Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Bill Peckmann sent a host of hilarity via email. So I have only to post it. Thanks for the smile to Arnie Levin for the great sense of humor and Bill for sending it to me.
Bill writes:

This is for Arnie Levin, a true prince of a man in the realm of cartooning, (both animation and print) and life!

Book’s cover

Back cover

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Bill writes:
Less is more, not a line or thought out of place, “P” for perfection, it all applies to Arnie!

- Bill Peckmann surprised me this week. He sent a number of stills from the book, The Art of the Tin Toy, featuring tin toys. These are all wonderful, and I knew it would make a great post to show on Sunday. Hence it’s here. I have to admit I didn’t know. Afyer her mother died, I offered her outfit to cousins. that I’m personally more attached to those toys of characters like the barber and his customer, or the tin frog, or even (and maybe especially) the Mickey Mouse.

I hope you’ll have some you like.

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The book’s cover

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for shaking it up a bit.
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Here is a film we did for a home video of children’s poems. It’s a poem by the late Russell Hoban. The animation is by Mark Mayerson, and the design is by Jason McDonald. The music is by Caleb Sampson. I think all of these artists did brilliant work, but then Hoban’s thoughts and words always pull out the best.

A rich Alex Toth comic creation arranged and sent to us by Bill Peckmann. Bill writes:

In the new recently published “Genius Illustrated, the Life and Art of Alex Toth” by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell, there are pages, after wonderful pages, of Alex’s terrific, original comic book art. I thought it would be fun to see a couple of those original splash pages (thanks to Mr. Mullaney) followed by their stories from when they were originally printed.

Here is a 16 page Alex Toth story that appeared in DC’s “Adventure Comics” in 1972. The “Black Canary” was a super heroine that got her start in 1947 and was updated by Alex 25 years later in this two part story. Lucky for us bird watchers!

This is the Splash page of page one – “the author’s proof”

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The Splash page of the Title page for story 2.

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Here is the prologue page to Toth’s “Batman” story, the splash page follows. It was the only time he did a story of the caped crusader and what an excellent one it is. Teamed with friend, writer, editor Archie Goodwin, who was smart enough to entice Alex to illustrate, by writing a tale that came with one of Toth’s great loves, World War One airplanes!

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Prologue page
This story appeared in DC’s “Detective Comics”, # 442, Sept. 1974.

The Splash page of the Title page

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The Title page

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for all his work in getting the story to us.

“Cartoon Movie Posters” is a book that was published by Bruce Hershenson in the 1990′s, volume 1.
Bill Peckmann sent me some of the better posters in the book, and I posted them last week.

I have to admit that I’m intrigued by the notion of scanning quickly through the history of animation via the poster art. I guess today one would more easily collect a reel of commercial spots. I’m not sure they’d be any more exciting, and the experience would probably wear thin quickly.
Although, it’s not that rare to see a poster for an animated short. As a matter of fact, posters can all too easily be produced by the film makers, themselves. At Oscar voting time we saw posters for all the potential nominees: Paperman, Combustible, Adam & Dog, The Eagleman Stag, Oh Willy!

“Adam and Dog” | “Combustible”

“The Eagleman Stag” | “Oh Willy!”

The winner: “Paperman”

Here’s post #2 featuring some great cartoon posters. Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for planning and scanning and sending.

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– It’s tough out there in the Jungle.

Harvey Kurtzman wrote & illustrated The Jungle Book in 1959. The book is made up of four stories:
“Thelonius Violence, Like Private Eye” is a parody of the typical private-detective story which blends its visual movement with jazz motifs.
“The Organization Man in the Gray Flannel Executive Suit” features the earliest appearance of Kurtzman’s character, Goodman Beaver. The story is a satire of the publishing industry’s capitalist tendencies.
“Compulsion on the Range” is a humorous play on the over-popular westerns of the day. Something like Gunsmoke is mixed with a pop psychology.
“Decadence Degenerated” is a satire the is set in the deep South and plays off the bigoted, lynch-mob mentality of the generic-rural South.

We began the first half of the fourth story last week, and we come to its final pages today. In conjunction with the show currently on view at the Society of Illustrators we’re posting this part of the graphic novel. That show at the art exhibition continues at the museum through May 11.

