The Business of Cartooning Pt.III

Herriman and Bushmiller. Anyone else before I return this 1939 book?

Kelly's Mother Goose Pt. I

Taken from Walt Kelly's Mother Goose verses
in Dell's "Raggedy Ann + Andy".
Enjoy!

Want more?

X-9

Picked up this X-9 daily last week.


This is fourth from this sequence I have. :)
Stamped with Chester Kozlaks name on the back.
I wonder how many Mel Graff X-9 originals he had?
Maybe he assisted Graff this period and kept some of the originals? Just a thought.
Anyone seen more originals from this 1942 adventure?

The Business of Cartooning Pt.II

The internet has been down in the studio for a few days. But now it works as it should again. :)

So... here's post 313 (!) on this blog: the Walt Disney page as requested.



Now, I gotta get back to the drawing board again.
Two pages gotta be finished and scanned today...
For those interested here are two samples:

The Business of Cartooning Pt.I

I have this book on loan from Svenskt Seriearkiv and thought I should share a few pages with you.
First out is Billy DeBeck.

And a bonus pic from 1916!

Who will be next? Disney? Holman? Bushmiller?
See any name on the cover that you want me to scan the entry for? Just let me know.

PS.
If you want to see me in the studio, NOT inking a Nils the Cat strip you should check this out:
http://kattennils.blogspot.com/

Bamse 9/08

Bamse 9/08 (#465) is out now with a cover by yours truly and Adam Blomgren. For those of you interested in "behind the scenes" stuff here's a step-by-step of the creation of the cover.

First I made a rough layout sketch wich I used to pitch my idea to the Editor in Chief, Lisbeth Wremby.

She liked it and I sent it to one of the Bamse artists: Adam Blomgren.
He then refined my idea and made a finished pencil drawing out of it.

Adam then scanned the drawing and mailed it to me at the office.
I then inked it on a Schollerhammer paper, A4 size in 100% of the print size.

Then Lisbeth colored the cover, added the logo and ta-da! Finished! :)

Stony Craig by Bill Draut

As some of you guessed (or saw) the sample panels I posted two days ago were drawn by Bill Draut (1921-1993).
The strip was named Stony Craig and was credited to Frank H Rentfrow and Don Dixon, although all the strips I have from March 1945 to June 1946 are signed by Rentfrow and Draut. Anyone who knows when Draut started doing the artwork?

Looking at the early strips in my run you can see a young artist (ca 25) who struggles hard to imitate the style of what must have been his heroes: Caniff, Sickles and Robbins. Not too bad but not that good either. Just like Bert Christman when he took over Scorchy Smith from Noel Sickles.
If you look at these samples from March 1945 you see that he fills the panels with heavy shadows and light. Just like his heroes did. (And I think the pose of Stony in the second panel is "loaned" from another strip. I reall it, but can be either a Steve Canyon or a Johnny Hazard pose. Or a Scorchy...)

Jump to June 1946 and we see a much more confident Draut with thick and elegant brushstrokes. He don't try to hide as much with black shadows anymore. Hey, even some beautiful profile shots of girls are thrown in to the strip. (These are the only ones I've seen in the whole run.) Who knows how good it would have looked if he had continued yet another year.
My sources says that Lin Streeter took over the strip after Draut and that it folded the same year. No surprise to me. Even if the art was interesting the script was really, really bad. No wonder Draut artwork seemed uninspired at times.
But every now and then there would be a panel or two that would have fit nicely in any Caniff or Robbins daily. Like this one for example.

When his last strip appeard he was already working for a coulpe of guys called Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (What ever happened to them...) and their new title Stuntman, were he did "The furnished room".
He stayed with comic books and worked for Harvey, Warren, DC and Marvel etc.

Stony Craig is one of the many forgotten strips that never made it big time. However, for me my set of Stony Craig dailies is more than just a set of tearsheets. It's a document of a struggling artist taking his first step in a career that he would stay with a long, long time. By the years the Caniff/Sickles influence faded away more and more but every now and then you could see bits and pieces of the style he learned in the mid 40's.
I hope you enjoyed these samples.

Now, I'd better do some drawing myself before leaving the studio. (I bet the artists got more WORK done in their studios before the days of internet...)

X-mas in July

Saw this X-mas cover on eBay and just wanted to share it with you. From Sunday mirror December 20, 1936.
Art by...? Never seen it before.
Enjoy!

Coming soon

If you are a fan of the Sickles/Caniff school and enjoys artwork by artists like Frank Robbins, Mel Graff and Charles Raab this might be something for you.
What is it then? you might ask.
Just stay tuned and I'll post more on the subject soon.
I'm just teasing you with these images. :)

Asterix by Jippes

Regarding the previous Daan Jippes posts one of the blog readers had a question:

"Joakim,
I'm a Belgian fan of comics. I'd like to contact daan Jippes. Could you help me, or forward my email address to him. A friend of mine does have an original page of Astérix (unpublished). I'm 90% sure it's Daan's work. I'd like him to confirm. Please, if you can help me ... Dominique"

While I don't have Daans e-mail maybe we can solve the question right here and now. :)

If it is one of the following two pages it's by him:




Daan wrote the following in response to my question about his Asterix pages previously on this blog:
"[...] happy to oblige re the questions around the "why"of those 2 Asterix pages I drew in the spring of 1981.
An agency in Amsterdam got wind of Editeurs Albert/Rene`s plans for a monthly Asterix magazine, and contacted me to do the art for a 32 page story, for which Lo Hartog van Banda ( ex- Marten Toonder Studios) had already done a synopsis, plus script for pages 1 to 4.
All I know ( because at the time I was living in Van Nuys, California) is that the work was submitted for approval to a guy in Bruxelles, Belgium, and then....zilch; nothing!
As we all know that magazine never saw the light. Was my effort ever SEEN by Uderzo? One wonders..."

Dominique: I hope this gives an answer to if the page is one of Jippes or not. Please let us know.

Al and Russell

Here's some rare cover art by Russell Patterson and interior art by Al Taliaferro. Never seen these before.



And while I'm at it why not throw in a Patterson painting from his early days titled "My villa In Normandy" . Just for fun.:) Love the colors on this one.



Now, I gotta rush. Got a bus to catch.
Next update: Sunday evening.

Walt's people volume 6

Walt's people vol. 6 is now available on Amazon.com!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1436318726/didierghezsdisneA/

Chew, chew

Me hungry. Me eat original drawing of cats. Yummy...


(Seriously now, this is from a photo session for Bild & Bubbla 1/08. A more well behaving and serious me will appear in that magazine along with an article about Nils the Cat. (The strip I'm chewing on.) But I just couldn't resist having some fun between the more proper shots. Photo by Hedvig.)

Gottfredson 1968

A quick question:
I own the original art to this promotional piece drawn by Floyd Gottfredson in 1968.
Anyone who knows where/if this was published?

Notice that unlike most of the later Gottfredson art this piece doesn't have yellowed zip-a-tone. Instead only blue indicating where the dot pattern should be added. Also notice that the board has been cut of to the left. (The thin blue line that "frames" the drawing is clearly cut off, indicating something's missing.) Maybe the parade continued with the ducks etc. after Mickeys car? Does that art still exist?
Any Disney publisher who wants to use this? Feel free to let me know.

Spirou by Danier

A big thanks to Timo who directed me to these two Spirou pages drawn by Daan Jippes under the name Danier, written by him and Yann and translated into french by Etienne.




Daan: This is really wonderful tribute!
Maybe a longer Spirou story some day ?
Until then I'm looking forward to a second Havank album. :)

And don't forget to check out Daans first Havank album. Some samples can be found if you use the Labels function. (Just click on Daans name below.) Just did that myself and realized that I had missed one comment from Daan regarding one of his childhood drawings.
Daan: I got the Chlorophylle scan +several others from a guy who had purchased some of your early sketchbooks. (Can't remember who it was who sent them to me. It was many years ago.)

Update July 2012:
Page 2, from the Galerie Laqua site.

[Edit: Please see the comments for Jippes "story behind the story" about these pages.]