Author: Mark
Ridin’ Fer Sedona!
 Folks, “Some Other Cat” has been accepted into the Sedona International Film Festival (www.sedonafilmfestival.org )! We’re screening as the accompanying short to the feature “Garibaldi’s Lovers” at the Harkins 2 Cinema on Monday, Feb. 24th at 12:10 PM and on Thursday, Feb. 27th with the same feature at 9 PM. We seem to be one of the few animated shorts at the Festival, maybe they liked the SouthWest backgrounds in the short. So head out there if you are so inclined.
 Krazy is from 3-23 to 3-28-1942, a whole week of Goldfish puns! I like the Kat Langwitch in the 3-24, “IMMMMPOSTA!”
 Myrtle is from 12-14 to 12-21-1947, Sunday included with a drunken and wayward Bingo and Junior out on a spree!
 Felix is from 3-12 to 3-18-1934, he’s with the starving artist this week. Felix is fooled by a very realistic bulldog painting, and he restores the arms to a statue of the Venus de Milo (favorite statue of many cartoonists). In the Sunday, Felix gets blown off the planet Jupiter by the March wind and starts travelling through the galaxy.
 Here’s the Yogi Sunday comics from March of 1964, all the work of one of my favorite cartoonists, Harvey Eisenberg! That flying squirrel in the 3-8 has been in the Yogi pages before, he’s “Harman-Ising” cute! The “Gambling Yogi” story is appealing in the 3-22, provided you’ve never lost at the gaming tables in Vegas! Seems like Mr. Ranger is mighty forgiving of Yogi as long as he’s winning! I’m keeping this post rather short and sweet this time, as we will be busy with Sedona for the next little while. See you soon!
Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline!
 For the first time in Catblog’s history, this post is going to be a “political” commentary, so if you don’t like to be exposed to progressive thinking, just skip to the comics.
I participated in a demonstration last Thursday night to raise awareness of the impending construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. This pipeline is being financed by a coalition including many Chinese oil companies and the billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, to extract the world’s dirtiest crude: tar sands oil, in Alberta Canada and transport the oil in a pipeline built across the United States all the way to Corpus Christi Texas! Once there, the oil will be refined in a heavy-duty plant owned by the Koch Brothers and exported to China and other consumer countries around the world. The Koch’s refinery is uniquely positioned to reap the benefits from Keystone XL, since their Corpus Christi outfit is one of the few that can refine such heavy tar sands crude. We are being told that the tar sands oil will make the U.S. less dependent on imported oil, but the U.S. will get almost no benefit from this pipline, as the oil is not really being refined for domestic use, but for export. If approved, the Kochs, Canada and the Chinese Oil companies will be swimming in profits from this dangerous project.
How will this new fossil fuel development affect the World’s climate? Scientists have stated that if this pipeline is built and the tar sands oil is extracted on the scale envisioned, it’s “game over” for the climate, and probably for human life on Earth. With this much at stake, it’s saddening that our Clear Channel dominated media would rather feature stories about Miley Cirus and Kim Kardashian than the Keystone pipeline! During our demonstration against the pipeline, a gentleman told me that he thought that President Obama will eventually approve the pipeline due to the irresistible financial pressure of the oil interests. A lady informed me that the pipeline has already completed construction through Texas and Oklahoma, and is just waiting for the Government green light to connect to Alberta. I can’t find any confirmation of this rumor on the Internet, so if it’s true, that certainly demonstrates the Oil Industry’s arrogant certainty that Keystone XL will be approved! So it’s time to put aside your iPads readers, and take to the streets!
I went to nearby Eagle Rock on the corner of Eagle Rock and Colorado Blvds. on February 6th and met a lot of good people including many ladies from nearby Occidental college. It’s nice to see young people aware of an issue bigger than a cel phone screen! I grabbed a candle and a picket sign and waved and yelled “Stop Keystone” at the traffic passing by. Some motorists made obscene gestures, but many honked their horns in sympathy against Keystone, especially the bus drivers and riders. Several buses stopped in front of us and everyone on board was all smiles; of course most city buses here are powered by Natural Gas, which has it’s own issues, namely fracking, but is cleaner than tar sands oil. The Keystone pipeline would be prone to leaks due to the toxic corrosive nature of tar sands oil, threatening ground water tables and slashing through sensitive wildlife habitat.
Ninety minutes of sign wiggling won’t be enough to stop the pipeline or the Kochs, but it’s a start! This Thursday, 2-13-2014, President Obama will be meeting with Governor Brown and the Mayor at the Los Angeles City Hall at 200 N. Spring St., L.A. 90012, to discuss Climate and energy issues. There will be a demonstration there organized by Credo, NRDC, The Sierra Club and more to keep awareness of the poisonous Keystone pipeline before the President and State Officials. If you can put down your iPads for a morning and be at the L.A. City Hall at 11 AM, you may help to extend the life of the Planet so that you may eventually return to your iPads and safely read comics! Be there and Help Yourselves! Look for Keystone XL demonstrations near to where you live, and if you can’t find one, ORGANIZE one! End of lecture for this post.
 Here’s Krazy, from 3-16 to 3-21-1942, 3-18 is missing, anyone have it? It features a Gopher character in the first two, then features Krazy as a baker of flying flapjacks and brick-hard loaves of bread in the 3-19 to 3-21 episodes. I love the masterful pen shading in the last panels of the 3-20 and 3-21 strips, giving us the feeling of the Coconino desert at dusk.
