HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Whodunnit? : July 11th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

Today’s featured item… a Rudy Palais story from Crime Does Not Pay #49 (1947) courtesy of Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine. Click the image below to read the comic.

Whodunnit?

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : The Onion Sisters : July 10, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

Just a ton of great stuff today… I hit the golden age funny animal comic jackpot below. You’ll find great stuff by Carl Barks, Walt Kelly and Floyd Gottfredson, among many others. Also some great examples of Cliff Sterrett’s Polly and Her Pals from the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive, which is among my favorite comic strips.

Today I thought I would highlight something more obscure, though. Here’s the latest post from my friends at the amazing Barnacle Press blog… click the image below to meet the bizarre Onion Sisters!

The Onion Sisters

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Jack Cole Week at Those Fabuleous Fifties : July 7th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

Last week was Jack Cole week at the Those Fabuleous Fifties blog. Jack Cole is best known today as the creator of Plastic Man, and he did a lot of wild crime and humor comics as well. Click the image below to read some good examples.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

Another unbelievably great selection of new old comics on the web. As has been the case recently, it is hard to pick one to feature… Jack Cole, Frank Frazetta funny animals, comics by Tad, a whole Milt Gross book (!!!) and much more great stuff can be found below. I’ve chosen to feature Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat. Messmer is another one of the greats of childrens’ comics. He has a beautifully simple style, and I love the way his stories unwind. Although widely acclaimed, Messmer still seems pretty underrated to me, and is really in need of more reprinting (Fantagraphics did do a great reprint of some of his newspaper strips a while ago called Nine Lives to Live: A Classic Felix Celebration). I think his Felix comics could sell like crazy if some good publisher packaged them well and marketed them to children. Click on the image below to read a Felix comic at Comicrazys.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : John Stanley’s Other Comics : June 26th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

Scans Daily has recently had a number of posts of comics written by the great John Stanley. I’ve been reading a whole lot of Stanley’s brilliant Little Lulu comics recently with my daughter, and they are some of the best kids’ comics ever written. So great is Little Lulu that is has overshadowed Stanley’s other comics work in most comics aficionados minds.

It is interesting to see some more of his other work… his work was rarely credited at the companies he worked for, and I hadn’t really realized what a variety of work he did.

If you want more, note the wonderful (and very affordable) series of Little Lulu books that was recently published by Dark Horse Comics, and also note that Drawn and Quarterly recently announced that they will be publishing much of Stanley’s other comics work. Click the image below to go to the latest Stanley post on Scans Daily.


HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : The Sunday Funnies at the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive : June 24th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

Another embarrassment of riches for you… it seems like the amount of cool old scans online has been increasing exponentially lately. Again, really hard to pick one item to feature. I mean, Marc Bell has a blog!

However, I’m guessing the link most of my readers will be the most drawn to today is again courtesy of Stephen Worth at the utterly fantastic ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive blog. He has posted three old Sunday funnies sections in their entirety, along with an essay wondering what the hell happened to make newspaper comics sink to the depths they have sunk to today. Lots of beautiful stuff, scanned large and clean. Pictured below, a panel from Clifford McBride’s Napoleon, one of the many, many comics featured. Click it to see the full post!

Napoleon by Clifford McBride

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : More Swinnerton! : June 19th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

Another great day for browsing comics online, as is usually the case when Stephen Worth at the incredible ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive blog makes a post. Today he has given us more Jimmy Swinnerton to appreciate! Some exceptionally beautiful examples of his work, too. Click the image below to view the comics.

Also note that I have posted a whole lot of other examples of Swinnerton’s work on this site previously… you can view those here.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS!: Jimmy Swinnerton at the Dawn of Comics: June 18th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

Today’s smörgÃ¥sbord of free online comics includes an excellent short article on Jimmy Swinnerton with a few nice strips by him at the insightful Illustration Art blog. Click the image below to go to the article.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS!: Walt Kelly Pogo Sunday at The Fabuleous Fifties: June 17th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

I found a new site full of old comics today. Those Fabuleous Fifties has a lot of nice stuff posted, including the full 1952 Pogo Sunday strip by the great Walt Kelly you see a panel from below. Click on it to go to the post on the Fabuleous Fifties site.

HEY! KIDS! COMICS!: The Gay Boys: June 16th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

There are a ton of fantastic comic links for you to check out today… more Wolverton! Jeff Smith! Bryan Lee O’Malley! Lots of great stuff. It was quite difficult to choose which one to feature. I chose an obscurity from The Stripper’s Guide, quaintly titled The Gay Boys. I couldn’t resist a strip that features the always hilarious situation of an old man hiring boys to go into his cellar and kill rats. Click on the image below to see two full episodes of this bizarre strip.

Once you are at the Stripper’s Guide you will want to stay and browse. Among many, many other wonders your host Allan Holtz has posted, every Saturday he posts “Herriman Saturday” which features pre-Krazy Kat political and other one-shot cartoons from my all-time favorite cartoonist George Herriman. Click here to see the latest installment of that.