Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Bill Peckmann has sent a number of early Jack Davis crawings our way, so let me turtn it over to Bill:

After Jack left EC/Mad Comics in the late ’50′s, after Harvey Kurtzman’s “Trump” and “Humbug” magazine’s didn’t get the solid footing they so richly deserved and went belly up, and before Jack carved out that wonderfully successful niche for himself in the world of humorous illustration in the ’60′s, he had to really scramble for work to keep the wolf from the door. Here are some examples from that period from late 1958 to 1961. Jack would say that some of this art was done in his “fast” style.

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These first four western covers were done for
Stan Lee for Atlas Comics, later to become Marvel Comics.

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A cover for “Cracked” Magazine, Mad’s longest running rival.

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4 B&W pages from inside “Cracked”.
The first 3 pages are a spoof on TV show “Peter Gunn”.

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A single page (Kurtzman type) gag.

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This western magazine was published by Jim Warren
who also published Harvey Kurtzman’s “Help!” Magazine.
It was rumored that Harvey was also the editor of this book,
I don’t know about that.

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A 3 page gag from “Wildest Westerns”.

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Believe it or not, Jack actually did a Dell Comic book.

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4 pages from “Yak Yak”.

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All the art was sent in the chronological order it was done.

- Bill Peckmann sent scans of an incredible comic. It’s an early issue of Animal Comics (June/July 1947) with Walt Kelly‘s Pogo making an early appearance. The bulk of the magazine is the Pogo story, however there are a couple of other short pieces. We have doubt that Kelly did these other strips, (Jigger, Chuck Wagon Charley, Uncle Wiggily, and Rover), so if anyone out there knows, please drop a comment. Other than that, all I can say is enjoy and thank you Mr. Peckmann.

comic cover

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Jigger was done by the great John Stanley
of “Little Lulu” fame.

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-Previously, I’ve posted a couple of short chapters from the great Arnold Roth book, A Comick Book of Pets.

You can see this chapter on cats posted a couple of weeks ago.

Arnold Roth was born in 1929 in Philadelphia, Pa. He attended public school and was awarded a scholarship to art school. He started free lancing in 1951 and continues to do so. Mr. Roth has had cartoons published in The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Punch and the NY Times. He’s worked briefly in animation for John Hubley and Phil Kimmelman. He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife and two sons.

This was sent to me by Bill Peckmann for posting. Many thanks to him for this generous contribution.

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A double page spread

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- Bill Peckmann sent me the first installment of Carl Barks‘ comic story, “Sheriff of Bullet Valley.” There will be two other installments to follow. Here’s the note Bill sent with the scans:

“Sheriff of Bullet Valley” was reprinted in Another Rainbow Pubishing Company’s “Carl Barks Library” in 1984. Most of the “CBL” was printed in B&W, fortunately “Sheriff” was printed in color and what a beautiful job they did. The coloring is done in wonderful flat tones, no color gradients and that seems to be just what the doctor ordered for Carl’s style.

Barks’ was at the top of his game when he did this story and because of that, a great deal of enjoyable time can be spent studying each page and each panel. A lot of people have explained Carl’s art much better than I can, but to me, he always had the ability (and still does) to make a world on the printed page as real as the one outside your window. What he packed into those pages by way of writing, continuity, panel and page design, backgrounds and landscapes, his posing and the acting ability of his characters, wow,in this day and age it seems like such a super human effort.

Here then is the first installment of “Sheriff of Bullet Valley” by Carl Barks.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- In a second posting of art reprinted from MAD Magazine, Bill Peckmann forwarded the following covers and the two stories that follow. I’ll let Bill’s words introduce the material. The material comes from the collected Mad For Keeps.

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Here is the cover, comprised from one of the issues,
which has Harvey’s great MAD logo, Bill Elder’s border and probably
Norman Mingo’s first Alfred E. Neuman illustration.

These are the only two stories from the MAD comic books in the book that are reprinted in color. (And good color it is because of the hard cover production.) Again, the talent of Harvey Kurtzman really shines through with his writing and laying out of the pages. They are also great examples of Harvey the editor choosing the right cartoon talent to complete the job.

The first story “Melvin of the Apes”, is drawn by John Severin, he certainly captures the flavor of the early Hal Foster Tarzan strip.

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Here is the second story, it’s with cartoonist Wally Wood. IMHO, it’s one the stories where their collaborative powers are at their zenith. The animated continuity is so good, It’s hard to picture this story without either talent or being done by somebody else.

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Here are the three faces of MAD. The first cover is of MAD comic book # 6, (1953) drawn by Harvey for the inside “King Kong” story spoof. This is the issue that contained “Melvin of the Apes”.

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This is the cover from # 20 (1955), by now Harvey had been spoofing “covers” (magazines, newspapers etc.) for about ten issues. This is the issue that contained “Sound Effects!”

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This is MAD magazine cover # 27 (1956). It is the fourth magazine cover done and the first Jack Davis cover. It’s easy to see the “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World” (1963) movie poster lurking in there and also a lot of TV GUIDE covers to come.

