splash page, grabber.

Magazine Cover
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Intro art by John Severin. His love for the subject matter shows!
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The first Davis story also flows perfectly into the second Severin and
Elder story. The terrific art is done by John Severin (penciler) and
Bill Elder (inker). As with Jack Davis, the strength of Kurtzman’s writing
and rough laying out comes roaring through.
Kudos again to Marie Severin’s coloring!
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Here’s Jack’s cover for the third and last issue of Harvey’s “Civil War” series.
It was TWO-FISTED TALES No. 35. A little more than a year and a half after
it had started, the planned seven issue series was over and never completed.
(Us old EC fans always dreamt of what those last four issues would have looked like.)

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This is Jack’s rendering of the battle of “Chancellorsville”. It’s the last story in the
last issue of the “Civil War”series. Quite a visual high point for everyone working on it,
especially the dramatic coloring.

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It’s a bit ironic that in the last panel, of the last story, of the last issue in the series,
that Harvey would miss one of the very few typos that ever graced his books.
“1893″ should read “1863″, go figure…

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing this artwork with us.

- The collaboration between Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis has proven to be a very fertile one.. Bill Peckmann has continued to send more material to extend the idea, and I take delight in posting it. Bill wrote the accomp;anying notes:

In really reaching and stretching to show more Harvey and Jack “firsts”, I’m sending you the first two covers that Jack did for Harvey’s war comics “Two-Fisted Tales” and “Frontline Combat” along with a Harvey and Jack story from each issue.

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Here is the cover of “Two-Fisted Tales” No. 30, 1952.
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This is the inside cover of “Two-Fisted”. One of the
big treats of EC Comics were their “in house” ads for
other titles. Here is the ad for MAD No.1 done by Jack.
It was great the way EC put faces to your favorite artists.
I’d say the roots for Jack’s future TV GUIDE covers are right here.
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Skipping ahead twenty-two years, (a break in the action)
I’m inserting a Jack Davis TV GUIDE cover from 1974.
(It also has a Korean War theme.)
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Harvey and Jack’s story from No. 30.
(They certainly gave the great aviation cartoonist,
Alex Toth a run for his money!)
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Jack’s first “Frontline Combat” cover, No. 11, 1953.
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Inside front cover of “FC”. It’s an ad for MAD No. 2 done by EC great, Bill Elder.
(Sorry about the front cover colors bleeding through.)
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“Sailor!”, Harvey and Jack’s collaboration for “FC” No. 11.
It shows the horrors of war (as much as you could in a
comic book back then), the realism that was to come later
in films like “Saving Private Ryan”.
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The colors, excitement and dynamics of the cover are just terrific.
Jack makes it look so easy.
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Back in the days before comic book reprints, fans had to do with
whatever copies they had collected. One way to keep comics from
getting battered and tattered was to have them bound in volumes.
Working with Harvey and Jack on animated projects back in the
early 70′s, I was very fortunate and they were very kind to put their
John Hancocks in my bound volume of “Frontline Combat”.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing the material and putting it all together.

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