 Felix is from 3-5 to 3-11-1934 this outing, Felix is again in trouble on account of food. He listens to the radio in the 3-5 and 3-6 strips, and consequently can’t hear the dinner bell. In the 3-8 strip, Felix gallantly sacrifices his home with the Dooits, so that he can forage for his own food and be less of a burden on the family. The 3-9 is missing, can anyone supply it? (Our friend Yowp has supplied the missing daily, we now can see Felix’s first meeting with the artist! Thanks from the Cat to the Dog!) In the 3-10, Felix picks out a starving artist to live with and feeds the artist by means of a tube of paint. The Sunday still has Felix trapped on the Moon with Jupiter Pluvius and the March Wind collaborating on Climate Change. I love the long continuities that were the norm in newspaper comics in the 1920s and 1930s.
 Myrtle, from 12-7 to 12-13-1947, features a beautiful Sunday page, with Dudley Fisher’s unique bird’s eye view format, and some energetic dailies, with Myrtle finding both braids on the left side of her head in the 11-8. Snoggons kisses Myrtle in the 11-10, causing her parents to worry about romance dawning on the little tomboy, I love Fisher’s mid-air pose of Myrtle in this one. The 12-13 has a funny concluding panel as Myrtle tells Freddie how much a lady’s hat really costs, and he beats such a hasty exit that the chair and his daughter both flip over backwards! Until next time readers, study about the Keystone pipeline, you will be quizzed!
Scout In Her New Home
 A reconnaissance photo of Little Scout in her new house in an undisclosed location in Los Angeles County. I’ll bet she’s looking for her leaves, but there’s naught but palm fronds in front of her. She’s obviously getting comfortable with her new place, so that’s what counts.
 Krazy from 3-9 to 3-14-1942 is missing the 3-10 strip, anybody have it? The 3-9, 11 and 12 strips are looking forward to Crockett Johnson’s “Harold and the Purple Crayon” books, as Ignatz and Offissa Pupp draw trees and a rock on the paper in front of them and then hide behind them. Ignatz even draws himself in the 3-12 and his drawing is so lifelike it fools Offissa Pupp. The ability to simulate real trees, mice and rocks simply by drawing them on the paper you live in is rife with possibilities. I’ll bet the 3-10 strip was part of this dream-like continuity.
 In Felix, from 2-26 to 3-4-1934, Felix helps the reformed burglar to escape the Dooit house by taking the blame for him. Felix is put out of the house in the 3-3, just look at the sympathetic pose on him in the second panel, Chaplin’s influence on Messmer is very much in evidence. The burglar does Felix a good turn by letting him back in the house, such is the redemptive power of kids remembering you in their prayers! The Sunday has Felix still visiting the home of Jupiter Pluvius and creating havoc with the weather by falling asleep on the weather control buttons! Felix, wake up!
 Myrtle is here, from 11-30 to 12-6-1947. I love the 12-2 as Myrtle’s Mom bounces on the bed in defiance of her own orders to Myrtle; now we know why Myrtle is such an irrepressible tomboy, she inherited the tendency from Mom! Dudley Fisher has fun with distorting his drawings of Myrtle and Sampson as they try on Freddie’s glasses in the 12-4, “no wonder he doesn’t wear them”.
 The Yogi Bear Sunday pages by Harvey Eisenberg continue, this time from February, 1964. I love the gag in the 2-16, as the Ranger and Yogi’s snow boot buckles hook together. In this same strip we learn that Ranger Smith’s first name is Frank! There could be an insider gag here, as Frank Smith the animator was a very popular guy in the 1960s L.A. animation scene. I wonder if they still make rubber snow boots with the metal clasps anymore, I still have a pair. The guinea pigs in the 2-23 are typical Eisenberg cute little animals, sweat drops and all. In the 2-2 we get to meet the Ranger’s wife and little son, I don’t remember any TV cartoons that featured the Ranger’s home life. Remember to check Yowp’s blog at http://yowpyowp.blogspot.com/ for the half-page versions of these Yogi Sundays in black and white with his informed and informative commentary. Comically yours, Mark.
Farewell Scout!
 Scout seems to have gone over pretty well with you readers, so here she is once more. Scout looks out of the sliding glass doors as she waits for me to play leaf hockey with her. I love the friendly half closed eyes, she’s relaxed and comfortable with the routine. That’s a typical sycamore leaf in the foreground, Scout loves big leaves! 
 Here in marked contrast to the pose above, is Scout about to move to her new house! She doesn’t look too happy here. I held her against her will as her caregiver prepared the dreaded CAT CARRIER for transport. Poor little Scout struggled and kicked me with her back feet, but didn’t scratch or bite as she tried to escape. Cats don’t like travel, even in the most comfortable of cat carriers. I really miss my friend, but, the happy thing is, she’s alive, and will have a wonderful happy home with folks who love her. Don’t you wish all cats could have such a bright future ahead of them?
