Al Capp in "Se" 1954

Here's something I saw in the window of an used book store in Gothenburg last week.

A copy of "Se" ("Look") from 1954. For only 10 sek! (Less than $2)
I grabbed it at the sight of a Schmoo on the cover.
(For those of you not familar with Schmoos:
It's not the beauty to the right. :)
It's the small white creature in the lower left corner.)

And here's the spread on Al Capp and Li'l Abner from that issue.

Here's a bonus image from that issue that I just couldn't resist. Enjoy!

Puzzle Pt III

Time for another piece. This time we got the left hand bottom corner.

 

And I found a prize for the winner! More info in the next puzzle post.

A Merry Christmas from Frank King

[The original art to this x-mas card by Frank King recently surfaced on eBay.]

Puzzle Pt II

Time for the second piece.

 

Now, we need a prize to make this competition interesting, don't we? 

Let's see what I can find...

Puzzle Pt I

Just for fun, here's the first piece of a puzzle.
The other pieces will follow over the next few weeks.
Now, let's see who will be first to identify exactly what this is. ;)

/Joakim.

PS. Happy Holidays to all of you!

The Donald Duck backup issues Part II

As promised, here are some more photos from the "lost" issues of Kalle Anka & C:o/Anders And & Co.  [See previous post HERE.]

As you can see the small package has plenty of proofs in various stages. Some are lettered in Swedish, some in English and some have no text at all, but separate scripts instead. D-coded stories are mixed with stories from USA, Holland and Italy.

It's worth to mention that a few of these stories are unpublished.

Did we have fun browsing throught these stories? You bet. ;)

Let's take a closer look at some of the items.

First we have the compilation list for No 8.

Then the title pages to a few unpublished D-coded stories. 

Now, the big question is: What was in the big package? I had hoped for some long lost Al Hubbard original art pages, or something like that... But no such luck.

What we found was proofs pasted up on heavy card board.

If you click on the image below you can see how an Italian story was re-formatted to standard Scandinavian format.

And there were even a few unpublished Rydahl covers.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse of "what could have been".
:)

/Joakim.

The Popeye x-mas calendar

If you are a fan of Popeye you shouldn't miss Jimmy Wallin's Popeye blog.

It's in Swedish but it's loaded with artwork and comics for your eyes to enjoy.
(You can always use the Google Translated version of the site if you prefer a rough English version of the blog.)
However, don't expect scans of old strips or comic books.
No, the artwork is all new.
Besides a weekly "sunday page" written and drawn by Jimmy himself there's an x-mas calendar going on right now with "fan art" by Swedish comic book artists.
My contribution appeared on Dec 2 and I had the pleasure to do the Jeep.

Here are a few of the other contributions:

Artwork by: Åke Forsmark, Natalia Batista, Alf Woxnerud and Hedvig.

/Joakim.

PS. I havn't forgotten about the second part of "The Donald Duck backup issues". I'll try to post the second part this weekend. [Edit: Or so I thought. Am I ever so optimistic or what...]

Saint Lucy's day today

Meeeeeeeeow from Hedvig and her Lucy cats!

Genius x 3 and Barney too

Some great news for all of us Toth fans!

The book "Genius, Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth" has expanded into a slipcased three book set! Read more HERE!

Barney Google
Got the new Barney Google book produced by Yoe Books!
And it's everything I expected it to be, and more. Besides all of the dailies from 5-18 to 12-26 1922  there's also loads of rare artwork shot straight from the original art, and plenty of photos of Billy DeBeck.
If you like funny stuff, and now I'm talking really laughing-out-loud-funny stuff, you should get this volume. Don't be scared about he fact that the strips are nearly 90 years old. The reason Barney Google was such a big success was that DeBeck, like Roy Crane and other greats, wrote in a more "modern" way than most of their contemporaries. It's still funny and gives us a glipse of 1920's life in the US.
Now, go get it!
Time's a wastin'!

Who is this guy?

A few years ago these photos of Jim Holdaway appeared in a Swedish Modesty Blaise collection.

Now, the question is: Who is the guy in the photo to the right?
I doubt it's Holdaway. The editor told me that the photo came from the syndicate, so I guess it's another comic artist/writer?
Modesty Blaise related in any way? Just curious. :)

/Joakim.

PS.
Here's a photo of Jim for comparison:

Adv. of Patsy page added

Just added a page with some samples from the newspaper strip "The Adventures of Patsy" by Mel Graff and Charles Raab.
You can find it above or by clicking HERE.

/Joakim. 

NSFW post

Time for some dirty stuff! :)
A friend of mine, Pidde, posted two sheets of naughty Gaston sketches by Franquin on his blog a while ago. And I just couldn't resist sharing them myself.
So without further ado here they are. Enjoy!

The Donald Duck backup issues, Part I

Way back in February this year we made an interesting "discovery" at Egmonts Malmö office. (That's where I work.)
I had been told that some old Bamse artwork was supposed to be found in a safe on the 7th floor. And since I work with this title I was naturally curious. Still, it took me a few weeks to actually investigate it further. It turned out that the Bamse artwork that was found wasn't anything previously unseen. Anyway, it was decided that we should move it into the Bamse archive on the 6th floor. And so we did.

