HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Header Strips and More Courtesy of Hogan’s Alley : March 3rd, 2009

Posted on March 3, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM:

Hogan’s Alley has a wonderful gallery of full-color topper strips courtesy of Bill Blackbeard as a supplement to the latest issue of their always wonderful magazine (#16)…. there are some other great supplements at the link as well, as usual. Topper or header strips, for those who don’t know, are secondary comic strips that used to be published in conjunction with the main strip back when cartoonists were afforded an entire page of a Sunday newspaper to practice their craft on.

Most of these wonderful strips are largely forgotten today, and many are quite wonderful… examples of some of my favorite header strips are featured… Otto Messmer’s Laura (a header of Felix… which they have attributed mistakenly, although understandably, to Felix credit-stealer Pat Sullivan) and Segar’s Sappo (a header of Thimble Theatre) notably. Cliff Sterrett, Billy DeBeck, Rube Goldberg and many other greats are featured as well. There are no examples of Sterrett’s wonderful silent Dot and Dash topper, unfortunately (another of my favorites), but multiple examples of his variously titled marriage-lament topper strips (all headers of Polly and Her Pals).

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Popeye in Organ Grinder’s Swing (1937)

Posted on January 20, 2009 by STWALLSKULL

A Fleischer Popeye cartoon to add to the Vintage Monkey Cartoons list.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Popeye in Shiver Me Timbers (1934)

Posted on October 15, 2008 by STWALLSKULL

Another cartoon for the ongoing Vintage Spooky Cartoons list… the Fleischers’ Popeye versus a ghost ship.

Unfortunately, the only version of this available online that I can find right now is the colorized version. I’m not talking Ted Turner colorized either… bad as that is, this is much worse. My understanding is that at some point (around the time color television came around?) some brilliant entrepreneur decided it would be a good idea to make a buck by remaking some old public domain black and white cartoons in color by tracing cartoons on the cheap, coloring them and re-filming them. The results are poorly traced, and hideously colored, with far less “in-betweening” than the originals… leaving the animation a clunky, jerky, ugly mess… a hollow shell of the original. I imagine that they generally have chunks of the cartoon outright missing as well, judging from the budget-minded nature of this monstrous process (not to mention the sort of censorship that inevitably occurs when dimwits revisit the material of yesteryear and judge it by modern standards). In the very likely event I have any of this information wrong, someone out there please do correct me in the comments. Needless to say, I’ll replace this with a black and white version if it becomes available.

CRUMBLING PAPER: Thimble Theatre (strip #2)

Posted on September 17, 2008 by STWALLSKULL

Here’s an example I scanned of Thimble Theatre with a Sappo header from October 1, 1939 probably by Charles H. “Doc” Winner, a year after Thimble Theatre creator Elzie Segar’s death.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read about E.C. Segar at lambiek.net.

Click here to read more about E.C. Segar at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read more about Popeye at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read more about Elzie Segar at Wikipedia.

View a bunch of Fleischer Popeye cartoons here.

You can get the three Fantagraphics Popeye books here.

You can get the Popeye the Sailor DVD sets here.

CRUMBLING PAPER: Thimble Theatre (strip #1)

Posted on September 11, 2008 by STWALLSKULL

Here’s a badly damaged example I scanned of a Thimble Theatre Sunday strip with a Sappo and Popeye’s Cartoon Club header from March 31, 1935 by Elzie Segar. Segar’s Thimble Theatre is simultaneously one of the best humor and best adventure strips of all time… and Segar also had the best header strips! I love the Popeye’s Cartoon Club strips… someone should do a book of just those strips for kids.

Don’t miss the fantastic Fantagraphics Popeye books. The Popeye the Sailor DVD sets that have been coming out recently look very cool too… I hope to get the Fleischer ones when I have the money to spare someday. Good time to be a Popeye fan.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read about E.C. Segar at lambiek.net.

Click here to read more about E.C. Segar at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read more about Popeye at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read more about Elzie Segar at Wikipedia.

View a bunch of Fleischer Popeye cartoons here.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : The Shenanigan Kids, Flip the Frog, Particularly Odd Comic Strips, War with Ants and More : September 8th, 2008

Posted on September 8, 2008 by STWALLSKULL

John Adcock continues to post great stuff on his Yesterday’s Papers and Yesterday’s Papers Archive blogs, and brings us more strange ghosted daily Katzenjammer strips… these ones are utterly free of character, style or artistry, and ran under the title The Shenanigan Twins (apparently due to WWI anti-German sentiments… the old title returned soon after the war), still under Rudolph Dirks credit. The “gags” were presumably just lifted out of some old joke book… backgrounds are nowhere to be seen… hardly any violence either. Even the German ach-cents are gone! These strips are bland before their time, and would be right at home on a modern comics page.

He also posts a Katzenjammer strip he suspects is pencilled (not inked) by Frederick Opper, which seems very likely…

That’s not all! Here is a well done Mutt & Jeff clone called Hitt & Runn… apparently four-letter names ending in double letters is a crucial part of the ingredients to making a successful clone, even if the names are totally improbable.

And some rare, crude, very early E.C. Segar…

And more! Just go to his blogs and check them out.

Barnacle Press brings us another great list of greatest hits… Ten Particularly Odd Comic Strips from Barnacle Press. The Handy Man From Timbuctoo makes the list, naturally. Click on the below image from the bizarre Goops to go there.

Get out your crayons! Comicrazys manages to dig up ANOTHER Flip the Frog coloring book! Where do they find this stuff? I gotta print these for my daughter…

And, finally, Karswell at The Horrors of it All brings us World War III With the Ants from Captain Science #6… this story has some great, inventive layouts. The artist is apparently unknown… can anyone identify the artist (in their comments?):

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Popeye the Sailor (1933)

Posted on March 28, 2008 by STWALLSKULL

Here is by far the most successful (in every way) example of Betty Boop crossing over with characters from the funny pages… the first Popeye cartoon!

STWALLSKULL

Amusements, diversions, whirligigs, geegaws, humbugs and comics, comics, comics.

Category Archives: Elzie Segar