 Here’s a whole week’s worth of Krazy strips that have minstrelsy in them. In other words, Ignatz in black face. These are from 3-2 to 3-7-1942. The black mice start in the 3-4 daily, and the dialect that Ignatz speaks is spot-on, or should I say soot-on. Offissa Pupp finally has had enough in the 3-7 and tries to wash Ignatz’s face, only to discover an authentic black mouse named “Curfew”. His wife Ambrosia, lets Pupp have it with a broom and he “leloose”‘s Curfew. Note that the dialect becomes a lot more Joel Chandler Harris in the 3-7, when Ignatz speaks with a Southern black accent in the earlier strips, the wording is a little simpler. Herriman was of mixed heritage himself, but doesn’t shrink from the occasional black stereotype in his comics, that was the humor of Krazy Kat’s time.
 In Felix from 2-19 to 2-25-1934, Danny’s home is invaded by a burglar pretending to be Santa Claus. In “Bedtime Worries”, an Our Gang comedy of the early 1930’s, a burglar tried to use the same ruse to fool Spanky. Danny and his brother are easily fooled by the burglar’s friendly demeanor, but Felix remains skeptical. In the Sunday, Felix still controls the weather from the planet Jupiter, freezing a tramp who is after Danny. I love the large expressive hands and fingers that Messmer puts on his human characters, the burglar in the 2/22 is especially interesting. Messmer draws many of his characters bodies as big barrel shapes, and the heads as simple ovals or bean shapes. He was an early practitioner of creating cartoon characters based on round, friendly forms.
 Here’s Myrtle from 11-23 to 11-29-1947. In the 11-24, note how Dudley Fisher has a squirrel bopping Myrtle with a walnut. If this didn’t influence the nut boppin’ squirrels in “Mutts”, it should have. The 11-27 strip was scanned from my tear-sheet, because the strip was missing from Newspaper Archive. It’s a clearer looking image, but lacks the lower third of the drawing. I hope you enjoy all the comics!Â
Scout says “Happy Mew Year!”
Dear Readers, this is my wonderful neighbor’s granddaughter’s cat. Her name is Scout, and she wants to wish you the happiest of Mew Year’s. She has about the sweetest face you could ever look at, and we love to play games together. I sweep my neighbor’s patio for her a few mornings a week, and little Scout likes to watch me out of the sliding glass doors. At first she seemed fascinated by the broom I sweep with, but now I’ve found out that she really loves to watch big sycamore leaves floating down in front of her face. The pose above is Scout watching a leaf I’ve suspended just out of camera range. If ever you’re feeling blue or out of sorts in the Mew Year, just remember this sweet kitty face and brighten up!
 Here’s another friendly kitty face, Felix, from 2-12 to 2-18-1934. Felix shares a home with Danny and Chip Dooit and their folks. I like the 2-14 gag as Chip tries to find the CWA (Civil Works Administation) and the NRA (National Recovery Administration), two of President Roosevelt’s Depression era government agencies, on the radio! Chip should try the fireside chats!  I like the expression Danny uses as he fills up Felix’s glass in the 2-16: “Y’can’t walk on one leg, y’know-“, it sounds like a saying that bartenders used to use to get their customers to buy more poison. In the 2-17, suspicious-looking characters are on the loose, so “Thrills, Pathos, Humor and Suspense Start Next Week”! The Sunday page has Felix trapped on the planet Jupiter, 300,000,000 miles away from Danny and Chip and OMIGOSH a Bear! He scares away the bruin with some of Jupiter Pluvius’s weather making machines.
 Krazy, from 2-23 to 2-28-1942, continues the “Home is Jail” theme started in last week’s strips. Pupp is increasingly hot under the collar as Ignatz stubbornly refuses to leave the Jail, calling it home and even ordering fresh bricks delivered to his cell by Kolin Kelly. At last in the 2-28, Offissa Pupp figures out that he can “extradite” Ignatz back to his home under the custody of Magnolia and the kids, and keep him there as if he was in Jail.
 Myrtle by Dudley Fisher is from 11-16 to 11-22-1947 this time. One of the main threads this week is that Myrtle and Sampson are maturing physically. Fisher spins three days of gags out of Sampson’s voice changing, and in the 11-20, Myrtle puts on a pair of her Mom’s high heels and does some pageant walking in front of Sampson. Bingo adds doorbell-ringing to his bag of tricks in the 11-21, as he lures Freddie out of the easy chair by hitting the button from outside the front door. Bingo also is good at opening doors and going through bureau drawers as we’ve seen in previous weeks.
 Here’s the January 1964 Yogi Bear Sunday pages, 1/3rd page versions. The first two use essentially the same idea, Yogi freezing objects to keep the kids entertained, winter gags. The 1-19 strip is promoting Yogi’s feature cartoon; “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear” by showing a Hollywood premiere for the film at the Grauman’s Chinese theater. You’ll have to look at the strip to see where they put Yogi’s foot prints, just click the thumbnail to enlarge. You can really see Harvey Eisenberg’s layout and lettering in the 1-26, as the school kids whomp the easy going bruin with snow balls. I love the twisted left leg on Yogi in the fourth panel, it gives the impression of a really twisted pose without getting into realistic anatomy, just an overall pleasing shape to the bear’s body. If you want to see the 1/2 page versions of these strips in black and white next year, just check in at Yowp’s blog ( www.yowpyowp.blogspot.com ) from time to time and he will post them.
