HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Flip the Frog Annual, More Funnies at the ASIFA, and Wood’s Spawn of Venus Inked : August 6th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS! So much great stuff… way too much to look at. I take a couple weeks off from this stuff, and the length of this thing just gets ugly. I don’t know what to feature today… Wolverton obscurities? Fox & Crow comics? More Herriman? Walt Kelly? Arch Dale? I’d feature the Chris Ware link the Comics Reporter pointed me to, but the resolution is terrible.

How about a Flip the Frog comic? Flip the Frog? He had comics? I guess he did… presented courtesy of Comicrazys, click the image below to see it.

But then there’s the ASIFA – Hollywood Animation Archive, doing amazing work as usual. Not only do they deliver the goods, but they do it with big, gorgeous scans. Some choice old newspaper funnies featuring Cliff Sterrett, Milt Gross, Clare Briggs and more are there today. Click the image below to go drool over them.

Those are sure great, but I gotta point to this as well… an inked version of the Wally Wood Spawn of Venus story I ran the pencils for previously, thinking they had not been inked… Courtesy of the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog. Click on the image below to view it.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Betty Boop and Pudgy in My Friend the Monkey (1939)

THE CARTOON CRYPT

I must confess, I used to really dislike Pudgy and Grampy… the characters that invaded Betty Boop’s cartoons after her pre-Hays code prime. I blamed them for the decline of quality in Betty Boop cartoons, not to mention the unfortunate disappearance of Bimbo and Koko. I’ve been watching them a lot lately, however, because my daughter LOVES Pudgy… and they really are fun cartoons. Betty is nowhere near as interesting as in her earlier cartoons… but I guess it ain’t Pudgy and Grampy’s fault. This is the 6th from last Fleischer Betty Boop cartoon, and 2nd from last Pudgy cartoon. This may be my favorite of the Pudgy cartoons I’ve seen.

PLEASE NOTE: This cartoon contains ethnic depictions that some people would certainly find offensive, and you may not want to watch it if this sort of thing bugs you.

Read more about this cartoon at the Big Cartoon Database.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Flip the Frog in Fiddlesticks (1930)

THE CARTOON CRYPT

Only two of Ub Iwerks’ Flip the Frog cartoons were made in color, and one of them was the first one, Fiddlesticks, seen below. I’ve always preferred the early Flip design to the later one… he looks much more like a frog, and much funnier. I would guess the design was changed so it would be easier to animate him turning his head… the designs are so different they don’t even resemble each other. If you want to see the later design, check out the coloring book posted at Comicrazys. I’ve also posted a number of Flip the Frog and other Ub Iwerks cartoons previously that can be seen here.

Note the apparent Mickey Mouse rip-off late in this cartoon… since Ub Iwerks created Mickey Mouse a couple years before this was made, it hardly seems like a rip-off, though.

Read more about this cartoon on the Big Cartoon Database here.

Read more about Ub Iwerks on Wikipedia here.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: The Mascot (1933)

THE CARTOON CRYPT

A great, great short by Ladislaw Starewicz, The Mascot, in three parts. I posted a short excerpt from this cartoon previously… this is the full cartoon at a much better quality. The Mascot is one of the most bizarre and beautiful puppet animations I’ve ever seen. And it has a monkey! Don’t miss it!

Part 1

Part 2

Part3

Read more about Ladislaw Starewicz at Animation Heaven and Hell.

Read more about Ladislaw Starewicz at Wikipedia.

See a tribute site to Ladislaw Starewicz made by his granddaughter.

For more old cartoons with monkeys, go here.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: The Plane Cabby’s Lucky Day (1932)

THE CARTOON CRYPT

J – Oatari Sora No Entaku (The Plane Cabby’s Lucky Day) (1932), by Teizo Kato. This bizarre cartoon is made more bizarre by the animator not animating random stuff he apparently doesn’t feel like animating, or doesn’t feel competent to animate… arms stretch for no reason other than wanting to avoid drawing a walk cycle… inanimate objects move on their own accord. Instead of putting a hat on, our hero shoots a hat out of his ass and it floats effortlessly onto his head.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Picnic Panic (1935)

THE CARTOON CRYPT

I’ve been enjoying watching this cartoon recently with my daughter. It is a Van Beuren cartoon from 1935 called Picnic Panic directed by Burt Gillett and Tom Palmer. I particularly enjoy the teapot music at the beginning.

I was delighted last night to find a longer version of the beginning of the cartoon on YouTube before it had the beginning truncated by an unscrupulous cartoon bootlegger. See the wonderful original beginning below.

Pretty catchy tune, eh? Download the music as an mp3 here:

Picnic Panic – The Rhythm of the Rain

Read more about this cartoon on the Big Cartoon Database here.

UPDATE: Actually looking at the Big Cartoon Database still of the title card, it is different than either of the ones above. So the new footage appears to be a bootleg, and the first one a bootleg of a bootleg. Anyone have the original version online?