The cover of the book, pictured on the right, was scanned from the original 1959 book, while the inner B&W illustrations are from the later 1988 edition where the printing of the B&W images was, and is, significantly better.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for suggesting the material and then for scanning and sending it forward for us all to enjoy.

We continue:
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The back cover of the original 1959 Ballantine Books’ paperback.

The back cover of the 1988 Kitchen Sink Press reprint edition.

Bill Peckmann sent me scans from a book of his on “Cartoon Movie Posters.” Bill sends pages from some of the early cartoons and begins to get into the Disney animated features. If there’s interest from you, he’ll send more from the book. Here’s Bill’s comments:

This is the “Cartoon Movie Posters” book published by Bruce Hershenson in the 1990′s, volume 1. He mentions plans for more volumes; I don’t know if they ever came about. This paperback has almost 400 posters in it and offers plenty more to post.

The Book’s Cover

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- Currently, the Society of Illustrators is featuring an exhibit celebrating the art of Harvey Kurtzman. This exhibit continues through May 11th.*

When I brought this info to the attention of Bill Peckmann, Bill naturally began by sending me some pages of “Jungle Book”. It’s 4 pages long, so we’ve decided to break it into two. The second part will come next Friday. Here’s part 1, immediately following Bill’s comments:

Harvey Kurtzman‘s “Jungle Book” was a very rare treat for us knuckle headed Kurtzman fans when it came out in 1959. It was 140 long pages of Harvey’s writing and art. The art was the rare part, since HK had just come off editing and writing Mad, Trump and Humbug magazines where the final art was always left to his “usual gang of Idiots”.

Here in this wonderful paperback was the master at the height of his cartooning talent! The treat was extended when Kitchen Sink Press published their reprint version in 1988, and what an exquisite job they did!

The cover of the book is the original paperback, the inside pages are from the beautifully done reprint book.

* Thanks to Steve MacQuignon for word on the show at the Society of Illustrators.

Maynard Dixon was a wonderful artist of the old West. His beautiful landscapes, his extraordinary posing of the figures in those landscapes, his ability to connect us to the scenes he so beautifully creates are strong reasons for caring deeply about his art. Bill Peckmann has this book, and he shared it with me/us. Is there anything more I need say? I hope you enjoy this artwork as well as do I

Here are Bill’s comments:

This book of Maynard Dixon’s wonderful western art is not exactly a coffee table book, at 9 x 6, it’s more like a night stand book, but don’t let its’ bantam size fool you, it packs a very potent punch! This well written, perfectly researched and very enjoyable to read biography by Donald J. Hagerty, has it all. Profusely illustrated, with lots of pictures that I’ve never seen before. (The best part about that, is the fact that the illo’s are in sync with the text, you read about something and there’s a picture right there to illustrate the point. That doesn’t happen that often in books.) The price is a steal on Amazon, so whether you are a fan and have all of Dixon’s exceptional, well worth, over sized art books, or, you are new to the art of Maynard Dixon but want to find out what the noise is about, this IMHO is THE book to get!

Here are some of the illustrations that appear in the book. If you remember that Dixon was born in 1875 and then look at the dates of the illustrations, you’ll see what this mostly self-taught artist was capable of doing at a very young age.

Bill Peckmann forwarded another beautiful book by Fritz Baumgarten. Here’s Bill’s note:

“Teddy’s School Walk”. As Always, Baumgarten’s wonderful detailing is never over done and leaves you wanting more of it!

Book’s cover

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Sunday will be St. Patrick’s Day although the parade will go down Fifth Avenue tomorrow. Bill Peckmann sent me Alex Toth‘s Darby O’Gill and the Little People. This is a comic book adaptation of the live action film (with lots of Effx.) And it’s surely appropriate to post it today.

I can remember this film as a big deal when I was a kid. Maybe it was just me; I always loved those Effx movies where they mixed Lilliputionas in with the large folk. Outside of the starring threesome in the cast, a young Sean Connery, a very young and attractive Janet Munro and the crusty, but well cast, Albert Sharpe as Darby, the rest of the cast seemed a somewhat shabby lot. Bill writes:

It’s the comic book version of Alex Toth‘s ‘Darby O’Gill and the Little People‘ Dell comic. Unfortunately my old copy came from a used book store and it came missing it’s cover!

Again the scanning and computer screen really help the not so cool reproduction process of yesteryear, the pages look better here than they do in real life.

Step up to the pot o’gold, and take a look:

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