I’m so happy that more of you readers are leaving comments. I don’t get on to social media very much, so this is my way of finding out what you are interested in, so don’t hesitate to write something, all three of you! Again, the best of Mew Years to all you cats, we’ll catch you on the flip side of midnight!
Help Yourself to Last of the Christmas Pan!
Smee blows up real good in the next to the last strip in the 4 week continuity, Peter Pan’s Christmas Story, originally published 12-19 to 12-24-1960, written by Frank Reilly and Drawn and Inked by Manuel Gonzales. I hope all my readers have just as delightful a Christmas as Santa, Peter Pan and Walt Disney wished you 53 years ago!
 Felix ran originally from 2-5 to 2-11-1934. Felix gets one of his rare “Thank You”s in the 2-5, as Danny’s Mom proffers him a huge feed. There are gags about streamline car chassis, silly goats, little pups with Mickey Mouse ears and how not to mess up a newly painted floor. The Sunday page really gets cosmic as Felix’s balloon floats higher and higher, until he is hit by a comet and ricochets to Jupiter! I wonder if the 1938 Paul Terry cartoon, “Just Ask Jupiter” may have been inspired by this Felix page?
 Krazy Kat is from 2-16 to 2-21-1942, and has some solid “hoomerous kontinooittee” throughout the week. Ignatz has been thrown in Jail so often that he thinks of it as home, much to Pupp’s disgust. Not even a visit from the Kounty Tax Collector can force the “mice” out, Ig’s wife sets up “micekeeping” and Offissa Pupp gets thrown out on his back in the 2-21. Garge’s art on the 2-21 is especially beautiful, I love panel 3, as Krazy looks around the corner of the building, and panel 4 looks like it was one of Herriman’s famous “scratched out” originals, in which he used the Bristol board like scratch board to indicate the speed lines as Ig throws Pupp down the path. Folks, I hope I’ll be back for a New Year’s post, until then, stay out of the Egg Nog! Have a hot Tom and Jerry instead.
More Christmas Pan
Here’s the next two weeks of the Peter Pan’s Christmas Story strip, which ran 11-28 to 12-24-1960. It was written by Frank Reilly (who became manager of the Disney comic strip department) and drawn by Manuel Gonzales who did the second to the 24th strip. Floyd Gottfredson did the first one (see the last post). From 1938 to 1981, Manuel Gonzales pencilled and/or inked the Mickey Mouse Sunday page, alternating with Gottfredson for the first few years. He went by the nickname “Gonzy” in the comic strip department. Peter Pan’s Christmas Story was the first of 10 Disney Christmas daily strips. A few of the other story lines were: Pinocchio’s Christmas Story (#2, 1961, Gonzales inked, Chuck Fuson pencilled), The Three Little Pigs Christmas Story (# 4, 1963, Gottfredson pencilled and inked), Cinderella’s Christmas Party (#5, 1964, Gottfredson pencilled, Gonzales inked), Bambi’s Christmas Adventure (#6, 1965, Guillermo Cardoso and Gottfredson, pencilled and inked), Santa Claus in Never Land (#9, 1968, Cliff Nordberg pencilled, Gonzales inked) and A Quest For Christmas (#10, 1969, James Swain pencilled, Gonzales inked). I don’t know #3, 7 or 8’s titles, nor whether the Christmas strip continued after 1969. I miss the days of annual Christmas daily stories, if you go over to the Stripper’s Guide page, http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/ Allan is running an unusual Christmas strip from 1937, called “Santa Claus and Company”, drawn by Royal King Cole and distributed by King Features Syndicate, who also distributed the Disney Christmas Strips.
 Here’s the Myrtle strip from 11-9 to 11-15-1947. I love the 11-12 strip which refers to post-war food shortages, as Bingo chases a rabbit for a between-meals snack; “Wipe that smile off your face, Kid–this ain’t no dress rehearsal!” There’s something very theatrical about that line.
Very soon, we’ll have the fourth week of the first Disney Christmas Daily Strip right here! The Cats will return as well, they are out Christmas shopping this time.
Christmas Strips and Other Pleasures
 Do you feel like Captain Hook this time of year? Well, to bolster your Holiday spirit, here’s the first week’s worth of the Disney Christmas strip from 1960:
 Sorry I don’t have the exact dates, but the Post-Dispatch deleted them. I always thought that Mr. Smee and Doc of the seven dwarfs had a strong resemblance facially, and here the comic strip artists make a story point out of it. I have no idea who drew these, but they are not bad. I’ll try to post the rest of the story before Christmas, it has three more weeks to go.
 
 Krazy, this time from 2-9 to 2-14-1942, features the Kat’s Kuriosity for the whole week. I love Offissa Pupp’s reaction (in the 2-14)  to Krazy’s admission that Ignatz’s square package contained a brick!
 Felix finally beats the nasty mice who played havoc with the Christmas toys in the strips from 1-29 to 2-4-1934, and succeeds in getting Danny’s toy plane restored to him. In the Sunday, Felix’s balloon ascension rises close to the Sun. Felix roasts a passing bird, but the Sun’s heat burns it to a cinder.
 In Myrtle this time, from 11-2 to to 11-8-1947, there is no real continuity. Myrtle experiments with making her skirt longer in the 11-5, but it restricts her football kick, so she shortens it up again. Myrtle does an extremely cartoony rise in the air in the 11-8, as she anticipates a raise in allowance from her Pop. I’ve included the Sunday from 11-2 this time. It features the great 3/4 downshot layout that Dudley Fisher did so well. It spreads out the storytelling, and you can read the dialog in the large panels in any order you want and it still makes sense. I love the back of the garage busting out in the second panel.
