Month: April 2022
Felix Hits A Milestone
Here’s Felix from 12-18 to 12-31-1933. Felix closes out the year by trying to serve out his time as the millionaire’s mascot. Felix misses Danny and wants to spend Christmas with him, so he tries a lot of tricks to mess up the millionaire’s office so he’ll get thrown out, but nothing works. Then in the 12-29 strip, Felix blows the millionaire’s gold bonds out the office window by turning on a fan accidentally. Danny and his brother are in their back yard cleaning up when they notice the gold bonds have landed right in front of them. If you want to read the rest of the story, find my blog post from 10/1/2013 in the archives, where you will find the Felix strips from 1934. This post concludes the Felix strip from 1933 which I started posting on 3/11/2016. It took SIX years to post the 1933s! Now as before, Felix will magically project BACK IN TIME to 1/1/1932! Look for that in an upcoming post. Don’t forget to right-click the images for the menu which will enable you to open the strips in a new window. There you can blow them up larger so you can read them more easily. Let me say “Thanks” , good readers, for staying with the old Catblog for all these years. Mark
Jimmie’s Sax-o-telephone
Here’s “Now Listen, Mabel” from 9-25 to 10-4-1919. Starting in the 9-29 strip, Jimmie Doozinberry’s pal butts in on Jimmie’s harmonica serenade over the telephone to Mabel. The office rival uses a saxophone, probably a C-Melody Saxophone, which was in use in the 19-teens and 19-twenties in parlors and small ragtime jazz bands. Frankie Trumbauer, a C-Melody saxophonist and friend of Bix Beiderbecke in the twenties, did some great jazz recordings with the saxophone. It’s very funny in the 10-3, that Mabel prefers the yowling of two pre-Krazy cats to the sound of Jimmie’s sax. It’s interesting that the saxophone was invented by Adolphe Sax in 1842, and is really a brass instrument, like a cornet, with a clarinet mouth piece on it. The saxophone is louder that most other woodwinds, hence it’s versatility used in symphony orchestras and jazz bands. The instrument in the last panel of the 9-26 is a Barrel Organ. That little handle was turned, and a wooden “roll”, similar to a player-piano roll, would rub up against the keys and valves, producing a rather screechy melodic sound. The Barrel Organ dated to 1854, and the gag here is that Mabel and party are expecting Jimmie to show up with a traditional instrument, not a mechanical one. I love Garge’s layout in the 9-26 as well, one long panel in the middle of the group having a picnic, and the first and third panels laid on top of the sartorial scene. I love the design of the office telephone, The mouthpiece has an unusual white cylindrical shape, quite unlike the standard “candlestick” telephone of the era. Dial phones first came in to use in December, 1919, so Jimmie’s office phone would have been operator-assisted dialing.
I hope you enjoy these strips, readers. To enlarge them to full screen, just right-click your mouse on the image, and you should see a “Open in New Window” item in the menu list. Click on that, and you should see the strips in a new widow, much larger. Enjoy, Mark
Felix Goes Back (to 1932)
April 13, 2022
Felix the Cat
2 Comments
Mark
As promised, here are the Felix strips from the first two weeks of January, 1932. The model of Felix used in these comics has to be one of my favorite cat designs. His fingers are square, his knees are pointy, his torso looks like a miniature bowling pin, and his ears go high up off his head and end in points. I love how Otto shows the bottom of Felix’s feet and the Sleuth Hound’s feet as they walk along in the first panel of the 1-15. If you animated the foot coming forward almost parallel to the ground, the character would stumble or trip over his own shoes (see also the burglar in the second panel of the 1-5). The main story here really starts in the 1-7, as a funny old guy complains to the police captain that his mule is “gone”. Felix decides to train the “Official Police Dog” he met in the 1-5 to become a detective by taking up the mule case. Felix and the Hound keep coming up empty, until they see the imprints of the mule’s shoes on the rear end of a black mule wrangler. We’ll see what happens to Felix in the next exciting chapter in the Adventures of Felix The Cat!
Remember to right-click on the images until you see a menu of instructions. Click on the line saying “Open Image in a New Tab”. When you see that, click on the new tab at the top of your screen. You will then see the image in a new screen with black on both sides of it. Then enlarge the image by clicking on it, or hitting plus or minus on your keyboard. Can you figure that out?