Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

This is the second part of the book for youngsters written and illustrated by Dick Moores from his comic strip, Gasoline Alley. Moores took over the strip when Frank King, the originator, retired. I’ve written frequently that i love this edition of the strip. Dick Moores’ open, rounded line work is just beautiful to me, and I like his compositions as well.

It’s interesting in this book how he keeps to closeups of the characters leaving a lot of white space to work against his linar shading. Only rarely do we get a longer, establishing shot of the scenes. It’s quite effective in its own way and, at the same time, gives it a variance to the strip done for syndication.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for scanning and forwarding the book to us for posting. I love it.

Book Cover

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Notes about the book series.

I’ve written in the past about how much I enjoy the work of Dick Moores. So I’m always pleased when Bill Peckmann sends comic art by him, and am excited to post it. Here’s the latest. From Bill:

It may be a tad too early for summer vacation but it’s never too early for “Walt Disney’s Vacation Parade” comic books, especially if they contain two of the best of Uncle Walt’s comics bull pen! Back in those days, the New York Yankees had Mantle and Maris, the M&M Boys, Disney also had his own M&M Boys, Dick Moores and Paul Murry, also grand slammers!

Here from “Vacation Parade” no. 2 is a 19 pager by Paul Murry, Donald heads the cast and we get to see how Murry handles Scrooge McDuck. The comic book is from 1951, just about the same time Paul was doing his daily comic strip “Buck O’Rue“!

Cover 1

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Back cover

Front Cover 2

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Back Cover 2

- Bill Peckmann chooses one of my favorite artists to end the comic strip posts for 2012. Dick Moore’s is a champion to me, and his work on the Mickey Mouse strips is wonderful.
I, personally, like the way he draws Goofy. But this is Bill’s entry, so here he takes over the post:

I’ve always been a fan of Dick Moores’ Disney comic art work, especially the two Mickey Mouse comic books that I have, (we’ve posted one already) if he did more than these two, I’m not aware of them. And if he only did these two, wow, that is really our loss. He had a great understanding of the Mick and the Goof characters.

His combination of excellent story telling and outstanding art makes you wonder what he could have done with Mickey and Goofy, if he would have had the same lengthy run with them that he had with his super successful Gasoline Alley comic strip.

The magazine cover

Here from 1952 is Dick Moores’ “Mickey Mouse and
the Wonderful Whizzex” Dell comic book.

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The end of the story, but…

…I thought it would be fun to line up these two panels from
Moores’ 1936 comic strip “Jim Hardy” next to the following panel
from “Wonderful Whizzex” done sixteen years later.

- Yes, today is Walt Disney‘s birthday anniversary. He would have been 111 years old. It’s also the anniversary of this Splog. It’s seven years old today; my 2,552nd post. They’ve gotten a lot longer than the initial posts. They’ve also gotten more verbal rather than visual, though my attempt is always to keep it visual. I like putting up pictures, especially if the pictures are ones you see so infrequently.

Yesterday, was a first. I had prepared a review of the new McKimson book, I Say, I Say . . . Son!; I’d spent a hell of a lot of time putting it together. And I was supposed to post it yesterday morning. But I forgot. I never put it up. It’ll be posted tomorrow, but I can’t get over the fact that I’d forgotten to send it out there. Mark Mayerson caught it. This was the first time that I did that, and he checked in to make sure I was OK. Maybe I am, maybe not. Could be Alzheimer’s, could be I just forgot it. I have had some time with that review, and a lot of stuff has gotten in the way with it. I’ll be curious to hear any of your comments on it.

Over those past seven years, there are some posts that I’ve been particularly proud of having run and others that were just filler. It’s interesting how I get pleasure from some posts that you might not expect.

I certainly like posting things that one rarely sees on the internet and enjoy putting out material that every animator should own.

For example, I like putting up storyboard images such as these from Pinocchio: this was composed of photos from animation pencil tests from Pinocchio. Bill Peckmann and John Canemaker contributed.

Some of the actual board was here. The coachman’s ride.

I also enjoyed posting the board from Mr. Toad’s Ride, excerpted from The Wind in the Willows.

Or there was Dumbo takes a bath here.

There was also all the material from The Sword in the Stone as I posted not only the board from mad Madame Mim’s section of that feature, but I included some great artwork by Bill Peet from that film.

I also liked the walk cycles from 101 Dalmatians, here.

I’ve written often enough about his work for you to know that I’m quite a fan of Yurij Norshtein.
There were the chapters from that wonderful little book about Yurij Norshtein:

Norshtein Comics – 1
Norshtein Comics – 2
Norshtein Comics – 3
Norshtein Comics – 4
Norshtein Comics – 5
Norshtein Comics – 6

As a matter of fact, there were a whole string of posts I did about Norshtein when I was reading Claire Kitson‘s brilliant book Yurij Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator’s Journey.
for example there was this post on Norshtein’s Battle of Kerzhenets.

Or there was this post about a breakfast I had arranged in my studio for Norshtein and Feodor Khitruk. It was a wonderful morning for me, and I enjoyed sharing it on my blog. (It was sad to note that Feodor Khitruk died this week, December 3rd. I’ll try to put together a proper post to note his life’s work.)

I have been enormously influenced by Norshein, the Hubleys and other animators, such as Tissa David or Jiri Trnka or Bill Tytla. It gives me pleasure to talk about such influences. You can just go to the blue names to the right of the blog to click on those names that are well represented.

Some of these stories really stand out for me. For example, there was this story about Finian’s Rainbow, a Print Magazine article by John Canemaker. I can’t tell you haw many times I’ve gone back there, myself, to look at the material again.

I also enjoy continuing a dialogue I see on the internet. If it gives me a chance to expound on animation, film or acting it often brings me pleasure. There was this post and others about it, thanks to a series by Mark Mayerson, that gave me time to think aloud on this blog.

I have a strong love of design in animation, and I can’t help but call attention to it. George Cannata is a brilliant artist and deserves all the attention he can get. See here and here.

Or John McGrew here and here.

Or T. Hee was brilliant. See here or here.

I also have a wealth of artwork and plenty of information on Rowland B. Wilson. Start here or here or here.

You know, there’s just a lot of material here.

I haven’t even gotten into the wealth of material on loan from Bill Peckmann with his stunning collection of illustration and comic art. It’s just magnificent, and I am so proud to be able to post whatever he sends me whether it’s Rowland Wilson or Harvey Kurtzman, Gahan WIlson or Dick Moores. There’s just a bounty of artwork, and it all demands viewing. What a treasure is there. What a pleasure to post it.

All I can say is that I intend to keep it up. There’s so much more to post, so much more to enjoy,

Years before Dick Moores got near the smell of Gasoline Alley, he had a bulging career at Disney’s doing books. Long before he ever thought of drawing Walt or Skeezix, he was a master of the Mouse. Bill Peckmann has sent me Goofy as the “Mechanical Wizard”, and I’ve rushed to put it together so I could read it. Here’s Bill’s opening salvo:

Continuing with the posting of Dick Moores ‘Disney’ career, we have here one of the classic Mickey Mouse comic book stories of the early 1950′s. It’s ‘Goofy’s Mechanical Wizard’, written and drawn by Dick, the story gives us a little glimpse of what will be in store for us once he was to take over the complete reins of the ‘Gasoline Alley’ comic strip, approximately a decade and half in the future. Surprisingly, here in his Mickey Mouse stories, there are no famous, rickety, ‘Gasoline Alley’ type bridges or catwalks. They would come later, but they would have been perfect for the hi-jinks of Mickey and especially, Goofy, with that in mind, Moores’ two MM stories would have made very enjoyable animated shorts.

Here then, is the cover and story of ‘Goofy’s Mechanical Wizard’.

The book’s Cover

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Inner covers of the magazine

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All three of these gags were written by Moores.

