The Imp Press - Part II

Some five or six years ago I saw some original pages drawn by Bill Wright beeing auctioned off by Heritage Auctions. Now, it wasn't any Mickey Mouse pages from WDC or even a Mickey daily.
No, this was someting that really had me wondering.

A story called Impy with references to Walt Disney, Frank Reilly at the Disney Comic Strip Dept and even Bob Grant!

What was this???
The auction only had the first few pages shown and I was stupid enough not to bid. (The complete story only went for ca $200-300.)
A year later it was sold again for even less money and now all of the pages were shown. I still had no idea what this was used for... until last week.

Back to the scans Bill Peckmann sent me.
The "mystery" revealed! Enjoy!

You know what?  Yeah, you guessed Wright!  There's more to come. :)
Part III can be found HERE. 

Felix in Utopia

Finally! One of my favorite Felix stories has been collected!

It's Werner Wejp-Olsen's story "Felix in Utopia" (his take on Orwell's 1984). If you've only read the Jan Lööf version of Felix you are in for a treat. Werner gave the strip his own touch and knew every storytelling trick in the book when it came to grab the readers attention and he knew how to keep the readers interested in the story. To say that I was a dedicated follower of Felix in the 70's is an understatement.
I loved this. And I still do. :)

Available as e-book from Replikant, saxo.com and williamdam.dk
Will also be available as an app from http://www.Dansketegneserieskabere.dk

Check it out!

The Imp Press - Part I

 When a mail from Bill Peckmann appears in the mail box you can be sure there's a link that you will enjoy or a scan of something he found in his collection. And no exception this time.
What we have here is what Bill got from another Bill back in 1972. The other Bill was no one else than Bill Wright. The Disney artist who worked at the comic strip dept for many years and also freelanced drawing many Mickey stories for Western Publishing. 
I have never seen most of this stuff before so I'm sure this will be a treat to all fans of Bill Wright and Disney History. Enjoy!

Here's the front and the back of the work resume. The rest can be found in THIS post from 2007.

More to come...

Kim Thompson RIP

http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Kim-Thompson-RIP.html&Itemid=113

Vouge 1926

R. John Holmgren in Vouge 1926.
Beautiful, isn't it.

Serieskolan 2013

Took a walk with Hedvig today to see the exhibition over at Serieskolan (The Comic Art School) here in Malmö, Sweden.
So, for those of you who can't make it there –
here are a few snapshots of some of the stuff that I especially liked. Enjoy!

 The webcomic "Seed" by Julia Philip can be found by clicking HERE!

Alexandra Malmquist

If I had to single out one author among this years students I think it would be Anna Syvertsson. Great stuff, both when it comes to stories and art. Here's her part of the exhibition in full!

 If you like this I'm sure you'll enjoy her blog: http://annavonsyfert.blogspot.se/

And one more favourite:
The poster by Sissel G.
Beautiful!

Check out her Deviant art by clicking HERE!

Now, it's late sunday evening and it's time to get back to the drawing board. Still got some inking left to do on the latest Nils the Cat page...

/Joakim.

Barks in the limelight

Dana Gabbard has yet again provided us with a rare piece of Barksiana:

"My friend Brent Swanson has found another Barksian rarity, a 1994 issue of Mouse Rap Monthly that includes a picture of Carl Barks posing with Disney legends Ward Kimball, Eyvind Earle and Marc Davis. My accompanying article is a bit gushy but does give an accurate picture of the state of Barks' activities in the mid-1990s" /Dana

WDC 132 revisited

A recent post over at Michael Sporn's "Splog" featured the cover to WDC 132 by Carl Barks.
(Thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing the cover scan!)

Notice how off balance this cover is. There are two big chunks of empty space to the right of Donalds foot and above the nephews. Not well composed at all. And why is there a sign saying "Do not pick flowers"? It has nothing to do with the gag of HDL fooling Donald with a fake flower at all. In fact it distracts from it.

Now, I've seen this cover hundreds of times, but I've never taken a closer look. Could it be that this cover was altered and not what Barks drew?
Take a look at this:

Notice the small gaps between the sign and the inked lines surrounding it. It's been pasted on afterwards. I guess by someone who didn't think the original gag was strong enough.
But by adding the sign the gag became ... strange. Why wouldn't the nephews want Donald to pick the flowers when they are about to fool him?
Working at a comic book company I can attest that editorial desicions aren't always logical...

So what would Barks original version have looked like? I took a quick stab at it using photoshop. Maybe like this:

/Joakim.

PS. While on the subject of Barks covers:
Over the years I've seen people write that the nephews on the cover of FC 353 are drawn by someone else than Barks, because the eyes doesn't have the piecut.
Well ... the nephews are drawn by Barks. Why he chose to draw their eyes different (or why someone else changed them afterwards) I don't know. But the composition, drawing and inking is by Barks. :)

Image taken from GCDB.

Jamaal Hill - again

Yep, the guy is back selling forgeries.
This time it's a fake based one of the last drawings of Uncle Scrooge that Carl Barks did.

The above drawing is based on the 1997 Barks piece "Last Call for the clan McDuck". However this tracing is so poorly done that the only one he's attracted as a bidder yet is "cosmogirl". But, hey, that's one of his aliases! Check out the auction HERE. 

Will he ever stop? Nah, not as long as there are people falling for this kind of stuff.