But ...
Underneath the Bamse packages were two other packages! One large and one small.
The small package was labeled "Filmer till reservnummer KA & C:o" (Films for backup issues Donald Duck & Co. "KA & C:o" stands for Kalle Anka & C:o. The name of the Swedish Donald Duck weekly.)
The large package was labeled "Original reservserier, KA & C:o". (Original backup comics, DD & Co.)
Woha! It seemed like I had found some "lost" issues of the Scandinavian Donald Duck weekly I never even knew were lost. 

A day ot two later we gathered in a small conference room to open these packages.
A day ot two?!? How could I wait, you might wonder? Well, I wanted everyone who was interested in this kind of stuff to be present. The more the merrier. And the handful of people who attended the "grand opening" was indeed merry and curious about the "mysterious" packages.

Here we see Germund von Wowern opening the large package.

And Karin Wahlund Franck and Barbro Andersson are watching as the wrapping unfolds.

But let's stop for a while and go back in time. Back to the 70's!
To the time when these packages was prepared. Barbro, who has been at the company for a long time, told me what she suspected the packages would contain and why they were stashed away and forgotten.

At some point during the 70's someone at the main office in Copenhagen must have decided that it would be good to have a set of backup issues (Or "nød nr"/ emergency issues as they are also known as.) ready in case something disasterous happened. Like a fire at the printer or at the office.
Said and done, they prepared what would be twelve "emergency issues".
I don't know who was in charge of this, but in one of the package there is a letter from Leif Jørgensen in Copenhagen to Inge Lantz in Sweden. It's dated 1977 and Leif writes that Henning Dahl will deliver supplemental film for the German edition to be stored in the bank vault.

Barbro told me that she had heard about this material before and that it was indeed kept in a bank vault earlier. I guess that it at some point was decided that there was no longer a need for these backup issues and they were moved to the Malmö office. Stashed away in a safe and ... forgotten.

Now let's take a look at what's in those packages, shall we? :)
The small package contains films, proofs, translated scripts and compilation lists.
The first four issues are made up out of material published in Scandinavia in 1967, except for the covers.
Here's what was supposed to be used on the cover for the first issue. Barks cover to WDC 350. Not one of his best ...

The covers to #2-4 would have featured covers from the German Micky Maus weekly.
(D2684, D2484 and D1043 respectively.)

Then we have a photo of the stack in the small package, with issue 1 on top. Notice the post-it note (added at a later date) saying "Töntig" ("Silly") about the Barks story. :)

To be continued ...


Coming up in part two: The lost stories from issue 5-12 and what we found in the big package.

Some noses are bigger than others

Laff o' the day! 

If I had been a drummer, I know what I would have wished for this x-mas. :)

Can't help thinking of the lyrics to The Smiths "Cemetry Gates": 

"There's always someone, somewhere, with a big nose ..."

Original Peanuts daily for sale

[Edit: SOLD!]

For sale: An original Peanuts daily from 8-14, 1954.
Price 30000 sek. (Thats around $4185 or €3083.)
Please mail me for more info if you are interested.
sekvenskonst at telia dot com

Terry and the Pirates 1935

Just when I thought I had seen them all.
A Terry and the Pirates speciality strip by Milton Caniff from 1935!

Is this one published in the IDW books?

Coming soon...

Working on a blogpost about the "lost" 1960's issues of the Scandinavian Donald Duck weekly.
Some interesting stuff for hardcore Disney fans coming up this week. ;)

Update

[Edit: As you can see everything is back to normal here on the blog.
Now, what have I learned this weekend?
1) Never change something that works, just because you can.
and
2) It's more fun playing Left4dead, killing zombies on your Xbox360 together with your girlfriend than re-modeling a blog. :) ]


Have tried to re-model this blog during the weekend with the new blogger templates.
With vairied success and some frustration, I might add.
Still not happy with the way it looks, so you might see some changes over the next week.
Just in case you wonder what's going on. :)
/J.

PS. The image above is from the "Alfapojken" story I'm working with Hedvig on. So far 17 of 22 pages are done. Five more to go...

Best Modesty Blaise cover of the year?

Vote for the best Swedish Agent X9/Modesty Blaise cover of the year!
Choose between covers by Romero, Loopydave, Alejandro Sicat and Kim W Andersson!
Just click HERE!

Looking for a Tom and Jerry page

If anyone knows the whereabouts of the original art to the Tom and Jerry page below, please let me know. I'm interested in buying it! There's a $100 reward if you have a tip that makes me the owner of the page. (You tell me where to find it. If it's for sale and I buy it and you'll get $100.)
Mail me at: sekvenskonst at telia dot com
Thanks!

PS. If you have another page of Harvey Eisenbergs T&J for sale, please feel free to let me know.

Thumbelina character designs

As a follow up to the last post here are a few more Bill Peckmann sketches. And here's what he has to say about them: "Over twenty years ago when Rowland Wilson was on staff at Don Bluth's in Dublin, he got me on board to do some pre production character designs for the Studio's "Thumbelina". As far as I know they never went anywhere, c'est la vie."