Seems my big mouth has got me in a lot of hot water over at Cartoon Research. I wrote a review of the new Mouse short, “Get A Horse!” that picked a few design nits, and managed to annoy a few folks. Now I’m an official Disney naysayer and someone is using the negative parts of my review to support yet more negative arguments! If you read the review, it’s really not that much of a slam. I really like the cartoon in a lot of ways, not just whole hog. That’s the trouble with criticism on the Internet, it’s repeated by other posters and blown up all out of proportion. I also made a comment on Animation Scoop about President Obama’s visit to Dreamworks. I likened the quick demo of the CG animation process that Dreamworks showed to Obama, to a digest tooled for an ADD person. I’ll never forget when I visited the Disney Studio in 1963, a gentleman named Bob Youngquist spent nearly 45 minutes showing me how he drew a wolf character from “The Sword In The Stone”, and then ran the scene on his Moviola for me! I was really impressed with Mr. Youngquist’s dedication to his painstaking craft, and his patience with a 15 year old cartoon fan. I was just wondering aloud if President Obama was similarly impressed with the painstaking efforts of the Dreamworks CG animators, or if they just made it look like a three-ring circus with actors posing for the Mo-Cap. For that comment, I was labelled a Nazi by an Internet troll. Seems I insulted persons with ADD syndrome, for that I apologize as well. I ain’t no stinkin’ Nazi, and I probably won’t do much opining on the ‘Net for the forseeable future. See you very soon.
Your Comics Page Nov. 28 2013
 Here’s Krazy, 2-2 through 2-7-1942. This week’s strips remind me of Pogo’s declaration: “It hard to figure the angles on a worm child” in his very first daily strip. Garge does 4 out of 6 all about worms and eels, with appropriate word play, especially in the 2-7. The 2-2 had to be cut from a San Antonio Light, so it is not as good quality as the others.
 Felix from 1-22 to 1-28-1934 continues the epic battle for possession of the cheese between Felix and three determined mice. In the 1-23, the mice tie Felix’s tail up through a hole in the floor. In the Animated Antic cartoon; “Pop and Mom in Wild Oysters”, Charley Bowers built almost an entire stop-motion cartoon around the premise of a cat’s tail being tied up in a knot and keeping the hapless animal prisoner; showing a cat and dog struggling to free their tails from the floor boards. Look for this cartoon on You Tube; the mice, Pop and Mom, look a lot like the mice that Otto is using here. The mice escape from Felix with the cheese in a toy airplane in the 1-27. The Sunday page continues Felix’s balloon ascension. This time Danny gets into the act and uses his model airplane to send a bottle of milk to starving Felix. I guess the mice must have sent the plane back to Danny after they escaped!
 Myrtle is from 10-27 to 11-1-1947, and has some good gags about Halloween. In the 10-29, Myrtle puts on a false face that’s a near perfect likeness of Sampson, but he’s clueless about the resemblance. In the 10-30, Bingo dons Myrtle’s discarded clothes and fools Sampson (gosh, he’s easy to fool), into thinking he’s going to the masquerade party with the real Myrtle. Remember to cherish your dumb characters folks, if you’re going to write comedy, they come in handy.
 There are five Yogi Sundays for December of 1963, the first one is a promo for “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear”, Hanna-Barbera’s first theatrical feature cartoon, with their Clark Gable of the early 1960s, Yogi. If you look at the last panel, the Bear has gone Hollywood all the way. The 12-19 gag is an old one, but I like the Ranger’s attitude toward the “pump handle” in the last panel. All the art on these are by Harvey Eisenberg. I didn’t know who Harvey was when I clipped these strips in 1963, but I knew his style from the Dell Tom and Jerry comic books I bought at the Old Orchard Phamacy in Webster Groves, Mo. every month. He really made the early H-B characters look good and streamlined, considering they were designed to be broken into pieces, to make animating them more “planned”. Remember to visit Yowp’s blog from time to time to see these Yogi Bear pages at half-page size in black and white with appropriate comments: http://yowpyowp.blogspot.com/ .
     Hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving. “Some Other Cat” did not make it to the Short List at the Motion Picture Academy shorts derby this year. Still, I give thanks that it is with us and that people will eventually be able to see it for years to come.
All Went Well in St. Louis and the CTN Expo!
