Just a quick post to say that I'm back from the US. But I'm currently in Gothenburg and I have limited internet access the rest of the week. So if I havn't replied to the mails you've sent please be patient. I'll try to answer my mail & ship stuff etc next week. And natch resume posting rare and nice stuff here on the blog again. :)

Ahh, sweet summer time.

It's vacation time!
And I'm off to the US in just a few hours. :)
Hedvig and I are just getting ready for a short nap before the taxi will come to pick us up. First Los Angeles and then San Diego to get some Californian sunshine.

So there might not be much activity here on the blog the rest of the week or so. :)

/Joakim.

"These top cartoonists" Part II

Got a request for the Ketcham and Schulz entries in the book, so here they are. :)

Looking for a font

For the next issue of swedish comic book BAMSE we are seeking to find the font that was used on the Uncle Scrooge covers of the late 60's. Not the logotype font but the one/s used for the catchy phrases/titles. See the image below.


Does anyone know the name of this font?

Here's a preview of the BAMSE cover, sans color.

Who are these people?

Update October 24 2014!
These photos most likely are the ones Don Ault is talking about during his interview with Paul Murry in the 70's. If so these slides comes from Bill Wright and were taken in 1941.
( Can't update any text below the Gottfredson photo on my ipad, but the shortest guy is Bill Wright. )

It's identification time!
These photos turned up in a flickr gallery a while ago and I guess they come from the collection of Don Ault. (?)
Now, it looks like they were all taken outside the Disney Studios Comic Strip Department. But who are these guys? Who took these photos? (My guess is that they took turns shooting and that they come from one of the artists.) And when? The mid 40's? (And of course, if anyone got these in better resolution that would be fantastic. Images like these can always be used in books and articles on Disney comics history. )

Well, the he first one is actually easy. It's Floyd Gottfredson.


Could this be Dick Moores?


This looks like Al Taliaferro.







Please use the coments field if you got any info on these.

"These top cartoonists" Part I

Just picked up the book "These top cartoonists tell how they create America's favorite comics". Since it's long out of print I thought I should share a few pages with you. Sounds like a good idea, huh? Of course it is. :)
Let's begin with Roy Crane and Leslie Turner of Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer fame.



More to come.

Barks 1981, part II

Let's pick up where we left off last week. At the Barkses home back in 1981. As usual it's Bill Peckmann who has supplied the photos and letters.



Notice the layout for the "Stranger in the Bar" painting on Barks drawing board below.


The previous Barks post featured some "before the visit" letters and here are some "after the visit" letters.




PS. Do not miss Carl Barks unpublished Uncle Scrooge biography Peter Kylling just posted on his site. Click HERE.

Moores' Windy & Paddles dailies

Since Michael Sporn recently posted some really nice Dick Moores items on his blog (Click HERE to see them.) I just had to dig out my two Jim Hardy/Windy and Paddles dailies from 1942. These are from the end of the strip and I have a photo of a letter somewhere where Moores wrote that he only had a handful of them himself. So I guess they are quite rare.

The 10-9 daily was bought from Ron Goulart a few years ago and once belonged to Floyd Gottfredsons inker and Disney artist on his own merits, Bill Wright. How do I know? It's got a stamp saying "This belongs to Bill Wright" on the back. :)

I might add that my girlfriend thinks these two strips are the worst pieces of original art I got in my entire collection. (!!!) I personally think they are among my favourites. :)


PS. There is a Norwegian collection of some of Moores best Disney stories for those of you who are interested. Check it out HERE.

Artwork from the Brooks collection

Got an interesting mail from Leslie Brooks the other day. As some of you might know he's been collecting and dealing in animation art since the early 1970s. Among his personal favorites have been the “gag” drawings that the animators draw of each other and the other personnel at the studio. Over the years he's accumulated hundreds of them (not just Disney). Now, he's decided to thin out the collection and sell some of it.

Since I bet many people are interested in seeing these drawings, Leslie gave me his OK to show them here on the blog. Beneath every drawing is a short description written by him, and if you are interested in purchasing any of them just send Leslie a mail at:
wabbithole at comcast dot net

Now, bring on the artwork!:)


CALL ME WALT – A preliminary cover for Jack Kinney’s book “Walt Disney and Other Assorted Characters”. As you can see, his working title for the book was “Call Me Walt”. It is drawn on a 8.5 x 11 inch sheet. $500




DISNEY’S INFERNO – A great gag drawing by Floyd Norman. It’s one of my personal favorites among the gag drawings I have. Drawn on a 12-field Disney animation sheet. $300




FOOD CART – A drawing by Webb Smith done on a Disney storyboard sheet. I doubt that anyone will ever know who the girl is but the gag is obviously that the Porter is angry because she has brought her own lunch on the train. It’s very well drawn. Very cute drawing. $150




FOSTER GIRLS – a Freddy Moore drawing with a caricature of Ward Kimball staring at all the nude women on the beach. The Gae Foster Girls were an “all girl review” popular in the early 1940s up through the end of the 1950s. Ward must have had a “thing” for them so Fred did this little homage to them. $1500




GIRL MIRROR – A Sid Thorne original. I don’t know very much about this one but it’s a nice drawing that Sid did for fellow animator Fred Kopietz. $150




NUDE BLUE HEELS – A drawing by Paul Murry done while he was at Disney. This drawing is $150




SNAKE GAG – Another Floyd Norman drawing both about & for Fred Kopietz. It’s a VERY long story but Fred used to go to Arizona as often as he could. He retired there after leaving Disney in the 1960s. He was constantly having run ins with animals and cared about them very much. Even, apparently, this snake. $100




WOMEN WEARING PANTS – A drawing by Walt Kelly of POGO fame. Like Dennis the Menace creator, Hank Ketcham, Walt Kelly worked at Disney in the 1940s. You can already see the “Kelly style” in this drawing. One of the better gag pieces I have - $750



The last 3 are all from Warner Brothers artist Jean Blanchard. Blanchard was in the McKimson unit. He 2 claims to fame are that she was one of the first (if not THE first) of the women animators. The other is that she drew the Bugs Bunny model sheet that became the standard for Bugs in the late 1940 and through the early to mid 1950s.



She did a Christmas Card every year. The first 2 images in this group are from her 1947 card. One of the people in the card is Cal Dalton the other is probably either Dick Bickenbach or I. Ellis. Unfortunately, I have not been able to pin this down for certain but there’s no one left alive to really know. The package consists of the finished art for the card and the preliminary for the interior illustration. The card drawing opens up to 11” x 17”. The prelim is a 12-field Warner animation sheet. - $500

The last one is the art and the printed card for her 1941 or 1942 Christmas Card. That one is $350.

Barks 1981, Part I

Got home late yesterday, so Wednesday comes on a Thursday this week.
In other words it's time for Barksday!

Again it's Bill Peckmann who delivers the goods.
In 1981 he and Nancy paid Barks a visit and this post and the next will feature some before and after their visit letters + some photos of them and the Barkses at their home.

Lets begin with a letter from September 24, 1981. Notice the nice letterhead.



Then another letter from October 15, 1981 in Garés handwriting.



And then two snapshots from the visit.

More to come next week!

Mirror, mirror ...

Didn't get this one at first.

Then I saw the signature and realized it was mirrored. :)
Found it in Hemmets Journal #30, 1960.