HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Salesman Sam by C.D. Small, Milt Gross, Old Manga, In This Corner by David Steinlicht and Mrs. Bumps by Dwig : September 25th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS: The Marc Deckter challenge is over at the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive, but they have a bonus day today… a generous helping of the very inspiring Salesman Sam by C.D. Small and more Milt Gross (plus a Chic Young Blondie Sunday)! Boy, I’d like to see a book of those Salesman Sam strips. Click the image below to go there.

Salesman Sam by C.D. Small

My friend David Steinlicht‘s weekly In This Corner comic is one of my favorite things on the web (it also appears in the St. Paul Pioneer Press print edition every Thursday)… click the below image for his latest.

In This Corner by David Steinlicht

Shaenon Garrity brings us a bunch of pages of beautiful, obscure and forgotten manga in two different posts here and here.

Obscure old manga

Finally, The Stripper’s Guide brings us a lovely example of Mrs. Bumps’ Boarding House by Dwig. Click the below image to view it.

Mrs. Bumps' Boarding House

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : More Sunday Funnies at the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive, and the Black Terror Fights a Gorilla : September 20th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS:

Another huge pile of great Sunday strips from the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive courtesy of the Marc Deckter Challenge (which is over now)… lots more Gross and Messmer. Check them out here and here.

In their ongoing scans of the Nedor comics line, Nedor-a-Day brings us The Black Terror versus a gorilla… click the above image to go there.

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! : Everett True! Messmer! Gross! Herriman! Kurtzman! : September 15th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS: John Adcock at Yesterday’s Papers brings us another great A.D. Condo Everett True strip (among other delights)…

The ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive brings us another huge batch of gorgeous scans of old Sunday newspaper strips, featuring Otto Messmer and Milt Gross in the fourth day of the Marc Deckter challenge

The Stripper’s Guide brings us the weekly batch of Herriman rarities in their ongoing Herriman Saturdays feature…

Finally, Comicrazys and Those Fabuleous Fifties both bring us some Harvey Kurtzman rarities…

Lots of other good stuff in the links today too… have fun!

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

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: Count Screwloose – Jitterbug Follies (1939)

THE CARTOON CRYPT

Here’s one of the two cartoon adaptations of Milt Gross’ Count Screwloose. It isn’t a very good translation of the feel and charm of the comic strip, but it is fun and very well animated. The loony bin is nowhere to be seen. Why they decided to change Iggy’s name to J.R. the Wonder Dog I have no idea… and they stole his funny hat! You can see the other Count Screwloose cartoon, Wanted: No Master (also from 1939), here.


Note that this cartoon contains offensive racial depictions, and if this sort of thing offends you deeply you may not want to watch it.

Read more about this cartoon on the Big Cartoon Database.

Read more about Milt Gross on Wikipedia.

Read about Count Screwloose on Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

150 Greatest Cartoonists Countdown: #127 Milt Gross

#127 Milt Gross

Click on the above image to see the full Count Screwloose strip I scanned from November 23, 1930. Rudy Megaphone is a satire of singer Rudy Vallee, by the way.

Milt Gross’ comics drip slapstick. I don’t think Milt Gross aspired to do much with his comics other than make people laugh… and he was very good at it. That said, he wrote what may be the first graphic novel, She Done Him Wrong (a.k.a. Heart of Goldrecently reprinted by Fantagraphics). I wish someone would do a nice big reprinting of his newspaper work. Don’t miss the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive link below… great stuff!

See a number of great scans of Milt Gross comics at the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive here.

See some Milt Gross comics on Bugpowder here.

Read the Toonopedia entry on Milt Gross here.

Read the Lambiek Biography of Milt Gross here.