(Side notes: As high school students, we cut class one day in 1958 to visit the offices of MAD on Lafayette St. and were so fortunate to see the original of this cover hanging on the office wall. The reproduction does not do it justice at all! I was also lucky enough to be at Elektra Films in ’63 when they shot a trailer for “Mad Mad Mad Mad World” using Jack’s original poster art. Jack’s originals have got to be seen to be believed.)

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Here’s the record jacket (front & back) for It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.

Finally, this is the Kurtzman war comics crew as seen by John Severin. It was done sometime in the early ’50′s. John’s love for drawing historically accurate comic book stories really comes through here.

There are some great Basil Woolverton comic strips at John Glenn Taylor‘s blog

- Suppose we had a comic book version of The 3 Caballeros; wouldn’t that be fun to see? What if the artwork were done completely by Walt Kelly; would that make it a treasure? I think it does. Bill Peckmann made my week when he sent me the scans to the following comic book. As Bill wrote to me: “Beautiful stuff, like Barks’ art, it’s timeless, looks like it was done yesterday.”

Not only is the artwork out of this world, but the quality of the printing is brilliant. And the quality of the book, itself, is wonderfully well preserved. You only have to look below to read it. Take your time; this is great.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing this gorgeous material with us.

- Last week I posted the first part of this book by Greg Constantine, Vincent Van Gogh Visits New York. It was a paperback book Bill Peckmann bought in the ’80s. He introduced me to it and he scanned and sent the material to me.

Constantine also did Leonardo da Vinci Visits Los Angeles and Picasso Visits Chicago.

Cover

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sending this onto me to share.

- Bill Peckmann was reminded of this book by Hopper‘s Nighthawks painting on the last Hopper post we did. So he sent me some pages of Vincent Van Gogh Visits New York by Greg Constantine, a paperback book he bought in the ’80s. Constantine also did Leonardo da Vinci Visits Los Angeles and Picasso Visits Chicago.

The book’s cover

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This is a guide the author gives us to artistic references throughout the book.

Thanks to Bill Peckmann for the scans and sharing the book with us.

- I have a few Terrytoon Bgs and thought I’d post them today. They come from a number of different shorts from the late ’30s. If you have any idea of titles, please don’t hesitate to leave a note.

I have to say that I really am in awe of the watercolor and/or tempera painting abilities of the artists. They’re quite attractive in person. I must say that they stand up well against some of the other studio work I’ve seen. There were a couple of second rate watercolors done for some MGM Tex Avery shorts I’d seen only yesterday. I wouldn’t expect Terrytoons to be better, but they are.

Enjoy.

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This Bg is from “The Three Bears” (1939)

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Possibly “When Knights Were Bold.”

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This is from “The Glass Slipper” Oct. 7, 1938

- Bill Peckmann forwarded the following material from Mad magazine taken from the collected Mad For Keeps. Here’s to Bill’s comments:

Here’s a little something for all Harvey Kurtzman (writing and unseen rough lay outs) and Jack Davis (finished art) fans.

In 1958, Crown Publishers came out with the best of MAD collection. I believe this is the first hardcover collection of EC Comics to ever come out. Most of the book is comprised of MAD Magazine (started in ’55) stories and a few MAD Comic Book (’52 to ’55) stories.
Some of the comic book stories are printed in their original color, others without their original color. As far as I can tell, all of the work in here was written/rough laid out/edited by Harvey Kurtzman, MAD’s founder. It’s all copyrighted by EC Comics.

By the time the book came out it must have been a very bittersweet moment for Harvey because he had already left MAD, and MAD was just starting to become a commercial success. MAD went on to become an industry, rightfully so, but IMHO it never again was the “class” act that Harvey shepherded in. Also in retrospect, Kurtzman couldn’t have sustained that level for ever. After all, how many “Starry Nights” could Vincent paint?

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We’ll start off with the cover, comprised from one of the issues,
which has Harvey’s great MAD logo, Bill Elder’s border and probably
Norman Mingo’s first Alfred E. Neuman illustration.

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This is the back cover which Jack Davis embellished.

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Here’s the book’s introduction by Ernie Kovacs.

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I thought with this book we would be able to show Jack Davis’ neat
transition from “comic book” art to “magazine illustration” art.
Again, during this time period, Jack is working over Harvey’s rough layouts.
Man, what a team! Sans coloring, you can really see Harvey’s storytelling and Jack’s beautiful brush & pen line work and his masterful spotting of “blacks”.

So here is the whole comic book story.

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On to the “magazine” part. Look how sweetly Harvey laid this out,
add Jack’s hilarious art and you have perfection. Harvey always
compared Jack’s art to best strawberry ice cream sundae; I’ve
always seen it as the best sparkling jewelry ever, either way,
what eye candy!

ps: It doesn’t seem like baseball’s changed that much in 55 years.

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We’ll end on one of the early advertising spoofs and you can see
Jack is well on his way to becoming one of our national treasures.