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HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Hard Luck Bill at The Stripper’s Guide : September 11th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: Today Allan Holtz at the Stripper’s Guide blog brings us two examples of Hard Luck Bill, a Happy Hooligan clone by Harold Knerr… one of which features Knerr’s rip off of the Katzenjammer Kids, the Fineheimer Twins. Click the above image to see and read about the strips.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: El Mono Relojero aka The Clock-Making Monkey (1938)

THE CARTOON CRYPT

El Mono Relojero AKA The Clockmaking Monkey (1938). I read about this cartoon originally on Cartoon Brew here… go there to read more about it. According to Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew this bizarre and hilarious cartoon from Argentina is only surviving film by the creator of the first animated feature film (El Apostol, 1917), Quirino Cristiani.

Go here to view other vintage monkey cartoons on this site.

INTERESTING LINKS: Mike the Headless Chicken : September 11th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S INTERESTING LINKS

TODAY’S FEATURED LINK: Boing Boing brings us the story of Soapy the Chicken‘s cousin Mike the Headless Chicken. Click the above image to read the story.

CRUMBLING PAPER: The Outbursts of Everett True (strip #54)

STWALLSKULL'S CRUMBLING PAPER INDEX

Here is an Everett True strip I scanned from November 11, 1924. Go here to see more Outbursts of Everett True on this site.

If you have a desire to draw your own interpretation of an Everett True strip and send it to me, I’d love to put it up for the internet for all to see with a link to your website or what have you. Send it to me at:

Click here to go to the Barnacle Press collection of Everett True strips by A.D. Condo

Click here to read about the lesser-known works of A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read some samples of Mr. Skygack, From Mars by A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read some samples of Diana Dillpickles by A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read some samples of Duke Murphy by A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.

Click here to the Toonopedia entry on Everett True

Click here to read about A.D. Condo at lambiek.net.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS: Gross, Messmer and more at the ASIFA Animation Archive, Golden Age Comics Galore!!! and Other Great Things : September 10th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

The wonderful ASIFA Animation Archive is offering a great deal for donations…

One of our most steadfast supporters is Marc Deckter. Marc is allowing us to digitize hundreds and hundreds of rare 1930s Sunday pages from his extensive collection. Last year, Marc issued a challenge to readers of this blog. Today, he is challenging you to help again.

Contribute $20 to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive through the PayPal link below, and Marc will provide us with a vintage Sunday page to publish here on the website. Donate $50 and he will share three of them… donate $100 and he will allow us to post eight pages. Purchase one of these hard drives and have it shipped to the Archive, and Marc will post FORTY rare Sunday pages! Marc has classic Otto Messmer Felix the Cat, Chic Young’s Blondie, Cliff Sterrett’s Polly and Her Pals, Milt Gross Sunday and other great pages ready to go. All you have to do to see them is contribute. As the total rises, Marc is prepared to throw in some extra treats, like he did last year. When you contribute, everyone benefits.

They have already posted a huge number of great strips from this promotion… please do give them money! Click the above image to go see some great comics!

Tom Spurgeon points us to this amazing golden age comics download site at goldenagecomics.co.uk Im pretty sure I’ve linked there before, but this is the first time I have explored it in detail… they have a ton of amazing public domain golden age books for free. What a resource!

Note that you can find links to software for viewing the comics here (they are .cbr files).

Click the cover of Animal Comics #23 featuring Walt Kelly’s Pogo above (one of the many, many comics available there) to go to the site. Here’s a link to the Animal Comics they have available.

Note that you will need to create and account to download the comics. Note also that they take down comics if they come to believe they are not in the public domain… many of the Dell comics listed are no longer available for this reason… there is no EC or DC, among other notable omissions.

No matter, they have an utter overload of amazing stuff… don’t miss this site!

Among his usual heap of great stuff he is posting daily on his blogs, John Adcock brings us the full version of the previously truncated Frederick Opper Katzenjammer strip I linked to the other day. Click the above image to see it.

Finally, two more great lists from our friends at another overwhelming site full of old comics, Barnacle Press:

Ten Final Hearty Recommendations From Your Other Pal, Holmes! and Ten More Must-See Strips from your pal, Thrillmer

THE CARTOON CRYPT: The Pet Store (1933)

THE CARTOON CRYPT

The final installment of the Beppo the Gorilla trilogy. This one is a homage to Willis O’ Brien’s classic King Kong,which came out the same year.

Read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database.

This cartoon is available on the DVD Walt Disney Treasures – Mickey Mouse in Black and White.

INTERESTING LINKS: Google to Digitize Newspapers!!! : September 10th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S INTERESTING LINKS

Check out this article about how Google now plans to digitize historical newspapers and put them online. This is great news! I posted a letter I wrote to them here a number of months ago requesting that they do this… so now I take full credit for this idea! Seriously, though, this is thrilling news for comics fans… now I just hope that they do it right, and focus on scanning original newspapers rather than relying solely on microfilm and microfiche reproductions.

Here is an example of a comics page in one of the example papers they have posted. Obviously, one can’t be too picky about what gets digitized… much of the time there is only going to be one option for source material.

It appears a number of issues of the St. Petersburg Times have been added, comics and all.

I haven’t figured out a good way to search through this stuff for comics yet, although I’m sure the service will improve with time. The scans leave a lot to be desired… these appear most likely to have been reproduced from microfilm.

Hopefully they will include multiple copies of particular dates in their archives, so missing pages, varying quality and varying editions will be accounted for.

It is buggy right now, and there is clearly a lot to be desired, but this is still huge news for fans of classic newspaper comics.

CRUMBLING PAPER: The Outbursts of Everett True (strip #53)

STWALLSKULL'S CRUMBLING PAPER INDEX

Here is an Everett True strip I scanned from November 10, 1924. Go here to see more Outbursts of Everett True on this site.

If you have a desire to draw your own interpretation of an Everett True strip and send it to me, I’d love to put it up for the internet for all to see with a link to your website or what have you. Send it to me at:

Click here to go to the Barnacle Press collection of Everett True strips by A.D. Condo

Click here to read about the lesser-known works of A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read some samples of Mr. Skygack, From Mars by A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read some samples of Diana Dillpickles by A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read some samples of Duke Murphy by A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.

Click here to the Toonopedia entry on Everett True

Click here to read about A.D. Condo at lambiek.net.

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

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

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?):