The Mickey Mouse Theater

Tune in to the 1938 Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air!

Found on www.archive.org. Thanks to Per Starbäck who mentioned it on Facebook.

Fred Ray strips

I recently bought these two strips on eBay. Both are by Fred Ray and signed "FRAY".


Notice how he uses light and shadow just like Noel Sickles did. And, yes, he was a big fan of Sickles. It was from Fred's collection Alex Toth and some other artists got their Schorcy Smith sets a long time ago.



I suspect these were drawn while he was doing his military service during the early/mid 40's. But does anyone know where these were published? If they were published at all. They seem to be aimed to people not in the army since they explain how things are in the army. If you have any clues please leave a comment.

[Edit: As a bonus here is the third strip that was sold at the same time. But I didn't get this one.]

Bamse Pigg

I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone two days ago, while sketching on a piece of scrap paper.
You know how those phone conversation doodles usually turns out, don't you? Often only symmetrical patterns, but every now and then I do rough sketches of characters. This one became really weird. I started to draw swedish comic book character Bamse as if he would have been designed like Mickey Mouse. And to my surprise it worked quite fine to blend the two. The character both looks familar and pretty wierd at the same time...

Coming up tomorrow: Two original strips by Fred Ray, with a (heavy) touch of inspiration from Noel Sickles.

India tinta box

Oo, kung ano ang maaaring maging ito?

Mickey Mouse photo

Here's another vintage photo. But this one is even scarier than the ones posted yesterday. If I had been that girl I would have been running (Fast!) instead of smiling to the camera. (The photo above is also for sale att disneyana.de)

Hot babes

I like babes.
And I like Mickey Mouse.
I make no secret about two of my big passions in life. Butt oddly enough [!] I didn't get very excited when I saw these photos. Maybe it's true that just because you like two things they don't get better when you combine them...(The photos above are currently for sale at disneyana.de )

DD covers

Back in November I showed some nice new Daan Jippes covers on the blog. Now, thanks to Henrieke Goorhuis who sent me some scans, I can show you what the card tower cover looks like uncut:
I actually prefer Egmonts coloring (too many gradients on this version) but it's nice to see without all the text and stuff covering the art. And the dutch version have so much more depth thanks to the smart desicion to not cover the end of the card tower.

She also sent me three more scans wich I thought you might enjoy. First we have a Daan Jippes cover wich wasn't used in Sweden. Though it was printed in Norway...

Then a nice Scamp cover by an unidentified artist. I really like when the artists are using black as a dominant color on a cover. And I miss having other characters than the ducks on the covers of the Donald Duck weekly in Scandinavia. Using Mickey, Goofy etc now and then gives some variation, you know.

And finally the cover of next weeks DD with artwork by Gerben Valkema. I just can't imagine how long time it must have taken to figure out how to fit all the characters together to do this image. :) Let's hope this will be used in Scandinavia too.

Henrieke also sent me the lemur drawing below! If you want to see more of her artwork you should visit her blog Ducks and Lemurs.

Complete Rip Kirby

Just read that Dean Mulleany will reprint the complete "Rip Kirby" by Alex Raymond in five volumes! Beginning next year. If anyone can do this right it's Dean. Just look at the Scorchy Smith book released earlier this year. I'm really looking forward to these books. :)

Now, back to the Christmas candy and the family. Only 5 minutes left until Disney's "From all of us..." begins. Gotta go!

Merry x-mas to you all!

Zip - POW!

A wonderful claymation Krazy Kat Kartoon made by Banana Park.
Thanks to Sofia for showing me this yesterday.
I think Geo. Herriman would have been proud of what they did with Krazy and Ignatz

And speaking of the Kat don't miss the new Krazy & Ignatz book from Fantagraphics! It's filled with loads of extra bonus material. A pleasure for the eye and a delightful, weird piece of comic art.

Give me Liberty or ...

Beautiful cover art... Nuff said.

E&S #193

Finally finished the E&S page.
It's scanned and ready to be colored.
Myself I'm just hungry and ready for lunch. :)

What actually happened to the art

Remember this Mickey Mouse panel that I showed here in November?

Armando commented:
>>>Very interesting! The Taliaferro panel comes from the January 30th, 1938 Mickey Mouse Sunday, but the version reprinted in "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories" #12 (1941) seems to be heavily edited:
see http://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=ZM+38-01-30
Looks like Mickey wasn't allowed to handle a gun any longer...>>>

And yesterday David Gerstein left a comment that I think deserves to be read by all not just those browsing through old posts: >>>According to Floyd Norman (with whom I chatted about this), it's really an urban legend that the comic strip originals were sent to Western. If they really had been, it stands to reason that there would be no original, uncut dailies left from any of the Mickey stories Western serialized. But a handful of originals do survive from almost every continuity Western used.

Apparently, what actually happened was that Frank Reilly just told everyone one day that all originals prior to a certain year (might have been 1955), which were then being stored in some room, were to be destroyed. Staffers had a few days to dig through them and save whatever they wanted. After those few days were up, sure enough... the remainder bit the bullet.
But quite a number were saved, and it's those that were slowly dispersed and account for the several hundred (or so) on the market today.
The vast majority of originals from after that period still survive at Disney, held in big boxes of more than a hundred apiece.