 I’ve been derelict in posting to the old Catblog, much to my disadvantage. Some Other Cat played my home town, St. Louis, Mo. in the St. Louis International Film Festival last Friday, Nov. 15th. My brother was in attendance, and braved a journey to the Tivoli theater in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods to see Itza on the big screen. He reports that Itza drew a few laughs with his patented pogo stick shtick. At the very same time, I was doing a three-day stand at the annual CTN Expo, brainchild of the Matriarch of Contemporary Animation, Tina Price! Jerry Beck was kind enough to put up with Itza’s constant yowling at his Cartoon Research table, and assisted in peddling cels from the production to many fine people. Quite a few friends and former employers came by, Raoul Garcia, Will Finn, Don Hahn, Steve Segal, Wilbert Plainarr, Darrell Van Citters, Craig Clark, Steve Stanchfield and more! It’s especially gratifying when people who have never seen Itza before warm up to him and buy a cel. A professor at Van Arts School in Vancouver, B.C., remarked as he watched Some Other Cat on the little DVD player we keep on the table, “I can feel the emotion in it”. Just the quality that I tried to put in to the short, not only comedy, but feeling. Just that one comment made the whole weekend for me. A little girl from Thailand hung out at the table for quite a while, just touching the cels and remarking about how she could feel the texture of the ink lines. She took several photos of them with her iphone camera while I looked at scans of her beautiful water color paintings. The CTN Expo was absolutely packed this year. It’s grown so large that Jerry and I were under a big top tent, out in the parking lot. You can see what the table looked like in the upstairs photo, including Jerry’s new “The Spongebob Squarepants Experience” book, with 20, count ’em, 20 activity inserts! He sold all the copies he brought to the convention. Probably next year it’ll be in a Las Vegas convention center, this thing has grown almost as big as the San Diego Comic-Con in only 5 years. “Kids” with portfolios waited in very long lines to let the pros, such as Disney, get a glimpse at their masterpieces. Thanks to computers, and modern image duplication, almost every sample case looks professional, so it’s tougher to make an impression. Most everyone has an ipad with them or a laptop, so you can instantly see what their animation looks like. It seems as many women as men are looking for animation jobs, and even little kids are making their own Internet cartoons to be seen on You Tube. Hope springs eternal, and it is inspiring, but the reality is, there are very few jobs available in what’s left of the “cartoon” business. Keep pluggin’ kids!
 Here’s Krazy Kat from 1-16 to 1-31-1942. Offissa Pupp pits his “subtle noodle” against Ignatz’s “puny mind” in a week’s worth of continuity. Offissa Pupp has a station wagon which doubles as a paddy wagon, and he loves to have attractive goils like Mimi the French poodle riding in it. 1-16 to 1-28 deal with Mimi’s sense of outrage as it dawns on her that she is gracing a Police vehicle, and Ignatz is treated as a “fifth wheel”. Ignatz gets back at Pupp with a box of thumb tacks and hobnail boots in the 1-30 and 1-31 strips. I love Garge’s drawings of the Station wagon; the front of it resembles a locomotive boiler.
 Dudley Fisher’s Myrtle is from 10-20 to 10-25-1947 this time around. I love the pragmatism of Myrtle as she finds that she has unjustly accused Sampson of breaking her slingshot, and needles him into doing her arithmetic problems as punishment. Even though she finds out that her Mom broke her slingshot in the vaccum cleaner, Myrtle decides to let Sampson finish her homework for her just the same. (10-25 strip) The slingshot also comes in handy in the 10-20, as Freddie accidentally surprises Myrtle with the slingshot drawn and Myrtle retreats to the Park, convinced that her Dad is going to snap her with her own weapon.
 Felix is from 1-15 to 1-21-1934 this time. Those rotten mice try to get away with a hunk of Swiss in Danny’s toy train and Felix can’t stop them. When the mice run Felix’s blockade in a toy tank, Felix comes after them with a can opener! In the Sunday, Felix continues his balloon ascension and nearly starves, but manages to hook a Sea Bass with his anchor and roast it over a candle. Feast your eyes on the magical cartoon drawing of Otto Messmer, Felix constantly changes appearance year to year, but always remains himself. My friend Will Finn who has his own blog called “Small Room”, http://willfinn.blogspot.com/told me that he really enjoys the old comics I post here, so Will, this one’s for you!
Some Other Cat was Enjoyed by the N.Y. Film Festival Audience!
Here’s a very positive review by Anne-Katrin Titze:
It’s The Cat, and Some Other Cat
 |
|
Mark Kausler’s It’s The Cat |
One of the last hand-drawn animated cartoons, Mark Kausler and Greg Ford’s It’s The Cat from 2004 is set to the tune of It’s The Cat by Gus Kahn and Isham Jones. The slightly unhinged protagonist cat goes for a stroll, makes a wooden plank carousel on a dog’s head and flies off, taking a bite out of the moon. Can a cat exchange faces with the moon? Why not! When three blind mice dance by with their canes, you might remember for a second why you started loving movies in the first place.Some Other Cat, the more recent sequel from 2012, kisses the photo of his beloved, picks up some cacti in the desert and off he goes to Pearly’s house to pay her a visit, but – oh, no – there is someone else with her! If these cats and their tempo don’t lift your spirits to the sun and the moon, nothing will.
Greg Ford, who attended the screening was slightly puzzled at the placement of his films together with The Chase. Festival chair Kent Jones told me in our conversation before the festival that he didn’t want the cats to get lost in the short film programme, “it seemed like a good place to do it, because The Chase is kind of a crazy film”.
  Some Other Cat played at the Santa Fe International Film Festival last week, I hope the people enjoyed it and got some laughs. I couldn’t be there, had some priority commitments. I thought of Itza’s cartoon showing in that little theater in Santa Fe, it’s an ideal place for a cartoon set in the SouthWest to play.
 Here’s Krazy from 1-19 to 1-24-1942. It’s all about Offissa Pupp’s new police car. The garage is featured all week, but we only see the car in the Saturday episode. Some of Garge’s masterful scratching technique is apparent in the 1-21 and 1-22 strips, as Pupp’s car zips in and out of the garage. The originals were probably torn to shreds!
