Obscure Images: Gluyas Williams Orchestra Illustrations

There’s been a great thread on Gluyas Williams going on at the Comics Journal message board recently, with a lot of nice cartoons and illustrations from him. Mike Hunter, who started the thread, just posted a link to this auction of some wonderful Williams illustrations of various members of an orchestra. His cartoons show so much character even without any words… Williams is truly a master of subtle character observation. Here they are for your enjoyment.

I’ve posted a number of Williams cartoons on this site previously that can be seen here. You can see some more great stuff by Gluyas Williams at gluyaswilliams.com, at The Stripper’s Guide, and at Barnacle Press.

Click on the below images to see larger versions.




















Obscure Images: Wally Wood’s Spawn of Venus

It’s pretty amazing the treasure you can find on Ebay without even buying anything. I’m talking about the images that get posted there. Like these ones. Here are the images for an auction I ran across here for the complete pencils for an unfinished Wally Wood story for EC comics. Here is what the auction description says about them:

WALLY WOOD (1927 – 1981) graduated from New York’s School of Visual Arts, and was an early assistant on THE SPIRIT. His early work includes romance stories for Fox and science fiction stories for Avon, which led to his joining the EC staff in 1950, where he usually worked on the science fiction titles, while also contributing some amazing work to SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES. After the Comics Code came into effect, Wood continued to contribute to MAD, while also moving on to Marvel, where he worked on early issues of DAREDEVIL and THE AVENGERS. In the late ’60s, Wood joined Tower Comics as art director, where he created T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS. He also created the sexy CANNON and SALLY FORTH for Overseas Weekly in 1971.

This is the original pencil art for an never-finished complete 8-page story titled “The Spawn of Venus” that was slated to appear in a third issue of Three-Dimensional EC Classics, and was based on a story drawn by Al Feldstein in Weird Science #6. These pages are in very good condition with avearge wear and aging; there are also doodles and loose sketches on the backs of several pages. The pages have an image area of 13″ x 18″.

Here are the pages…

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8

These are probably big enough to reasonably ink if printed. If anyone out there wants to ink them, I would love to link to your inking job.

BOB SCULLY: The 2 Fisted Hick Detective

I ran across an auction for this hilarious and amazing looking, very early all original material comic book from 1933 on Ebay today… more images can be seen there.

Here’s what comics historian Robert Beerbohm says about this book (in an excerpt from his upcoming book Comics Archeology 101 called ORIGIN OF THE MODERN COMIC BOOK 1 1919-1933) here:

With the 1933 newsstand appearance of Humor’s Detective Dan, Adventures of Detective Ace King, Bob Scully, Two Fisted Hick Detective, and possibly the still unrediscovered but definitely advertised Happy Mulligan, these little understood original-material comic books were the direct inspiration for Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to transform their fanzine’s evil character The Superman from Science Fiction #3 (January 1933) into a comic strip that would stand as a watershed heroic mark in American pop culture. The stage was set for a new frontier.

Crumbling Paper: George Herriman’s Embarrassing Moments (aka Bernie Burns)

I found a couple of original George Herriman Embarrassing Moments (aka Bernie Burns) panels (from 1932 and 1931 respectively) on Ebay tonight. Note that the first one has racial depictions that some would find offensive, so you may not want to view it.

Click the image to view the full strip.

You can bid on the above strip here.

Click the image to view the full strip.

You can bid on the above strip here.

Obscure Images: Early Wolverton Original and Herriman Cigarette Buttons

Did you already buy that Milt Gross painting? No? Well, you could take that 600 bucks burning a hole in your pocket and bid on original art for this early, obscure Basil Wolverton strip instead.

What’s that? You don’t have $600? Well, I suppose you could bid on these two George Herriman cigarette pins made for Hassan and Tokio cigarettes in 1909 going for $16.50 and $12.50 respectively.


OK, I’ll stop now.