After a decade as a struggling cartoonist, minus a couple years as a World War I doughboy, Frank Willard found his meal ticket with a “vulgar” character in the tradition of Mutt and Jeff and, more explicitly, Barney Google (which Willard had spent some time assisting on during those earlier ten years). Moon Mullins debuted […]
Jimmy Dodge-a-Job and the Little Folks of Tumbledown Town Allan Holtz presents us with most wonderful samples of cartooning from 1918. Two full pages of Jimmy Dodge-a-Job from the mysterious James Stewart makes one wonder why he did not reach a justly deserved fame. Teena by Hilda Terry HIlda Terry gained fame more for reasons […]
King Features has put up a different sort of trouble slide, which isn’t their usual announcement for missing files and, instead, suggests perhaps a restart from the beginning? Not sure, but June 15 being nine days away and coinciding with the end of the week, here are the strips that would have run in that […]
Comics historian and R. F. Outcault/Yellow Kid authority Richard D. Olson has passed away. The report of Richard’s passing was shared on a comics board: Richard Olson (Yellow Kid) passed away last Sunday close to his home in Mississippi after battling ongoing health issues. His wife Gayle of 54 years was with him that day. […]
KFS continues to run the Dec 31, 1939, episode of Vintage Thimble Theater. Here are the missing episodes to date:
Vincent D. Faletti began cartooning while serving in the Armed Forces during World War 2. Returning home to Michigan he continued cartooning for the Saginaw News by creating the weekly Saga of Saginaw from 1946-47. He continued as a freelance cartoonist contributing to The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, American Redbook, Ladies’ Home […]
MIssed it last Sunday so here, a week late, is the historic anniversary of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World printing that paper’s first color comic Sunday supplement. The first Sunday Funnies?From American Comics: A History by Jeremy Dauber: The first color comic supplement appeared in the World on May 21, 1893, available on newsprint for […]
Blondie Boopadoop, Popeye, Longest-Running Comic Strips, Dennis the Menace, Harold Wilson. Blondie Bumstead, née Boopadoop? Before she married Dagwood Bumstead, Blondie’s name was Blondie Boopadoop. That’s what Wikipedia says, that’s what King Features Syndicate says, that’s what the Library of Congress says. But… was it? Rubbercat.net finds that the prevailing wisdom “while it’s official enough, […]
Rex Morgan, M.D. by Nick Dallis (as Dal Curtis) and Marvin Bradley & Frank Edgington debuted May 10, 1948. Below is the first week of dailies (the Sunday page would begin a month later on June 13, 1948). The original creators would stay on the strip for around 30 years. The last half of the […]
featuring Ted Richards, Nate Neal, Duane Abel, Jenny Campbell, Tony Husband, and Ben Oda.The Comics Journal has a Ted Richards obituary by John Kelly with a lengthy detour into the Air Pirates cooperative. It is post scripted by a number of remembrances about Ted. From Gilbert Shelton: Ted Richards was an outstanding underground cartoonist. We […]
One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And for the late Bill Blackbeard, the treasure that he’d stored from floor to ceiling in his San Francisco home was maybe the largest, most comprehensive private collection of American newspaper comics ever assembled. “He was single-minded,” said Caitlin McGurk, curator of comics and cartoon art at the […]
Comics historian Maurice Horn has passed away. A death notice for famed comics historian Maurice Horn has been discovered. Maurice Horn became the preeminent comics historian of the 1960s through the 1980s with his books. It was Maurice Horn’s massive World Encyclopedia of Comics in 1976 that put his name front and center. Though not […]
In the last year of Dan O’Neill’s Odd Bodkins for Chronicle Features O’Neill had met Bobby London and others who would make up the famous Air Pirates. According to Brian Doherty in DIrty Pictures Bobby had been “working with O’Neill on the final months of Odd Bodkins,” which would be the late Summer and Fall […]
I was poking around in 1973, looking to see what Easter cartoons might have run a half century ago, but found they were pretty much the same as what was running this Easter.And then I stumbled over this fascinating package from the Los Angeles Times, a pair of articles about comics by two very qualified […]
From The Columbus Dispatch of April 7: An exhibit currently on display at Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum will be featured during a segment on “CBS Sunday Morning” this weekend. “Man Saves Comics!: Bill Blackbeard’s Treasure of 20th Century Newspapers” includes part of a monumental collection ? 2.5 million pieces ? of […]