 It’s a full week of Myrtle, from 10-13 to 10-19, with the Sunday page! Dudley Fisher was most famous for his “Right Around Home” Sundays, with their panoramic approach to comics layout. I really like the dailies, too, because they bring the characters of the strip to center stage. I especially like the 10-17, with Myrtle and Sampson coming under the withering criticism of the townsfolk for the way they pull each other in their Radio Flyer, until they decide to just take the dogs for a ride. The 10-18 draws upon Myrtle’s superior strength as Sampson and a friend call upon her to blow up their football.
 Felix is from 1-8 to 1-14-1934 this time. The action is similar to his troubles with Moocher Mouse, as he battles a whole gang of mice around the Christmas Tree. Felix comes off second best to the little rats every time. I love the kiddee phonograph gag in the 1-12, since I had a couple of miniature phonographs when I was a kid that I played for about 5 hours a day. The Sunday page starts a long continuity, as Felix takes off in a balloon basket to hunt geese. The Funny Films topper features great drawings of not only Felix’s face, but Sammy Johnsin from the Billy Marriner strip makes a guest appearance as well!
 The Yogi Bear Sundays from November, 1963 as drawn by Harvey Eisenberg grace our blog this time. If you want to see the full length strips in black and white, make sure you keep in touch with Yowp’s blog at www.yowpyowp.blogspot.com , he’ll have them up very soon. The 11-24 Yogi was nearly lost in the collection, but I found it on the back of a Pogo page I clipped back in the day. The 11-3 is a real Kennedy era space ship gag, the 11-10 still uses the military style rankings of the forest Rangers as a basis for the gag and the 11-17 has a cast of hundreds, all fat folks as Mr. Eisenberg saw them; the last panel must have taken quite a while to draw.
Sorry I’ve been absent from the Catblog for such a long time, life is very full, lots to do, and unfortunately, the Catblog pays not a penny for the time I spend on it, which is not a lot. Not that I’m complaining, just keep an eye on Yowp’s blog (I use Yowp’s links nearly everyday to check on great animation and comics sites) or your RSS reader for our next episode!
Our Cat Cartoons play at the New York Film Festival Oct. 9th, 2013!
 
If ya snooze, ya looze! So git ye over to the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL on Oct. 9th! At 8:30 PM at the Francesca Beale Theater of Lincoln Center, :”It’s ‘The Cat'” and “Some Other Cat” will be playing with Arthur Ripley’s 1946 Noir Classic, “The Chase”, starring Bob Cummings, Steve Cochran, Michele Morgan and Peter Lorre! The whole program is in glorious DCP format, with a new restoration of “The Chase” from elements found in Europe. Read more about it: http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2013/series/nyff51-revivals . “It’s ‘The Cat'” has been newly scanned from the camera negative, you’ve never seen it look more crisp and clear, and the transfer of “Some Other Cat” is really beautiful, so, I repeat, get your cats together and scat over to the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL!! These shorts are together again, for the FIRST TIME!
Myrtle this time is from 10-6 to 10-11-1947. My favorites are the 10-9 strip and the 10-11. In the former, Sampson is practicing his violin with Myrtle and the gang egging him on, but a howl from his dog Junior, gives the boy a new perspective. I love the last panel as he hugs Junior, so touching! The 10-11 is another dog joke, with Bingo trying to join the runaways, Myrtle and Sampson.
 Krazy is from 1-12 to 1-17-1942, and the whole week is a continuity about the Swami, “Mr. WuWu”. WuWu has the ability to make things vanish, so his magic is a pawn in the eternal triangle that is “Krazy Kat”. Look at the beautiful way Garge fades out the characters in the 1-13, panels two and three, the Swami and Offissa Pupp are only half there, but the viewer fills in the blank. I also love the way Mr. WuWu makes Offissa Pupp vanish in the 1-16, then mystically mutters “I’m Still Here” in the last panel. It’s interesting that Krazy only appears in the first strip this week, all the other business is just between the gents.
 Felix has travelled back to 1-1-1934 and continues through 1-7. He is back with the Dooit family, saving valuable bonds and playing with the Christmas toys as the pesky mice drill holes in the floor with the toy tools. Felix figures out how to feed milk to Danny’s baby sister automatically in the Sunday page. I love the “Felix Movies” toy at the top of the page as Felix dreams of his many girl friends. Look at the variety Otto gets in the feminine cat faces with just a few tweaks of his versatile pen, larger and smaller eyes, whisker placement and of course the hats! The 1949 Felix is fine, but I love the toy like appearance of Felix in the early 1930s! The staging of the panels is usually long shots, very few close-ups, much like the layouts of the animated Felix cartoons of the 1920s. See you next time!
Santa Fe and New York Film Festivals Upcoming!!
