Mark Kausler’s CatBlog

Adios to Mike!

Boy, I hate to be rushed, but Alan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide is posting SYNDICATE PROOFS of Marvelous Mike from Cole Johnson’s collection. So rather than be completely scooped, I’m going to print the concluding story line of MARVELOUS MIKE in one post.

Well, that’s the story. Bob Kuwahara’s job as the first story sketch artist at Disney may have influenced the idea behind Mike. It’s really “Baby Weems” from “The Reluctant Dragon” isn’t it? Just a bit soapier, with a bit of Little Orphan Annie style sidetracking going on. It’s interesting that with only 6 days of the strip left to go, the Post-Dispatch was still promoting it: This ad ran on 9-15-1957. Most of the run of Mike was printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Everyday Magazine” on the back page. The Post ran most of the daily comics with color added, not always the best color and not always in register. That’s  why the copies of Mike I used were often murky. Here is a note that the Post ran on 4-25-47 when the ongoing labor disputes forced the dailies into black and white:  

You will notice that I’m missing 9/2 and 9/9/57 from the above strips. 9/2 was Labor Day, and 9/9, a Saturday episode that wasn’t printed because the Post was shut down in a strike! Mike’s final strips were printed in the midst of labor troubles. I used two versions of the 9/18 strip, one for the dialog, and one for the drawings. The microfilm printer just wouldn’t cooperate that day. It is with sadness that I bring to a close these Marvelous Mike episodes, one of my favorite strips from childhood. Again, thanks to my brother for risking his life (literally) to copy these from the microfilm collection of the St. Louis Public Library. It took many years to complete this project, I can’t believe it’s done! Now, click the link to the right, and go over to Stripper’s Guide, they have a better class of material. I hope they get more response to reprinting Marvelous Mike than I did! Remember to click on the thumbnails to see the strips at readable size.

This just in: thanks to Cole Johnson, here is one of the missing strips from the above story line, 9-2-1957:  The blustery Mr. Kimball shows his human side.

You can see more of these great scans if you go over to the Stripper’s Guide blog.

Playin’ Felix the Cat-chup

I’m playing Cat-Chup this week with the Felix strips. Here are the missing dailies: 5/23, 5/30, 6/19, 6/25, 6/29 and 7/2/36. As a bonus, here are the four missing Sunday pages that fit into our dates: 5/24, 5/31, 6/7 and 6/14/36. These fill in the missing Socky and magic wand episodes and the Sundays are the start of the circus story line. Enjoy! I’ll try to resume continuity next week. Thanks to David Gerstein for the plug and the link from his Prehistoric Pop Culture site. You’ll find a link over to him on the right side of this screen. David put together a nice Felix video compilation in honor of the cat’s 90th birthday. If only REAL cats could live that long. Kudos to Felix!

Here’s Krazy from 12/25 to 12/30/1939, finishing the 1939 dailies! In this week’s strips, Garge does “Town Crier” gags, Ostrich gags and a great snapping turtle gag on 12/28. I love the pose of Krazy looking into the turtle’s shell, very feline. Krazy finishes off the 12/30 with a terse line of dialog: “Smudda Time”.

Marvelous Mike is from 8/5 to 8/10/1957 this time. Bill Bell’s “Madeline” strip is saved by Mike and the kid contributors! Bill’s boss gives him a vacation, and Bill gives Mike a real little gasoline two-seater car! Next time we will start the last Mike story line as the strip winds up. Don’t miss it, it’s a real three hankie weeper!

For those who have trouble reading the 8-5 Mike strip due to the microfilm scan, here’s the dialog in the strip submitted by Sally Keene, Age 8 in the last panel: Little Girl: “Hi, Johnnie…I Like You…” Johnnie: “If you like me why did you hit me yesterday?” Little Girl: “I always hit peepul I like!” Johnnie: “If I like somebody I don’t hit him..” Little Girl: “Well, we can’t all be ALIKE!”

I guess nobody thought very much of my Soupy Sales tribute. Nevertheless it was heartfelt, I really loved his comedy. I find myself using a lot of his old jokes in everyday conversation, such as when somebody says “Go ahead”, I can’t resist saying “Who are you calling a gourd head?” Don’t throw that pie!

Thanks again to all those who wrote sympathy messages about my mother. It’s great to be remembered at a sad time like this. And now, to steal from Mark Evanier, “Goodnight, Internet.”

Don’t Kiss

Hello Readers, this week I’m doing a little tribute to a man who lit up my childhood in St. Louis many times via his Detroit program in the 1950s and his Los Angeles programs of 1962 and 1979. Soupy Sales has gone on to entertain in heaven, he left us Oct. 22nd at the age of 83. But first, the comics!

Krazy is from 12/18 to 12/23/1939. Offissa Pupp is ever vigilant in his anti-brick campaign, using his usual weapon, the Jail , and a phalanx of alarm clocks in the 12/23. Ignatz refers to a “Juice Harp” in the 12/19 strip. This musical instrument, used a lot in jug bands and Mountain Music also went by the popular name, the “Jew’s Harp”. You can look it up.

Marvelous Mike, from 7/29 to 8/3/1957, reveals Mike to be way ahead of his time. He invents the interactive comic strip! From the mail that Bill Bell is getting from children, it looks like a smash. The syndicate prexy isn’t too happy so far, we’ll see what develops. I like the little personality touch in the 7/31, as Mike spells out “procrastinate” with his letter blocks. 8/1 and 8/2 are a little faint, because the microfilm was so dark that I thought I would try to lighten the strips so they would read better. That’s a whole string of mailmen in the 8/1, bringing in sacks of mail to the Famous Features office.