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Back Cover

And coming to a future Splog from Dick Moores:

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- Recently, on this Splog, we saw Dick Moores, who would eventually replace Frank King as the artist behind Gasoline Alley, as the artist behind the beautiful comic books featuring Mickey Mouse. Bill Peckmann continues with the Disney artist, Moores, as he gives us Lambert the Sheepish Lion, Bill Peet’s tale.

But first we saw an early strip drawn by Moores, “Jim Hardy”. Bill Peckmann is here to present some of the Moores history:

When Dick Moores was assisting Chester Gould on his ‘Dick Tracy’ strip in the 1930′s, his big dream was to eventually have a daily strip of his own. In 1936, he was finally able to fulfill that wish with the comic strip ‘Jim Hardy’. It lasted from 1936 to 1942. He left ‘Jim’ to join the ranks of the Disney comic strip dept. in ’42.

In this 1977 Hyperion Press’ book of reprints we get to read Dick’s version of how the strip came about (and what a sweet read it is) and also included are the first 21 dailies of the strip.

The cover page of this Hyperion Press collection of strips.

The back cover of the book.

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Thanks to Germund Von Wowern we have an original ‘Jim Hardy’ strip from the early 1940′s. Beautiful ink work! (Sorry about the rubber cement stains in the word balloons, those are left over from re lettered foreign language versions of the strip.)

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Here, I’ve broken the original strip into two parts
so that we can see it fully enlarged.

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In this 1953 story Dick Moores had a great time adapting the Disney short ‘Lambert, the Sheepish Lion’ to the pages of a comic book. The more I look at the art, the more I start to get the feeling, that in Dick, the cartoonist, there was always an illustrator trying to get out. Some of these panels would have made pretty good page illustrations. (Which makes one wonder and dream of what a comic book page would have looked like if it had been done by the one and only Bill Peet!?!)

The comic book cover which contained Lambert.

The back cover

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In Part 2 we’ll continue celebrating the art of Dick Moores and the release of Library of American Comics’ “Dick Moores’ Gasoline Alley”!

- I’ve written about Dick Moores several times on this blog. He is one of my favorite comic strip artists. I knew him growing up with Gasoline Alley, which was about my favorite newspaper comic strip. Moores had taken over for Frank King, and the strip became something different and unique in his hands. There’s a roundness and a beautiful open quality to his character drawings. I find the style very appealing, and I also liked the stories. It took a while to learn that he’d also done a number of the Mickey Mouse comic books, which I also loved – (but not as much as those Gasoline Alley strips despite how great I think the Mickey comics are.)

Here’s the 2010 post on Gasoline Alley: Dick Moores – 1
Here’s the post on the Mickey comic books: Dick Moores – 2

Bill Peckmann sent some scans to make up a good post about Moores and his work. Here’s Bill, writing about the post:

Here’s a little triptych tribute we could give to master cartoonist Dick Moores. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, I would like to call it “The good, the bad and the ugly.”

Here’s the good: Dick Moores’ self caricature and capsule bio from R.C.Harvey’s terrific 1998 book, “A Gallery of Rouges: Cartoonists’ Self Caricatures”.

Here’s the bad: As in really bad, which in “today’s jargon” means exceptional, out of sight good!

It’s the new release of Library of American Comics’ “Gasoline Alley, by Frank King and Dick Moores, it’s the collected daily strips from 1964 to 1966. This vol. 1 is a dream come true for all Dick Moores fans. Done with the same scholarly quality as all of their long list of great books, LOAC’s “Gasoline Alley” does not disappoint in any way. Their front of the book bio of Moores, is illustrated with a lot of his, not easy to find, pre GA art!

The front cover

The back cover

The ugly: This is meant and said in only the most positive way. Here we have a 1948 Mickey Mouse children’s book that was illustrated by Dick Moores during his sixteen year tenure at Disney’s comic book and comic strip department. His style in the book might not be as “slick” as the great Disney print guys of the day, but Moores brought a wonderful, heartfelt “folk artist” quality to this book that he always gave to all of his endevours.

The front cover

The end papers

Title page

The back cover

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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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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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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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(Click any page to enlarge.)

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Once again thanks to Bill Peckmann for scanning these pages.

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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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