INTERESTING LINKS: Zero Mostel Hams it Up at I’m Learning to Share : September 20th, 2008

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TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: I’m Learning to Share brings us a great photo gallery of the wonderfully expressive face of the late Zero Mostel. Reminds me of his delightful photos from a great out of print childrens’ book he did, The Sesame Street Book of Opposites… one of my daughter Esther’s old favorites (and one of mine when I was a kid). Some interesting info on Mostel there too… I didn’t know he was a painter. Click the images above to go there.

INTERESTING LINKS: 1966 Walt Kelly Article at Yesterday’s Papers: September 17th, 2008

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TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM:
John Adcock at Yesterday’s Papers brings us a 1966 article on the great Walt Kelly. Click the above image to go there.

INTERESTING LINKS: Heartman’s Heart Breakers at the Internet Archive : September 15th, 2008

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TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: There is so much great music for free on the Internet Archive… today we have one of my favorite bands introduced to me by The Old Codger on WFMU (which, incidentally, is the greatest radio show of all time… and is all available for download). I bring you the one and only Hartman’s Heart Breakers, for your listening pleasure… there are two pages of music here and here.

INTERESTING LINKS: The Ink Spots at the Internet Archive : September 12th, 2008

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Looks like I just got Boing Boinged… this should be interesting. Thanks much to Amy Crehore at the delightful Little Hokum Rag blog for sending Boing Boing my way! Welcome new readers!

Today’s Featured Item: Music galore by the Ink Spots recorded from 78rpm at the Internet Archive! Here is the formula for a typical Ink Spots song:

1) Dumba dum-a dumba dum-a dumba dum-a dum.
2) Guy with high voice sings verses.
3) Guy with low voice talks same lines with some mild funny added.
4) Guy with high voice comes back for one more run of the verses.

It may be formulaic, but it sure does work well…

INTERESTING LINKS: Mike the Headless Chicken : September 11th, 2008

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TODAY’S FEATURED LINK: Boing Boing brings us the story of Soapy the Chicken‘s cousin Mike the Headless Chicken. Click the above image to read the story.

INTERESTING LINKS: Google to Digitize Newspapers!!! : September 10th, 2008

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Check out this article about how Google now plans to digitize historical newspapers and put them online. This is great news! I posted a letter I wrote to them here a number of months ago requesting that they do this… so now I take full credit for this idea! Seriously, though, this is thrilling news for comics fans… now I just hope that they do it right, and focus on scanning original newspapers rather than relying solely on microfilm and microfiche reproductions.

Here is an example of a comics page in one of the example papers they have posted. Obviously, one can’t be too picky about what gets digitized… much of the time there is only going to be one option for source material.

It appears a number of issues of the St. Petersburg Times have been added, comics and all.

I haven’t figured out a good way to search through this stuff for comics yet, although I’m sure the service will improve with time. The scans leave a lot to be desired… these appear most likely to have been reproduced from microfilm.

Hopefully they will include multiple copies of particular dates in their archives, so missing pages, varying quality and varying editions will be accounted for.

It is buggy right now, and there is clearly a lot to be desired, but this is still huge news for fans of classic newspaper comics.

INTERESTING LINKS: September 8th, 2008

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TODAY’S FEATURED LINK:

Allan Holtz at his fantastic Stripper’s Guide blog posts a review of the recent Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 1 published by IDW that has an interesting anecdote. Apparently, Mr. Holtz had pursued an Annie reprint project like this one previously and been extrememly frustrated finding copies of the early strips… it is horriffic how close we came to losing these classic strips forever. That’s right… the early episodes of one of the most well-known and longest running strips in the US almost disappeared. Now just imagine how the lesser known strips are faring! I wish this sort of thing was atypical, but it sure isn’t… as I have ranted here before (and will again, I’m sure), comics history is disappearing, and most of it will be lost without preservation efforts. Fantagraphics has had a lot of trouble finding some of the strips for their Complete Peanuts reprints, for pete’s sake!

Here is what Mr. Holtz says:

It may come as a surprise to those who aren’t devoted fans of Little Orphan Annie, but this is an extraordinary collection for the simple fact that the book begins with the very first sequence of the strip. So what? Well, when Little Orphan Annie began it appeared in only one paper in the world, the New York Daily News. That alone would make the early strips rare, but compounding that rarity is that the Daily News was considered a trashy tabloid and so it was never collected and bound by libraries. If there are no libraries collecting the papers, and then later disposing them, there are no opportunities for collectors to amass runs of the original tearsheets. The only known run of the first months of the strip is in the Daily News’ own microfilm copies, and that microfilm, which I’ve had the opportunity to review, is an almost unbelievable mess.

I had the idea of publishing the early Annie strips several years ago and I hit this brick wall myself. Faced with the impossibility of finding these strips in anything vaguely approaching reproducible form I waved the white flag and gave up. Luckily Dean Mullaney and company were not so easily dismayed. They had the bright idea of checking the Harold Gray papers at Boston University and it turned out that the archive included an unexpected treasure — an almost complete run of the strip right from the beginning. So, putting aside a wee bit of jealousy, I’m thrilled that finally we have the opportunity to read the saga of that little orphan gal right from the start, including the pivotal early days in the orphanage that have been unseen since they were published over 80 years ago.

I’ve been reading some of the Pacific Comics Club facimile reprints of some of the old Annie Books recently, and they are highly entertaining… I’m looking forward to getting a copy of this book. Click the above image to read the rest of Mr. Holtz’s thoughtful review.

INTERESTING LINKS: September 4th, 2008

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TODAY’S FEATURED LINK:

Random Semi-Conscious Musings brings us a photo gallery of who all the carticatures are in the Disney cartoon Mother Goose Goes Hollywood with comparison photos. I knew some, I didn’t know some, and I had some wrong. Click the above caricature of someone who is not Buster Keaton to see them all.

INTERESTING LINKS: September 2nd, 2008

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TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: I’m Learning to Share posts images of a mysterious hideously illustrated vintage teevee tray that seems to be painted by an artist copying the characters from different sources. I have two of these trays also… my daughter was eating sugar cereal on one sitting on the floor watching Fleischer cartoons just this weekend. Can you identify what artists the artist of this tray was ripping off? If so please do so in the comments here, or better yet on I’m Learning to Share’s post. I’m betting the monkey is a poor rendition of some Lawson Wood image. Click the image above to go to the site and see a better photo of the illustration.

INTERESTING LINKS: August 29th, 2008

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Today’s featured item: The Acme Novelty Warehouse, a online bibliography and photo attempt to archive everything Chris Ware has ever done (including constructed versions of all of his numerous papercraft projects, and many amazing and exceedingly rare items I had never seen or heard of before). Above is an image of a toy Ware made of his seemingly obsessive-compulsive friend Matthew McClintock (whose site should be seen to be believed). Click the image above to go to the Acme Novetly Warehouse.

And while I am mentioning the talented Mr. Ware, I will also note that the Fantagraphics blog, Flog, points us to a one day only McSweeney’s sale on back issues that includes the indispensible Chris Ware edited comics issue (#13). For five bucks. All of their in-print back issues are five bucks today! This is a teeny-tiny fraction of cover price, so cheap for the beauty of what you get it will make you feel guilty for getting it that cheap. Click the image above to go order.