More Buz!

Thanks to a reader of this blog here are scans from the new Buz book, so you can judge for yourselves. I don't have the book myself, but I'm more than happy to see how good these samples actually look. Especially after reading the Amazon review!
And the strips doesn't look "squeezed" as they did in the first volume. Great!

I have scanned the same strips from my old DLP editions for comparisation. The DLP strip is always the first and the FB the second. Enjoy!

The trouble with Buz

Seems that the new volume of Roy Crane's Buz Sawyer got the same problems as the first one. (Covered in THIS post.)
Check out the review for vol 2 on Amazon by clicking HERE. Guess we have a case of low res scanned screen tones from bad sources again? 

Roy Crane goodies

Here's some "bonus stuff" for those of you who bought the Buz Sawyer book mentioned in the last post.

The drawing below is simply listed as "promotional art" in the book and reproduced sans the gray shading.
Actually this was used in the 1946 promotional book "Famous Artists and Writers of King Features Syndicate". The theme for the illustrations in the book was "the future" and we can find Snuffy Smith on the moon, a Don Flowers girl riding a rocket ship etc.
In that context it's easier to understand Crane's drawing. It shows what to expect from the new strip in the future.

We also find an illustration from the Cartoonists cook book out of context in the preface. Here it is complete with the menue and the reason why Buz is using chopsticks. Enjoy!

/Joakim.

PS. If the publisher wants these scans for publication I'd by happy to provide them.

Buz Sawyer review

Buz Sawyer - "The war in the Pacific" was released by Fantagraphics earlier this year.
Now, Roy Crane is one of my all time favorite comic strip artist and Fantagraphics is one of my favourite publishers. Crane is the master artist and storyteller and Fantagraphics have a great history of publishing fine books.
What could go wrong? Well, something obviously did here.

The first thing that made me worried about the project, even before the book was published, was that Rick Norwood was announced as the editor. He's probably a nice guy (I don't know him) but he's got a track record of reprinting classic strips in bad resolution taken from bad sources in his magazine "Comics Revue".
When the book was published I started to ask around if anyone who had actually seen the book could tell me what the reproduction quality was like.  The answers got me worried and I put off buying the book. But Roy Crane is Roy Crane and I knew someone at FB must have given the book thumbs up before it went to press so ... I picked it up.


The preface by Jeet Heer is really well written. (As is everything I've read by Jeet!)
But boy, am I glad I didn't sell my old Dragon Lady Press and Pioneer reprints!
The quality of the repinted strips varies a lot in this book. Most of them are muddy. Both as a result of bad source material (Guess it's because they didn't find a good set of strips where the bottom hadn't been cut. Many of the strips from this era comes in two formats where the cut version seems to be more common.) and too low resolution when scanned I guess.
On the other hand there are a few pages that looks as if they are scanned straight from proofs. Other seems to be scanned in high resolution but from bad sources.
I wonder if a combination of high quality cut strips and not so good full strips could have been possible? With someone in charge who knows his/her way with photoshop I guess that would have been the ideal way.

Here's a sample of what I mean. Just so you can see for yourself.
Left image taken from the old DLP edition and the right from the FB book.

You can see what the low res scanning has made with the lines in the background.

This panel also contains an odd piece of restoration. 

Top panel from the DLP edition and the bottom from the FB book.

Compare Sultry's torso in the two images. Ouch, she's been cut.

Another example of editing. Notice Buz' clothes where details dissappear in the new book. I wonder if the editor checked the old DLP editions at all when restoration was made?

 If you take another look at the images above you might notice something else too.
And this is an even more disturbing problem than using bad source material and low res scans, I think.
More on that below next sample.

Again we can see how much better reproduction can be.
About the problem I mentioned earlier. Can you see it in the images above?
Yes, the image has been "squashed". Probably to make the strip fit in neatly on the page instead of keeping the ratio. (Hard for me to explain this in english so it makes sense. But I hope most of you follow what I mean?)

Below we see the same images on thop of each other. The height is the same. (If you disregard that the left version is a short version.) As you can see the red/FB version is not as wide as the old version. Squash!

To sum things up: This could have been good, but it's not.
My suggestion is that FB stops this project before it goes too far, and that the editor and production team responsible for this mess is taken off the project. Then production can then resume when a team with knowledge on how to restore old comic strips has been found.

/Joakim.

PS. If proofs are needed, just ask and I'll try to help. Don't have access to the first years but large runs of late 40's and onwards.

"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.

Tubbs to Ivey

Here are some pictures I found on eBay some 8 years ago. Back in the 70's Gordon Campbell and Jim Ivey compiled a book with Roy Crane's materpiece Wash Tubbs. These photos are from Jims copy of the book where Roy made several original color pieces. A one of a kind item. I hope it can be located for the new Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy reprints because I'd love to see them in higher resolution and in print. (If you know where it it please don't hesitate to contact Fantagraphics and let them know.) But until then here are some small but nice images. Enjoy!





PS. And while at it, here's a bonus Tubbs. A very off-model cover:

Pen and Ink #2, Part II

Here's the second part!



To be continued.

Wash Tubbs 1934

Ooops!
Remember the 1934 Roy Crane "Wash Tubbs" strip I mentioned yesterday. I spilled half my blueberry soup over the original while eating yesterday evening. The art is now a blue mess...
Fortunately I had a few snapshots taken before the disaster.
This should be a lesson to everybody: do not read your original art while eating. Terrible things can happen.

Anyway here are some "Before" pics... Nice, eh?



PS.
I was only kidding. The original is safe and I did *not* eat blueberry soup anywere close *any* piece of original art. I just wrote the above to upset my Crane obsessed friend Germund for a second. :)
I'm mean, ain't I?