 Look out for “Some Other Cat”, coming to the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, held Oct. 16-20th. It screens here: http://santafeindependentfilmfestival.com/Detailed/631.html and here: http://santafeindependentfilmfestival.com/Detailed/726.html on Thursday Oct. 17th and Sunday, Oct. 20th, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This was one of the rare times when a festival actually requested our cartoon to be part of their shows. They like the SouthWestern setting, and all the cacti featured in Kim Miskoe’s backgrounds. “Some Other Cat” will also be playing at the New York Film Festival, in a tandem performance with Itza’s first appearance in “It’s ‘The Cat'”. The press preview is coming up Oct. 2nd, I’ll fill you in on the exact screening time when I get it. The New York Film Festival runs from Sept. 27th through Oct. 13th. It’s been a long-held dream of Greg Ford’s and mine that the N.Y. Festival would run our cartoons and this year they will be running both of them!
The presentation at the L.A. Shorts Fest was good, I was quite surprised at how sharp and clear a projected Blu-Ray disc can look, almost as good as 35mm. However, the last scene in the cartoon, where Pearly’s house rises up off it’s foundation, had some fairly severe breakup in the ink lines of the house, due to the Blu-Ray. The audience was small, being a Monday afternoon at 3PM, and seemed to consist mostly of film makers and invited friends: 
 Here’s Tim Walker, Sue Crossley, Milt Gray and Katie Gray, no doubt convulsed by Tim’s dry wit. Here’s another shot of my wife Cathy, Bea Buchman, Ed Buchman (the foremost ailurophile), with Tim, Sue, Milt and Katie in the background of the theater. Notice the many unfilled seats. 
 Click to enlarge, this was at the Laemmle Noho 7 theater in North Hollywood. The audience didn’t laugh very much at the animated shorts, including “Some Other Cat”. Most of the other shorts were rather low-key and on the grim side, making Itza’s film seem very light-hearted in comparison. The final short of the program was called “Trusts and Estates” directed by a Cal Arts Student named Jeannette Bonds. The language used by the characters in her cartoon was so strong and over the top, that several members of the audience actually walked out! She told me that her cartoon was based on a conversation among “suits” at a restaurant that she overheard. After about 5 minutes of about the most graphic words I’ve ever heard on a soundtrack, the businessmen join hands in silent prayer! Jeannette explained that this was her “feminist comment” on male behavior, and she certainly made a point. Most of the audience’s questions were about “Trusts and Estates” at the end of the program. Jeannette was very nervous going in, not knowing what kind of reaction her film would get, but the picture stood out mainly for it’s unexpurgated talk, not so much the drawing or animation, which was not as strong as the idea. As it turned out, none of the films run during the animation show won best animation, but “The Missing Scarf” made by Eoin Duffy from Ireland, shown opening night, took the prize. The Festival was run kind of haphazardly, on closing night, none of the winners received their certificates, as they weren’t printed in time.
However, I was very happy that the L.A. Shorts Fest accepted “Some Other Cat”, and that Cathy, Tim, Sue, Milt, Katie, Bea and Ed could all come and see it’s World Premiere. I wish we could have all talked longer, in a restaurant after the show, but not like “Trusts and Estates”!
 Krazy from 1-5 to 1-10-1942 is mostly about natural phenomena this time. 1-5 through 1-7 are gags about Herriman’s potted trees, but my favorite is the “shootin stars” gag of 1-9, where they all go “Bang” and startle Krazy in a beautifully shaded concluding panel. The original art probably used Garge’s scratching technique to pull graded shading out of the black ink.
 Bingo is the featured player in “Myrtle” from 9-29 to 10-4-1947. I love how Myrtle and Sampson play dress-up with Junior and Bingo in the 9-30. Myrtle’s mom seems to mistake Bingo for her husband Freddie, and Fisher carries the anthropomorphism to an absurd conclusion in the last panel. In the 10-4 strip, Bingo’s reasoning process is revealed as the slogan “Ideas at Work” hovers over his head in the opening panel. Bingo wants to dig a recreation room under his doghouse, but Myrtle fills it in. What Bingo couldn’t do in 1947, Snoopy did by 1970. I decided to just use the Myrtle strips I found on Newspaper Archive, without joining them with the tearsheets I have, I think they look O.K. this way, what do you think?
 Here’s the last of the Felix tearsheets from 5-9 to 5-17-1949. From 5-9 to 5-14, Moocher and Felix continue to pursue the crook, and after a narrow escape, pin him to the wall with horseshoes. By 5-16, the crook is out of the story and Felix and Moocher go back to their rivalry, with television figuring prominently in the 5-17. In 1949, television was still not completely ubiquitous, but it was on the march, so Messmer found it fair game for gags. Next time, Felix will move backward in time, to 1934.
 Here’s the Yogi Bear Sunday page thirds from October, 1963, drawn by Harvey Eisenberg. In the last two strips, we see the Ranger chain of command revealed and the General and the Captain both make appearances. It’s as if the U.S. Army took over the National Park Rangers. You can’t help but feel sympathy for Yogi in the 10-20, as he is blamed for the incompetence of the General Ranger. In the 10-13, there is a Native American gag involving a 200 year old peace pipe that still makes me chuckle, despite the stereotyping. See you all next time.
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/167841Â . 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!
Sedona Was Swell
March 12, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments
Mark
Allen Elfman of the Best of Arizona.TV website, interviewed me at the VIP center, and now thanks to him, and my webmeister Charles Brubaker, we have a link to the interview that Allen has so kindly posted: https://www.facebook.com/groups/300140486809331/Â Â Head on over there and you will see a battered old cartoonist gamely trying to keep up with the dynamic Mr. Elfman. Enjoy!