Mark Kausler’s CatBlog

Count Down to September 9th!

 Don’t forget loyal readers and Itza Cat fans, that the L.A. Shorts Fest will screen the World Premiere of our new short cartoon: “Some Other Cat” on September 9th at 3:15 PM in Program 22, devoted to animated shorts. This program will screen at the Laemmle NoHo 7 Theatre, located at 5240 Lankershim Blvd. North Hollywood, 91618. Tickets are $12.00, and can be ordered from the festival website; www.lashortsfest.com. Itza will Meow and Hiss just for you! Come out to the L.A. Shorts Fest and cheer him on!

Friend of Itza Cat and Facebook moderator for his website, Charles Brubaker, is asking for your help. He’s making a cartoon short featuring his character, KoKo the Blue, a Junior-sized Witch. I’ve reviewed her comics here in past weeks, and now’s the time to show your support by contributing to Charles’s KickStarter campaign. Here’s the link to the KickStarter site: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/koko-the-blue-animated-short-film/x/167841 . This is an unusual cartoon, it will be inked and painted on cels, and shot in Super 16mm! Charles is really swimming against the digital tide, here, folks, so give Cel Animation a boost! Contribute today!

 Here’s the last of Krazy for 1941 and the first three strips of 1942. I love the way Garge gives the feeling of a boxed-in little stage in the 12-30-41 strip, as bricks fly through the scene south and west. He’s off to a good start to 1942 with the “Putz in Boot” gags in the 1-2 and 1-3 outings. I like the cozy feeling as Ignatz and KK both pop up in the same boot in the last panel of the 1-3. Remember to click on the strip thumbnails to enlarge them!

 Myrtle is in great form this time in the strips from 9-22 to 9-27-1947. Favorites are, the 9-25, as Bingo plays the piano so well, that he fools Myrtle’s parents into thinking that Myrtle was practicing! She gets a dime for her deception, and promptly spends it on a soda. In the 9-26, Hyacinth the cat gets a rare spotlight, in which she eats a whole litter of rubber mice and in the 9-27, Myrtle wears out her babysitter, Slug, who goes to bed while Myrtle sits up and reads. I’ve pieced these together from my cut-out strips and the Newspaper Archive files.

 Felix from 1949 continues his detective work in the strips from 5-2 to 5-7-1949. I like the implied action between the strips from 5-2 and 5-3, in which the thief discovers Felix and Moocher’s silhouettes when he turns on the lampshade, and the first panel of the 5-3, showing the thief  with the lampshade shoved down over his head, which implies that Felix and Moocher put it there without showing the action. The 5-7 shows the teamwork between the Mouse and Cat, as Moocher tear bombs the thief with onions.

 The art of Harvey Eisenberg continues to adorn the Yogi Bear Sunday pages from September, 1963. Especially poignant is the 9-8 strip, as Yogi visits Washington D.C. and actually meets John (John-John) F. Kennedy, Jr. The caricature of J.J. looks like it was drawn by someone other than Harvey, as the lines are less bold, and a bit sketchy. A little more than two months after this strip was published, President John F. Kennedy was killed, November 22, 1963. Remember how John-John saluted his father at the Memorial Ceremonies? And the little boy pictured in this strip was killed in a private plane crash  on July 16, 1999, 36 years later. Make sure you see Yowp’s blog, in which he has already posted the half-page versions of these Yogis: http://yowpyowp.blogspot.com/2013/09/yogi-bear-weekend-comics-september-1963.html Tell him Itza Cat sent you! See you in North Hollywood next week!