About STWALLSKULL

Learn more about Stwallskull here: http://www.stwallskull.com/blog/?page_id=2

SOAPY THE CHICKEN (#116): Attack of the Ads

Click the above image to read the current strip.

If you like this stuff and want to read the previous strips without going back post by post through the blog, they are easily browsed in THE ARCHIVE here.

The election for new comic strip czar will happen November 4th. Who will you vote for? Support your candidate by putting their below banner on your website, blog, social networking site, or ass. Consider it your own virtual lawn sign.








We have also provided a banner for one of the third party candidates in case you like losing:



Confused? Read this. Get more confused.

See the Soapy the Chicken archive here. Get downright perplexed.

Subscribe to the Chicken Feed. Understand less on a sometimes regular basis.

CRUMBLING PAPER: Their Only Child

Here’s an example I scanned of Their Only Child from 1915 by George McManus.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Apparently, there are over 1400 Bringing Up Father strips in the I Love Comix archive.

Click here to read MANY examples of Bringing Up Father at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read examples of The Newlyweds by George McManus at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read examples of Their Only Child by George McManus at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read examples of Alma & Oliver by George McManus at Allan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to read examples of Burglar Pete by George McManus at Allan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to read all the items mentioning George McManus at Allan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to check out The Holloway Pages’ Bringing Up Father original art page.

Click here to read about George McManus at lambiek.net.

Click here to read more about Bringing Up Father at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

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

Click here to read more about Nibsy the Newsboy in Funny Fairyland at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read a Newlyweds example at Shorpy.

Click here to read a Bringing Up Father example at Shorpy.

Read about George McManus at Wikipedia.

Go here to see examples of The Newlyweds at Coconino Classics.

Go here to get a DVD of all of George McManus’s work from 1905-1906. The site includes lovely color scans of a Nibsy the Newsboy in Funny Fairyland and Panhandle Pete Sunday strips.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Steinlicht, and Nostrand’s Man Germ : October 16th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS:

Here’s my friend David Steinlicht‘s latest Corner Comic.

Howard Nostrand’s bizarre Man Germ, courtesy of The Fortress of Fortitude.

INTERESTING LINKS: Allan Holtz’s Library of Congress Survival Guide: October 16th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S INTERESTING LINKS

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: Allan Holtz at The Stripper’s Guide has been recounting his recent comics research trip to the Library of Congress, and has many tips for wading through the bureaucratic nightmare of getting what you want out of the LOC. Part I here, Part II here.

Here is a choice quote from Mr. Holtz:

“I really can’t stress enough how important it is to stay on the good side of these people. If you annoy them, and they are VERY easy to annoy, and they can make the rest of your time there a living hell. There are a practically infinite number of rules that they can choose to enforce if they so decide, and you will run afoul of them pretty much no matter what you do. In fairness I think I understand the reasoning behind it all. If you’ve spent a lot of time in research libraries you will have noticed that they tend to attract a certain percentage of weirdos and nuts. The LoC is no exception, and once it becomes obvious to the staff that they have one of these on their hands, they use their deadliest weapons — that laundry list of vague rules, some of which they come up with on the spur of the moment, to gradually convince these fruit loops to take their craziness elsewhere. I’ve seen the strategy put into action and it is remarkably effective.”

SOAPY THE CHICKEN (#115): Frog and Angus are Illuminated

Click the above image to read the current strip.

If you like this stuff and want to read the previous strips without going back post by post through the blog, they are easily browsed in THE ARCHIVE here.

The election for new comic strip czar will happen November 4th. Who will you vote for? Support your candidate by putting their below banner on your website, blog, social networking site, or ass. Consider it your own virtual lawn sign.





We have also provided a banner for one of the third party candidates in case you like losing:



Confused? Read this. Get more confused.

See the Soapy the Chicken archive here. Get downright perplexed.

Subscribe to the Chicken Feed. Understand less on a sometimes regular basis.

CRUMBLING PAPER: Rosie’s Beau (Strip #3)

Here’s another example I scanned of Rosie’s Beau from 1917 by George McManus.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Apparently, there are over 1400 Bringing Up Father strips in the I Love Comix archive.

Click here to read MANY examples of Bringing Up Father at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read examples of The Newlyweds by George McManus at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read examples of Their Only Child by George McManus at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read examples of Alma & Oliver by George McManus at Allan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to read examples of Burglar Pete by George McManus at Allan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to read all the items mentioning George McManus at Allan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to check out The Holloway Pages’ Bringing Up Father original art page.

Click here to read about George McManus at lambiek.net.

Click here to read more about Bringing Up Father at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

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

Click here to read more about Nibsy the Newsboy in Funny Fairyland at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read a Newlyweds example at Shorpy.

Click here to read a Bringing Up Father example at Shorpy.

Read about George McManus at Wikipedia.

Go here to see examples of The Newlyweds at Coconino Classics.

Go here to get a DVD of all of George McManus’s work from 1905-1906. The site includes lovely color scans of a Nibsy the Newsboy in Funny Fairyland and Panhandle Pete Sunday strips.

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

THE CARTOON CRYPT

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.

Read more about this cartoon on the Big Cartoon Database.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Chick’s First Bite, Arctic Explorer Comics, King Kong in Mad Magazine : October 15th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS:

The Nedor-A-Day blog brings us Lincoln Ellsworth: Hero of the Poles! from It Really Happened #11. I link to it not because it is a particularly great comic, but because it causes me to go on a tangent imagining an alternate reality where instead of cowboy genre comics in the forties and fifties, the newsstands were filled with arctic explorer genre comics. Such is the sort of random and frivolous qualifier that will sometimes make a comic a featured item on this blog. Let the reader beware. Click the below image to read the comic.

A new Jack Chick comic is always a cause for celebration… or damnation! Mr. Chick continues his quest to save our souls with the healing powers of hatred, fear, paranoia and intolerance. This is a particularly bizarre one featuring vampires, just in time for Halloween. And as much as I like the work of Mr. Chick’s assistant (whose name I can’t recall right now), I MUCH prefer Chick’s own cartoony style, featured in this tract. Note that Mr. Chick’s All Tract Assortment has been the best bang for your buck in mini-comics for many, many years.

Finally, Gorilla Men brings us a collection of hilarious Don Martin and Sergio Aragones King Kong comics from Mad Magazine.

INTERESTING LINKS: Norm Saunders Featured at Comics Should Be Good: October 15th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S INTERESTING LINKS

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM:

Comics Should Be Good at Comic Book Resources has been posting a lot of good stuff lately. They recently did a feature on golden age cover artist Norman Saunders, who I’ve always been very fond of. Saunders is best known as the painter behind the notorious Mars Attacks! trading cards of the sixties, but he had a long history of comic book and pulp covers before that. He’s like a psychotronic Norman Rockwell… I can’t get enough of his stuff. I’m particularly fond of the covers he did for the Ziff-Davis G.I. Joe series (the first incarnation, I believe pre-toy, of G.I. Joe), where G.I. Joe is always portrayed as a goofy, smiling, killing oaf, genially slaughtering Koreans during the Korean War (often with a flower on his helmet). Click either of the images to go to the article.