Month: June 2020


The Lady and the Tiger


From the Cathy Hill Archive of Unpublished Comics comes “The Lady and the Tiger”. This story was drawn before Cathy started the “Mad Raccoons” series. Unlike the Raccoons, “The Lady and the Tiger” has no dialog, it’s all action and pantomime. The art was influenced by the work of Al Williamson, and Cathy’s staging and design show traces of Aubrey Beardsley and the psychedelic posters Cathy was designing in those days. The Lady is quite exotic, helmeted barbarians try to capture her on page two. Her tiger companion leaps to her rescue, scattering the abductors. Together they ride into the psychedelic tangle of the jungle. See part Two next time as the tangle relaxes.

Here’s Krazy from 1-24 to 1-29-1944. “Garge” is back on the job, complete with the stage details, stairs and floorboards he drew below the main action in the strip. I really like the 1-29, Krazy’s expressions are fun to look at as he pulls the beard of the “Koilly Lox” dog and is knocked for a loop by the bewigged canine. See if you can figure out the wordplay in the 1-25, kinda fun.
“K” here is from 1-31 to 2-5-1944, these again, are all the work of “Garge”. My favorites are the 2-3 with all the active little poses as Krazy evades the bricks tossed by Ignatz. The word play in the 2-2 is quite delicious and super corny at the same time.
Here’s Myrtle (“Right Around Home”) by Dudley Fisher from 6-13 to 6-19-1949. My favorite strip is the 6-18, the mix-up in cutlery reminds me of a children’s book and a Warner Bros. Cartoon. Hyacinth the Cat makes two appearances in the 6-19 Sunday page and has a line of dialog as well.
Here’s Felix from 9-11 to 9-17-1933, drawn by Otto Messmer. Lots of labor/depression gags this time, my favorite is the 9-16 , last panel. Otto could draw cats in myriad designs, all funny. The Sunday page is quite ambitious, as Felix and Danny accidentally start Papa’s roadster and tear up the countryside with it. The city and the rural countryside are quite close together in Danny’s world. I like the long panel when the police show up to interrogate a shocked Papa Dooit.
Kurt’s Corner
My brother’s collection of Lost Horizon stills included this one of Frank Capra, Jane Wyatt, possibly his assistant director and a newborn colt. The lamasery set is in the background. I love the ill assorted stone walkway pieces in the foreground, which fit in perfectly with the art deco Lamasery building.
My brother loved the writings of James Hilton and discovered his columns from the Irish Independent in 1939. This one describes his stay at the Furnace Creek Inn, built in 1927, 66 rooms. He talks about the little airport near the Inn, and paints a word picture of what a weird place Death Valley was before it became a National Monument. I wonder if Mr. Hilton every met up with Death Valley Scotty?
Here’s an interesting article written by James Hilton earlier in 1939, which really throws a rose to the Motion Picture Industry, in it’s finest year. He even relates an opinion of one of the readers of his book “Lost Horizon”, claiming that “…it left out a lot that was in the film…”. Hilton makes a pitch for Hollywood to develop it’s own stable of writers to create original novels for the screen, effectively putting authors like himself out of business!

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