Wednesday, July 07, 2010
News of Yore: Comings and Goings of May 1929
[all stories from Editor & Publisher]
May 4 -- Robert L. Ripley, creator of the daily cartoon "Believe It or Not," signed a long-term contract with King Features Syndicate, Inc., recently. The deal was completed on board the S.S. San Jacinto just before Ripley sailed for Yucatan, where he will gather new material for his cartoon.
May 11 -- Feg Murray, cartoonist and sports writer for Metropolitan Newspaper Service, visited Washington this week as representative of the executive committee of the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America to invite President Hoover to attend the track and field championship meet to be held at Franklin Field, Philadelphia, May 31 and June 1. Mr. Murray represents Stanford University, the President's alma mater, on the committee.
May 11 -- John Cassel, topical cartoonist for McClure Newspaper Syndicate, will resign and give up syndicate work permanently May 31, he announced this week. He will devote his time to etching and experimental art work. Mr. Cassel has been with McClure since he severed his connection with the New York Evening World in 1927, due to a difference of political opinion concerning Alfred E. Smith's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
May 11 -- Jack Wilhelm, creator of "That Certain Party" strip for McClure Newspaper Syndicate, has returned to New York after four months in Hollywood.
May 11 -- "Trippy the Pup", a new comic panel by Max Whitson, North Carolina cartoonist, will shortly be placed on the schedule for King Features.
May 11 -- Jimmy Hatlo is doing a new daily comic panel, "They'll Do It Every Time," for the Premier Syndicate.
May 25 -- Terry Gilkison, artist, formerly of the Associated Press, has joined Publishers Autocaster Service of New York, for which he will draw a new comic strip entitled "Pinky Dinky."
May 25 -- Charles B. Driscoll, who has written many pirate tales, sails next Tuesday for Vigo and other ports in Spain, to do research work on pirates and tresure fleets of the sixteenth century. He will also visit St. Malo, on the French coast, whose French corsairs had headquarters, and will try to find some relics of Sir Fineen O'Driscoll, a noted Irish rover who is one of the writer's ancestors. Mr. Driscoll, editor of McNaught Syndicate, writes a weekly series, "Pirates Ahoy!" and a daily column, "The World and All."
May 4 -- Robert L. Ripley, creator of the daily cartoon "Believe It or Not," signed a long-term contract with King Features Syndicate, Inc., recently. The deal was completed on board the S.S. San Jacinto just before Ripley sailed for Yucatan, where he will gather new material for his cartoon.
May 11 -- Feg Murray, cartoonist and sports writer for Metropolitan Newspaper Service, visited Washington this week as representative of the executive committee of the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America to invite President Hoover to attend the track and field championship meet to be held at Franklin Field, Philadelphia, May 31 and June 1. Mr. Murray represents Stanford University, the President's alma mater, on the committee.
May 11 -- John Cassel, topical cartoonist for McClure Newspaper Syndicate, will resign and give up syndicate work permanently May 31, he announced this week. He will devote his time to etching and experimental art work. Mr. Cassel has been with McClure since he severed his connection with the New York Evening World in 1927, due to a difference of political opinion concerning Alfred E. Smith's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
May 11 -- Jack Wilhelm, creator of "That Certain Party" strip for McClure Newspaper Syndicate, has returned to New York after four months in Hollywood.
May 11 -- "Trippy the Pup", a new comic panel by Max Whitson, North Carolina cartoonist, will shortly be placed on the schedule for King Features.
May 11 -- Jimmy Hatlo is doing a new daily comic panel, "They'll Do It Every Time," for the Premier Syndicate.
May 25 -- Terry Gilkison, artist, formerly of the Associated Press, has joined Publishers Autocaster Service of New York, for which he will draw a new comic strip entitled "Pinky Dinky."
May 25 -- Charles B. Driscoll, who has written many pirate tales, sails next Tuesday for Vigo and other ports in Spain, to do research work on pirates and tresure fleets of the sixteenth century. He will also visit St. Malo, on the French coast, whose French corsairs had headquarters, and will try to find some relics of Sir Fineen O'Driscoll, a noted Irish rover who is one of the writer's ancestors. Mr. Driscoll, editor of McNaught Syndicate, writes a weekly series, "Pirates Ahoy!" and a daily column, "The World and All."
Labels: News of Yore
Monday, July 05, 2010
Obscurity of the Day: Animaldom
Mora evidently enjoyed drawing animals, and also produced several children's books featuring his anthropomorphic characters. Seems to me that in this series the vaguely sinister drawings were more likely to produce nightmares for the kiddies than the light entertainment and morals the Herald was probably intending.
Mora's artwork is certainly intriguing, but the doggerel verses are downright painful. The comics pages were never a place to expect the next Keats, but Mora's poetry manages to stand out even among the lightweight competition. Dare you to read the two samples above without wincing a few times.
An interesting factoid about Animaldom. Mora was originally from Uruguay. Does this strip then qualify as the first American newspaper comics by a Latino creator?
Labels: Obscurities
Comments:
I have to agree on both the doggerel and the dourness of the art. On the other hand, I am impressed not only by the high quality of the illustration but the creative variation in layout and coloring.
I'm reminded once again how much effort was once considered reasonable to put in on a single Sunday strip, for both the creator and the reader.
Another great find!
I'm reminded once again how much effort was once considered reasonable to put in on a single Sunday strip, for both the creator and the reader.
Another great find!
News item from the Seattle Daily Times, October 11, 1947
Noted S.F. Sculptor, Jo Mora, Succumbs
Monterey, Calif., Oct. 11.--(AP)--Jo Mora, 71 years old,
noted sculptor, died yesterday after a year's illness.
A native of Montevdeio, Uruguay, he started his career
as an artist on The Boston Traveler. In 1900 he turned
to writing and illustrating animal stories for children. In
later years he confined himself largely to sculptoring.
He created the Will Rogers Memorial in Oklahoma, the
Statue of Cervantes in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco,
and heroic figures in Los Angeles, Portland, San Jose
and other cities.
He painted the huge dirama [sic] for the state buildings
at the international exposition on San Francisco's
Treasure Island, He was a member of the Bohemian Club,
which has his statue of Bret Hart.
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Noted S.F. Sculptor, Jo Mora, Succumbs
Monterey, Calif., Oct. 11.--(AP)--Jo Mora, 71 years old,
noted sculptor, died yesterday after a year's illness.
A native of Montevdeio, Uruguay, he started his career
as an artist on The Boston Traveler. In 1900 he turned
to writing and illustrating animal stories for children. In
later years he confined himself largely to sculptoring.
He created the Will Rogers Memorial in Oklahoma, the
Statue of Cervantes in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco,
and heroic figures in Los Angeles, Portland, San Jose
and other cities.
He painted the huge dirama [sic] for the state buildings
at the international exposition on San Francisco's
Treasure Island, He was a member of the Bohemian Club,
which has his statue of Bret Hart.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics
Comments:
And then in 2010, some incompetent manager will "downsize" you in order to help some CEO get a bigger bonus...
# posted by 
: 7/05/2010 8:01 AM
: 7/05/2010 8:01 AM
I love my job... the only thing that could be better would be to be able to sit around and play poker all day... or hearts... or spades... or...
Post a Comment
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
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:
