Public service...

Since this page was bumped off the recent Swedish and Danish editions of the Scandinavian Donald Duck Weekly, by an italian soccer story, I feel that's it's not more than fair to post it here.
Story and art by Daan Jippes. Enjoy!


More stuff from Holland coming soon...

Coming soon...

And speaking of "coming soon": I heard yesterday that advance copies of the Buck O'Rue book by Paul Murry and Dick Huemer has been shipped from Classic Comics Press! :)

Close-up, part II

Time for an early piece by Dick Moores of Gasoline Alley fame.
This is a "Windy and Paddles" daily, the strip that followed in the footsteps of his Jim Hardy. 
This strip might not be everyones favourite, but look at the inking,
just look at the inking...
Lots of contrast between the different types of shading. And a nice use of black spaces. He sure knew what he was doing.

Shortly after this Moores joined the Walt Disney studio were he worked at the Comic Strip Department.  And this strip once belonged to one of his colleagues there: Bill Wright.
How do I know that? Just take a look at the back of the original art. :)

Watch out for the first volume of Dick Moores Gasoline Alley coming from IDW this fall!

Close-up, Part I

Over the years I have gathered a lot of original art for inspiration, and to study how my favourite artists worked/works. So why not share it with other people by scanning it in color, in high resolution so that the fine details can be seen?
Let's begin with a 1967 Bob Lubbers/Bob Lewis X-9 daily from Bob's final episode, before Goodwin and Williamson took over the strip. Enjoy!
(Click on the images to super size them.)

And a bonus: Two sketches from the back of the strip.

PS. While you are waiting for the next post in this series, here's another daily posted in 2010:
Frank Robbins 1969

Robin Malone 1970

Have picked up a lot of Robin Malone dailies by Bob Lubbers lately. All from 1969 - 1970.
Just thought I should give those of you who never have seen the final RM adventure a taste of it. Enjoy!

Donald's Nephews

This post has been moved and a ton of images has been added.
Check it out here:
http://sekvenskonst.blogspot.se/p/donalds-nephews.html

Alameda Times-Star, Nov 10, 1937

Got this from Bill Blackbeard many years ago.
An Al Taliaferro drawing from Alameda Times-Star, Nov 10, 1937.
It was reprinted by Gladstone in the 80's and is often credited to Floyd Gottfredson.
Enjoy!

How to spot a Mickey drawn by Taliaferro? The easiest way is to check if Mickey is moving like Donald Duck. Then it's Taliaferro behind the pencil. Here are two samples of how he drew characters walking. (Notice the dust clouds.)

Last weekend I took a walk with Hedvig through one of the parks in Gothenburg and we ended up at Palmhuset. Lots of orchids and exotic plants in there. And a beautiful sculpture!
I don't know who the artist is. Anyone who knows?
Just love it. Like Hedvig said to me when we saw it, it's like a sculpture made of a Claire Wendling drawing. 
Enjoy! 

Last weekend I attended the first SIS in Stockholm. (Stockholms Internationella Seriefestival = The International Comic Festival i Stockholm, previously known as SPX, Small Press Expo).

Didn't pick up much stuff this year. Maybe it's me getting more picky over the years, realising that every item takes shelf space... But on the other hand the three (3) items I brought back were really good. I urge you all to check them out/to buy them. You won't regret it!

First off we have Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds.
I'll let the images speak for themselves, but I can tell you that once I began to read it I couldn't put it away. I had to finish reading it. The story was so well told and got me hooked in a way very few comic books or graphic novels do these days. (Latest one was Asterios Polyp over a year ago.) The storytelling and the artwork makes a perfect marriage in this book. Published in Sweden by Wibom Books.

Posy was there and I was happy to get a nice drawing in my copy. :)

The two other items I picked up were both by Hanna K: "Lite drömmar typ" and "Astrobebis".

If I got it right she sold out during the convention, but has already printed more if you want your own copies.
And you do.

To see more of her artwork check out her tumblr: hannakdraws.tumblr.com

Hmm...

There's something wrong with this picture...

Rock Pincus versus the Earth-Monster! Part III

And thus ended the story of Rock Pincus, a story too horrifying to be published in Sweden. 

Restoring the Sunday funnies

A question to those of you who restore old newspaper comics from sunday sections: Is there a good Step-by-step around? Not a quick "Scan and save for web" but something actually written by people working with restoration on how to scan and restore for archival purposes.
How to make scans and restorations good enough to be printed. (I'm thinking of IDW's and Fantagraphics books here.)

I'm about to scan a zillion of old "Barney Google" sundays from the 20's, a big file of Bob Lubbers' "Long Sam" etc and I want to do it right the first time around. :)

Panel from Long Sam 12-4, 1955.

Update:
Did a test following Manuel's advice and I think I'm on the right way now!
Thanks for the input all of you! Here's a sample panel from one of the pages I test scanned. The paper was very lightly yellowed and I think I got pretty close to the original when I scanned.
(Original is 400dpi, file size reduced for the blog.) Enjoy!

Rock Pincus versus the Earth-Monster! Part II

Just in time for the weekend, here's part two...

Rock Pincus versus the Earth-Monster! Part I

First: A short history lesson.

Back in the 60's the Swedish weekly magazine "Året Runt" ran Li'l Abner, or "Knallhatten" as he is known as here. Unlike the the american publication, where a certain sunday page had to be published on a specific date, the pages in Året Runt could be published years after they originally had been printed in the US. Not that it mattered, though. A good story is always a good story.
    However, the editor of Året Runt didn't think all Li'l Abner stories were that hot. He got them in bunches from Serie-Service who provided Året Runt with syndicated material, and he said no to plenty of them. Serie-Service even ordered lots of older stories from the United Feature Syndicate when the editor ran out of newer stories to choose from.
When he did come across a story he liked the sundays had the english dialogue removed and Swedish text added before publication.
End of story.

Or...

What happened to all the stories he rejected?
Guess what? The proofs to them just surfaced!
Covering the late 40's to the mid 60's, there are plenty of rejected ones that didn't see print in Sweden in that pile. And to see the artwork in sharp black and white: Wow!
Beeing a fan of Bob Lubbers I thought I should share a short story here, featuring his gorgeous artwork. (Don't know if he did all of the work on these pages, or if it was a teamwork. But Moonbeam is drawn by Bob, thats for sure.)
Three pages from 1963 featuring the Pincushions and Moonbeam McSwine.
Enjoy!

To be continued ...


PS.

More great Lubbers panels
from Li'l Abner?
Make sure to visit
the Cartoon Sexy tumblr!

For more Li'l Abner sundays
check out the new collections from IDW.
So far four volumes has been published, covering 1934 - 1942.


For more Lubbers on this blog,
just click HERE.

Coming soon ...

More of this:

And while you are waiting, here's another Moonbeam:

Anyone who wants to take a stab at guessing who the Moonbeam artists above are?


PS. Just updated the previous post with a third (!) version of the final Robin Malone daily.