Saturday, July 03, 2010
Herriman Saturday
Sunday, November 24 1907 -- Once again Herriman is tapped to provide a Sunday magazine editorial cartoon for the whole Hearst chain. Here he tries to emulate the approach if not the style of Winsor McCay, whose editorial cartoons always had a sense of grandeur that was perfectly evocative of the Sunday
Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons
Friday, July 02, 2010
Obscurity of the Day: Ghost Story Club
The strip not only offered daily thrills and chills but also a club with a monthly newsletter, and an interactive website. Comic strip websites are ho-hum common today but it was a real innovation in the mid-90s. Kulpa also cites his strip as the first to extensively use Photoshop techniques (see panel 5 above) and scanned photos.
Unfortunately the strip never caught on nearly to the extent envisioned by its creators. Was it that kids were no longer willing to follow a story even for a mere week, or that newspapers didn't give the strip much of a chance? Some of both, surely. There's also the factor that the creators were self-consciously hip. The strip constantly referred to current teenybopper fads and fashions, and kids can smell adults trying to be cool from a mile away and roll their eyes in exasperation.
Ghost Story Club was distributed by Tribune Media Services. It seems to have begun on August 20 1995 (a date I arrived at based on numbered Sunday strips), and ended on April 12 1998.
On Kulpa's Captain Comics website he mentions that three weeks of the strip were drawn by substitute artists. I haven't had any luck tracking these down. Anyone know the dates and the subs?
Labels: Obscurities
Comments:
Just found a batch of Ghost Story Club color Sunday pages, with dates that run to May 31, 1998 (with a small "The End" in the last panel) - so that is probably the correct end date for this strip. Cliff
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# posted by 
: 3/28/2018 6:26 PM
: 3/28/2018 6:26 PM 
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Can You Help?
Cartoonist/historians Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden are in the home stretch of "How To Read Nancy" and cannot stand the thought of having to reproduce microfilm copies of these key works in a book about the craftsmanship of Ernie Bushmiller.
They are seeking scans of the following strips from hardcopy (newspaper tearsheets) and have come up empty; please advise if you can help:
NANCY 6/ 29/55
NANCY 8/8/59
DEBBIE (AKA LITTLE DEBBIE) by Cecil Jensen 6/ 27/ 55
NANCY 6/ 29/55
NANCY 8/8/59
DEBBIE (AKA LITTLE DEBBIE) by Cecil Jensen 6/ 27/ 55
FRITZI RITZ 12/31/30
Any examples of pre-1925 work by Bushmiller
Any MAC THE MANAGER strips (1924)
Any examples of pre-1925 work by Bushmiller
Any MAC THE MANAGER strips (1924)
And, of course, Nancy's first appearance : Fritzi Ritz 1/2/33
Any leads appreciated. As you well know, this stuff is very hard to track down.
Please send Paul an email with any tips, leads, or high res scans:
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Obscurity of the Day: Pete
I have the strip beginning on December 27 1903 based on the San Francisco Chronicle, oddly enough with two complete strips appearing in the same section, while Alfredo Castelli cites a start date of December 13. The strip last ran on June 25 1905.
Thanks to Cole Johnson for the scans!
Labels: Obscurities
Comments:
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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Cartoonist Mug Shots of 1911-12
Thanks to Alex Jay for sending these to the Stripper!
Monday, June 28, 2010
Obscurity of the Day: The Human Zoo
One of the most gifted editorial cartoonists of the past century, C.D. Batchelor flitted from paper to paper in the teens, worked at the New York Post in the 1920s, then from the 30s on was a fixture at the New York Daily News until his retirement and death in the 70s. His Pulitzer-winning 1937 editorial cartoon, a true masterpiece in my opinion, is impossible to forget once seen.
Batchelor's editorial cartoons are very serious indeed, but he did have a (slightly) lighter side that was put on display in his first syndicated feature, The Human Zoo, and a second, Once Overs. The Human Zoo was syndicated by the Philadelphia-based Ledger Syndicate and ran from November 6 1922 until sometime in 1924, possibly August 2nd. In its earlier days the social commentary in these cartoons was complemented by Batchelor's strikingly handsome artwork, but later in the series he simplified his style somewhat and the feature lost some of the 'wow' factor on display in these gorgeous samples.
Labels: Obscurities
Comments:
Human Zoo was still running in February 1925 in the Buffalo DAILY STAR.
# posted by : 6/28/2010 12:01 PM
: 6/28/2010 12:01 PM
Beautiful artwork, indeed.
BUT when I first saw Oswald Snively I thought Hortense was being wooed by a (mannish) woman! Now that would have been social commentary in 1922!
BUT when I first saw Oswald Snively I thought Hortense was being wooed by a (mannish) woman! Now that would have been social commentary in 1922!
Hi Grizedo --
Thanks for the info on the Buffalo Star run. Do you think it ended there in February, or did it run through the end of the month?
--Allan
Thanks for the info on the Buffalo Star run. Do you think it ended there in February, or did it run through the end of the month?
--Allan
By the way, Grizedo, I still need a name so I can credit you for information in the Stripper's Guide listings, now for this as well. Please email me at stripper@rtsco.com
The Human Zoo ran in the Birmingham Age-Herald from 3/2/1925 until 8/29/1925 with no copyright notice.
Hi Boyd --
Hmm. Seems a little late; if it was running in August 1925 I would have expected it to appear in the 1925 E&P directory, which it didn't. Of course that can be an oversight or the syndicate had already decided to drop it. Is the Age-Herald online, or did you get these dates from microfilm? What other material did they run? (That might give a clue as to whether the material was current or running late).
Thanks, Allan
Hmm. Seems a little late; if it was running in August 1925 I would have expected it to appear in the 1925 E&P directory, which it didn't. Of course that can be an oversight or the syndicate had already decided to drop it. Is the Age-Herald online, or did you get these dates from microfilm? What other material did they run? (That might give a clue as to whether the material was current or running late).
Thanks, Allan
That's from my ongoing microfilm survey of the history of the Birmingham papers; you can get the full story at the link below; my brief comments on the Human Zoo are on the A-H page for the 20's. You can also search for the contents of all the pages for any given date (although I haven't gotten that far yet on the Post), so you can do some experimenting on your question. On August 1, the A-H was running the following lineup:
The Human Zoo
Moon Mullins
Gasoline Alley
Little Orphan Annie
Winnie Winkle
The Gumps
The Human Zoo
Moon Mullins
Gasoline Alley
Little Orphan Annie
Winnie Winkle
The Gumps
Hi Boyd --
Fair enough, it doesn't look like the Age-Herald was in the habit of rerunning old material, so I'm going with your date. Thanks for the link!
--Allan
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Fair enough, it doesn't look like the Age-Herald was in the habit of rerunning old material, so I'm going with your date. Thanks for the link!
--Allan
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics
