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...

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.

Looking for Barney and Snuffy

[Edit: Found the book for only $8. :) ]
I'm trying to find Brian Walker's "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" book. If you have a copy on your shelf in decent condition that you want to part with please drop me a line at sekvenskonst at telia dot com

I'm also looking for Barney Google newspaper strips from the 30's and early 40's.
Other newspaper strips I'm looking for includes
*The Adventures of Patsy by Mel Graff and Charles Raab
*Gus and Gussie by Paul Fung
*Dumb Dora by Paul Fung and Bil Dwyer
If you want to complete your own collection of the above strips I can always trade copies.

/Joakim.