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

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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

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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! : David Chelsea’s Website : September 12th, 2008

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Note to new readers: The Hey! Kids! Comics! feature on this site is a regular list of interesting links to mostly old free comics around the web.

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: Tom Spurgeon at the indispensible Comics Reporter blog points us to David Chelsea’s lovely website. Note that Chelsea’s brilliant autobiographical graphic novel David Chelsea in Love is currently shamefully out of print, but there are some cheap copies on Amazon.

Mr. Chelsea is also responsible for the best book on perspective that has ever been written, and probably that ever will be written, Perspective! For Comic Book Artists: How to Achieve a Professional Look in Your Artwork.

He has a couple of his numerous 24 hour comics available for free on his site, among other things.

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

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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.

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

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

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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?):

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Doo Dads, Katzies, Beanworld and so much more! : September 4th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS:

John Adcock is on a roll! Today his Punch in Canada blog gives us two more posts of extremely rare and beautiful Arch Dale’s Doo Dads Sundays…

And his Yesterday’s Papers blog brings us some crude and bizarre ghosted Katzenjammer Kids dailies…

and A.D. Condo’s Everett True Vs. the Kaiser!

Meanwhile our friends at Barnacle Press give us three great overviews of some of the best strips in their enormous archives:

Ten Must-Read Classics from Barnacle Press
Ten Lesser-Known Works by Major Creators from Barnacle Press
Ten Features for Kids from Barnacle Press

Next we have the first new Beanworld comic by Larry Marder in I can’t remember how long. Apparently, there is a lot more to come, as Larry Marder has made a return to drawing comics after a decade or so absence. Don’t miss this stuff! Marder has always done utterly unique and wonderful work, and I’m thrilled that he is back at the drawing board… he is one of my favorite cartoonists. His plans also include reprinting all of his old work, so you’ll be able to easily start at the beginning.

And as long as I am going totally overboard with the featured links, here is another Wolverton Culture Corner strip (at the bottom of the Lance O’Casey story) courtesy of Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine:

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Arch Dale’s Doo Dads at Punch in Canada : September 2nd, 2008

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TODAY’S FEATURED COMICS: Today is an easy pick, in spite of there being the usual bunch of great stuff. My friend John Adcock at Punch in Canada has started posting a bunch of gorgeous examples of the obscure but wonderful comic The Doo Dads by Arch Dale. I haven’t seen that much of Dale’s work, as it is exceedingly difficult to see! It has never been reprinted, and if you want to read more of it you’ll probably have to hunt down the actual newspapers from when it was printed. What I have seen of his work has left a big impression.

Dale is often seen as a Herriman clone, and clearly Herriman was a large influence on him. It is terribly unfair to dismiss his work for this, though… his work is unique and he very much has his own voice and style.

John also shares the story about how he scanned a huge stack of these strips he borrowed and then had the files corrupt or disappear on him… it just makes me wanna cry. Fortunately these scans survived. Boy would I like to see more of this stuff… someone, please make a book on Arch Dale! You Canadians can get government grants for this sort of thing can’t you?

See the first post here and the second one here… sounds like there is more to come!

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : All Hail the King! : August 29th, 2008

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Happy 91st birthday yesterday to the deceased King of Comics, Jack Kirby. Tom Spurgeon at the Comics Reporter has a mind-blowing collection of his imagery posted in his memory. Click the above image I grabbed from there (from the wonderfully bizarre 70’s one-shot The Dingbats of Danger Street… a Kirby attempt to bring the Dead-End Kids into the Seventies).

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : A.D. Condo’s Diana Dillpickles : August 28th, 2008

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Today I’ll feature more from the great A.D. Condo of Everett True fame courtesy once again of our friends at Barnacle Press. Click the above image to see more examples of Condo’s Diana Dillpickles.