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

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

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).

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Messmer, DeBeck, Sterrett and more at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive! : September 17th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: More amazing classic newspaper pages posted today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, courtesy of their MARC DECKTER CHALLENGE… Messmer, DeBeck, Sterrett, Gross and more! Click the image above to go there!

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.

Crumbling Paper: Polly and Her Pals (strip #3)

Here’s a gorgeous example I scanned of Polly and Her Pals with a Sweethearts and Wives header strip from 1930 by Cliff Sterrett. Sterrett really hit his stride in the late 20’s.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read more examples of Polly and Her Pals at Barnacle Press.

See more examples of Polly and Her Pals from 1936 at the ASIFA Animation Archive.

See another beautiful example of Polly and Her Pals at Michael Sporn Animation, Inc.’s Splog.

One more example of Polly and Her Pals from Shorpy.

One more example of Polly and Her Pals from John K via Bugpowder, where it no longer seems to reside.

See some more Polly and Her Pals (and Dot and Dash, a header strip for Polly by Sterrett) at Coconino World.

Here are some examples of Polly and Her Pals translated to French, from a French collection of 1929-1930 Polly strips which appears to be in print.

Click here to read more about Cliff Sterrett at lambiek.net.

Click here to read more about Polly and Her Pals at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read more about Cliff Sterrett at stevestiles.com.

Crumbling Paper: Polly! When Your Own Sweet Daughter Cries, You May as Well Give Up (strip #2)

Here’s an example I scanned of Polly and Her Pals from 1914 by Cliff Sterrett.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read more examples of Polly and Her Pals at Barnacle Press.

See more examples of Polly and Her Pals from 1936 at the ASIFA Animation Archive.

See another beautiful example of Polly and Her Pals at Michael Sporn Animation, Inc.’s Splog.

One more example of Polly and Her Pals from Shorpy.

One more example of Polly and Her Pals from John K via Bugpowder, where it no longer seems to reside.

See some more Polly and Her Pals (and Dot and Dash, a header strip for Polly by Sterrett) at Coconino World.

Here are some examples of Polly and Her Pals translated to French, from a French collection of 1929-1930 Polly strips which appears to be in print.

Click here to read more about Cliff Sterrett at lambiek.net.

Click here to read more about Polly and Her Pals at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read more about Cliff Sterrett at stevestiles.com.

Crumbling Paper: Polly – When Pa Digs in He Has to Stay in (strip #1)

Boy have our friends at the fantastic online comic strip library Barnacle Press been on a roll lately! They’ve posted a collection of more of Swinnerton’s Dear Little Katy, which I published examples of recently. They just posted a bunch of examples of the bizarre and mischievous Uncle Mun (which I’ve also published examples of). Last week they posted examples of one of the earliest daily comic strips, The Hallroom Boys. Best of all, they put up an enormous library of one of the funniest and most visually inventive comic strips of all time, Cliff Sterrett’s Polly and Her Pals. Don’t miss this one. It is a travesty that the few reprint books there have been of this strip are all out of print.

Here’s an example I scanned of Polly and Her Pals by Cliff Sterrett, from 1921. I’ll have a couple more of these this week.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read more examples of Polly and Her Pals at Barnacle Press.

See more examples of Polly and Her Pals from 1936 at the ASIFA Animation Archive.

See another beautiful example of Polly and Her Pals at Michael Sporn Animation, Inc.’s Splog.

One more example of Polly and Her Pals from Shorpy.

One more example of Polly and Her Pals from John K via Bugpowder, where it no longer seems to reside.

See some more Polly and Her Pals (and Dot and Dash, a header strip for Polly by Sterrett) at Coconino World.

Here are some examples of Polly and Her Pals translated to French, from a French collection of 1929-1930 Polly strips which appears to be in print.

Click here to read more about Cliff Sterrett at lambiek.net.

Click here to read more about Polly and Her Pals at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read more about Cliff Sterrett at stevestiles.com.