A link to follow

If you enjoy the art of Paul Fung (and the history behind newspaper comic strip artists) you'll sure enjoy this link: http://chimericaneyes.blogspot.se
Eight posts covering the history of Fung, illustrated with really rare artwork and historical pieces. I've been collecting Fung for years and most of this was new to me. Top researcher Alex Jay has done it again! :)

Paul Fung lettering

One of the best and most skilled comic strip artists during the late 20's was Paul Fung. Not only was he a talented cartoonist, he was also a really good letterer. This weekend I took a set of his Gus and Gussie dailies and made a sheet of some of his best lettering. Just to have at hand when I need some lettering inspiration. Beautiful, isn't it?

The above image is just a low res image.
The high res image can be reached, and dowloaded HERE.

Polly and her Paul

With the soon-to-be-released book "Polly and Her Pals Vol. 1: 1925-1927"
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some Polly dailies not drawn by the creator Cliff Sterrett himself.
Whenever I read about the daily strip after Sterrett left it to his assistant/s it's mostly negative words. Well, I don't agree. The scripts are not the best I have to say, pretty much like other so-so funny strips of the 40's. But the artwork is just as fine as Sterretts own in the 40's and 50's.
Here are some samples of what I believe are the artwork of Paul Fung. Pretty nice, eh?




PS. Always looking for "Gus and Gussie" drawn by Fung. If you got any for sale, loan or trade, please let me know!

Worst Disney cover ever?

Here's my nomination to the worst Disney cover ever. Published in 1970 in Sweden, this was sold on "Barnens dag" (The kids day) for two crowns. I've never seen a copy, until I got this one a few days ago. I paid four crowns for it, so the seller made a good investment when he bought this book. Now he got 200% of what he paid for it. If he had bought 250.000 copies in 1970 he'd be a millionare today...
Hmmm... Sounds like a bad business pitch in the Dragons Nest.


Now over to something completely different. The first Gus and Gussie collection has reached the Dummy state. :)

It contains strips from January to February 1928.
Naturally it still needs cover pages.
Now back to work on the next.

A sneak peek

A sneak peek of what can be seen on my laptop right now.
This is what I'm doing on a sunday evening...
In case you wonder: it's Gus and Gussie by Paul Fung edited into comic book format. The strips seen here are from November 1929.

Not the most interesting strips in the run, but they are just to show what the pages will look like. The format will be mid 40's comic book format, three strips per spread. That means I won't have to reduce the strips at all.
(And, yes, I'm working at the Graff strips too, just taking turns with G&G for a while.)

Gus and Gussie

It was a busy weekend so the Gus and Gussie samples I promised to post had to wait a while.
Here are three strips from August 1929, the last year of the strip. The strip ended in early 1930 and Paul Fung began working on Dumb Dora instead.
The mood in these dailies reminds me a little of Frank King's Gasoline Alley. Nice, eh?



Coming up next: some Barks stuff...

Super quiz

I know there are plenty of experts on old newspaper comics out there.
So here's challenge for you!
Let's see who can beat the rest.
From wich strip is this taken?


Who said it should be easy? ;)

OK! I know it's almost impossible. You deserve a hint:
It's from the 20's. And some nice samples will be posted here soon. :)

Edit: To give you a reasonable chance to figure this out here's an image. (With the main character's face deleted.)

Edit: Here are a few more hints. This artist later took over a strip created by a man who left that strip to create one of the most successful of all time. This artist also worked as an assistant on one of the funniest (at least in the 20's and 30's) and still running strips. In the end of his career he worked as an assistant to a comic strip artist known for his abstract images.

Gus and Gussie

Just picked up two sets of Gus and Gussie by Paul Fung on eBay.
If there's anyone else out there collecting Fung stuff, feel free to drop me a line!
I'm just happy to share the strips I got and I'm always looking for tearsheets/copies to fill the gaps in my collection.

/Joakim.

Paul Fung and scanning

I've been pretty busy this week. Meetings, meetings and meetings. Small piles of paper at work that has grown into monster piles during my vacation has consumed most of my time at work. Tomorrow: two more meetings scheduled at work and them I'm off to my girlfriend for the weekend. Phew! I need that. It's hard getting adjusted after a long and nice summer vacation...

And in the evenings I've been trying to catch up with my scanning and restoration projects. Besides Adventures of Patsy by Mel Graff I'm also going through my sets of Paul Fung stuff.
If you have tearsheets for sale or want to trade high quality scans/copies please let me know. (Gus&Gussie, Dumb Dora, Guy from Grand Rapids etc.) If you are as much of a Fung-fan as me I'm sure we can work something out.:)

I'm scanning the strips and then mounting them for easy printing as you can see below. (This is only a low-res jpeg. My files are larger and sharp.)


The process I'm using is time consuming but the result gets pretty good.
First I scan the tearsheets in 600 dpi color. I then use the wand to select the black areas. (Tolerance between 80 and 110 depending on the condition of the strips.)
I then make a "new layer via copy". After that I drag the color background in the trash leavign me with only a black outline. I then change the image from color to grayscale.
Then under Adjustments I use Treshold to get nice sharp lines and to get rid of small spots etc. Then clean up and fill in black areas where neccesary and save as a bitmap. The results can be seen of you scroll down to my previous post. Those Patsy panels were all from yellowed newsprintpaper...
If anyone have a smarter, better and faster way to do it please let me know. :)

Before I call it a day here in the Studio here are two Paul Fung ads. Ger Apeldoorn has been posing several over at his blog so why shouln't I? :)
These are from 1941 and 1944. The one from 1944 is one of the very last things he drew before he died. More to come if there's interest.

Dumb Doras hair style

If you like Dumb Dora by Paul Fung you might find these articles interesting.
Back in May 1931 Fung asked for help regarding her hair...



Now, maybe YOU want to help Dumb Dora with a new haircut?
Send your submissions to
sekvenskonst at telia dot com