Now... back to that Taliaferro panel that we're seeing here. Why was it cut out? Maybe because it wasn't used in the final ZM 38-01-30 at all! I'm looking at the strip in its newspaper format now, and the corresponding panel matches WDC&S, not the original at you showed. No gun, Mickey is walking rather than standing still and the crooks are seen from the back, not the front.
Why the change? IMHO, because letting Mickey catch the dropped gun and use it softens the gag. It's funnier to have Mickey subdue the crooks without any weapon at all, entirely due to their misinterpretation of the car's backfiring sound.

So this is really a lost Sunday strip panel! >>>

Ahh, imagine beeing there that day in 1955. Walking into a room and beeing able to pick any strip from the Phantom blot story, the Bat Bandit of Inferno Gulch, the Miracle Master or just a trunk full of early Mickey and Donald sundays. For free...
Thanks for sharing this info, David!

Update: Now, it has since turned out that some of the original Disney comic strip art produced at the studio actually was cut up for use in the Western Publishing publications. But this was done at the studio. This was revealed when the John Basmaijan collection went up for sale.

Gifts

Got this original drawing from Jimmy Wallin. He's recently been doing a Hergé inspired comic for "Bild & Bubbla" and did a series of portraits of some of us here in the studio in the same style. So it's me you see below. :)

And yesterday Sofia Falkenhem gave me this x-mas card. I just had to show it here.

Recent drawings

Here's a "What's on the drawingboard right now and a happy Santa"-post. :)


Just bought some Gottfredson artwork today.
Ca 35 pieces. (!!!) Paid a lot of $$$ for them and I'm really looking forward to see them. (I actually bought them unseen. But Gottfredson is Gottfredson and I love his work so...)

Just off...

"Just off for a short trip".
Well, I guess it was their black ear plugs they took off for the trip...
But what's the big deal making a post card about it?!?
And why am I asking such stupid questions?
I'm just glad that Disney stopped the experiment with more "realistic" ears on Mickey in the 40's, just as quick as they began. ;)

The New Cover of Tinker Bell

Now, you might know that Four Color "The New Adventures of Tinker Bell" looks like this:

But then, what strange animal is this???

The Cowan collection

The amazing Cowan collection blog is now added to my
"Other stuff you'll like" link list.
(I've mentioned the blog before but I just forgot to add it.)
Check it out!

Bacon & Egg

If you are a fan of Patik Norrman's "Bacon & Egg" here's a rarity to look for.


Privately printed by Patrik himself in an edition of 100 copies (if I remember right). It contains a few stories in black and white translated into english. The publication was brought to San Diego Comic-Con several years ago and given away to publishers. Now, try to track one down. Good luck!
And, no my copy isn't for sale. :)

Gottfredson photos

Gunnar Andreassen sent me these photos he found on flickr a while ago.

Now, besides Gottfredson who are the other two? Anyone who knows?
And does anyone have photos from inside the Comic Strip dept building?

The Illustrator Fall76 Part III

Here's the final part of the Gottfredson piece.


Myself I'm currently in a Walt Kelly mode, since I found a stack of sunday sections with Pogo from 1966-1967 in my closet. I had no idea that I had those and I've never read them before. So I've been enjoying the famous Prehysterical Pogo in Pandemonia sequence now. :) (What a thing to find in your own closet...) Great artwork in those sundays. You can tell he had fun doing the dinosaurs and the prehistorical trees.

And since I now have grown way too much beard and my girlfriend will come visiting tomorrow I'd better get home to shape up both myself and my apartment... But I'll be back soon with some unexpected stuff. As always... :)

New Elsje and Havank!

Before posting the final part of the Gottfredson article, here are some goodies that was sent to me from Holland last week. I just wanted to show them here since most of you who reads this are not living in Holland and might not have heard about/seen these publications. (Sorry about the bad quality of the photos. The camera doesn't like me. Either that or I'm a bad photograper who can't stand still while shooting... )

Gerben Valkema, the artist behind Elsje sent me this package that included the latest Elsje album and a nice print. (Limited to only 200 copies.) Even if you can't read dutch (I can't.) you should pick this up just because of the artwork and the coloring. I've mentioned what kind of coloring I don't like on this blog before but here's how it should be done. Colorists: buy this book and let it inspire you. :)



He also sent me the Havank teaser published earlier this year and a smaller book with sketches and layouts etc for the first Havank album.
The teaser is large, btw! I've included my iPod in the picture so that you can get an idea about the format. It's a pleasure to see Daniers artwork in this size.
Needless to say I'm looking forward to see the new Havank album! Aw, I'm looking forward to any new Danier/Jippes artwork. But I guess you all know that by now. :)

A pelicat :)

Got this drawing from Hedvig on my birthday earlier this year. :)
But I had to bring it to the studio today because I noticed the screen tones were beginning to curl and fall off. Better scan it while they are still intact and in the right places...


Gotta get back to the drawingboard now. It's raining outside and I have magazine cover to ink. Ho and hum, off to work I go...

the Illustrator Fall76 Part II

Here's the second part of the Gottfredson piece from the Illustrator. The third and final, where he talks about his working methods will appear soon.

The Illustrator Fall76 Part I

E & S #192

Two sneak peaks from Emma & Sara #192, featuring Sara.
Pencils by Hedvig.
As you can see we like to fool around with the character degsigns. Here Hedvig was inspired by the animation designs for the Asterix and the Vikings movie.

For more Emma & Sara just click here. :)