Felix is from 7/6 to 7/12/1936 this time. Felix continues to attempt to “live” with the Dooit family. Socky the bodyguard and Snobbs the butler try to make life difficult, but Felix always makes the adjustment. A running theme in the strip is the ingratitude of Felix’s “owners”. When Felix does something good for them, they lavish him with milk and sardines, but as soon as a few days elapse, they try to get rid of him again.

Losing Soupy Sales is like losing a good friend. Strange that I think of him as a friend, since I only “met” him one time, in 2006 at his Walk of Fame ceremony (that’s Soupy with Johnny Grant, the ‘Mayor’ of Hollywood in the photo up there). I was so happy just to be able to see him, it was pouring down rain that day, but the faithful were there, and Johnny Grant caught a pie in the face. Soupy couldn’t talk except to say, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart”, in a strangulated whisper. In our house, in 1962, Soupy’s Los Angeles show came in on Channel Seven. Soupy had something more than jokes, pies and puppets. He had CHARISMA, he could look at you through the TV camera lens and make you feel like you were a part of his world. That’s where the friendliness comes in. His slight North Carolina accent made him seem a bit cornpone, but he was fast and witty. It’s interesting that Soupy was really closer to my parent’s generation than mine, he was born in 1926 (nee: Milton Supman), and served in the Navy during World War Two. Yet, he projected such a youthful vibrancy and enthusiasm, us “youts” accepted him as a “kid”. He could de-fuse a joke that bombed by saying “Well, let’s look at it this way,” and make a funny face. Or, he would launch into a fast dance called “The Soupy Shuffle”, which, as Mom pointed out, was a new version of a dance called the “Flea Hop” which was big in the 1920s. My Dad was never a man to suffer fools gladly, and my brother and I were often the fools, but Soupy could make him double up with laughter. When White Fang would get really vicious after a bad joke and pummel Soupy with pies to the sound of rifle shots, that did it! The more pies that flew, the funnier the show became. Of course, the show was really Nebbish comedy. Soupy got no respect from anybody, the crew, White Fang, Black Tooth, Pookie, Peaches, Herbie the Elephant Man or Spanky (from an old film clip). Clyde Adler and later, Frank Nastasi, were the offscreen tormentors that doused Soupy with water, put ice down his back, blew him up with firecrackers and of course, pummeled him with pastry. Clyde Adler was the puppeteer and voice man in 1962, my greatest year of Soupy “awareness”, and his delivery was spot on. The sneering disrespect in his voice, in any of his many roles on the show, always just as a pair of hands at the door, or hands hidden in “dog mittens”, created sympathy for the top banana. Clyde’s voice for White Fang was loud, inquisitive, and occasionally tearful, when Soupy tried to take his beloved fire hydrant away. When White Fang threw a pie, he snarled really loud, and the loud rifle shot of the pie made me think of a dog bite. There was a “monster” subtext to the show, the dogs were monsters, and even the little lion puppet, Pookie, could be a little monstrous himself. “These are the jokes, laugh it up”, Pookie would declare. Pook originally just whistled, then Adler came up with a tiny, slightly sneering voice for him, and his personality bloomed. It’s interesting to compare Soupy’s attitude toward puppets to other host/puppet shows of the 1950s and 1960s, Bob Smith and Howdy Doody had a very loving relationship, and even the villains on the show, like Mr. Bluster, never really got too monstrous. Burr Tilstrom, Fran Allison, Kukla and Oliver Dragon were the most gentle of the puppet shows. (Soupy actually replaced them in the summer of 1955 on ABC. I wonder what Burr Tillstrom thought of THAT!?) Fran Allison always had a very warm interaction with the puppets, their “villain” was Bulah Witch, and she was a complete incompetent, but a charming one. Oliver Dragon could look a bit like a monster, but he was really a cuddly dragon with only one tooth. Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop were a little sharper in the comebacks, but that was the late 1950s. Soupy had a more casual, matter-of-fact interaction with Pookie and the Dogs. I never got to see Willie the Worm from the Detroit shows, but he was reported to have been a unique character as well. Soupy would kiss Pookie across the puppet stage, often to the lion’s disgust, as he would spit right after the kiss. Sometimes the kisses were very lengthy and loving, the puppet’s rubber head getting mashed in the process. When Pookie took a pie in the face, it was the most visually hilarious of all the pie gags. Imagine a little hand puppet, completely covered in gooey shaving cream, mane frazzed out to all compass points, indignant, and trembling with rage! The fact that most of the larger puppets, like the dogs, were never seen on camera, let the viewer’s imagination fill in the void. The White Fang of my imagination was a 20 foot tall dog with a wolf-like head full of teeth. My Black Tooth looked like a tall, canine Effie Clinker (if you remember your Bergen). My Dad and I would often “talk” to each other in Fang and Tooth squawks. Soupy’s pie throwing became a big fad, my friend Elliot (Gibbons, from the 8th grade) and I threw pies made out of old oatmeal at each other at school. Elliot often drew pictures of Black Tooth’s arm throwing a pie: What memories! White Fang was part of the Soupy gang as far back as 1952, as this clipping from Radio-TV Mirror reveals: This article describes Soupy’s 1952 radio show in Cleveland, when he was known as “Soupy Hines”. This article, from TV-Radio Mirror (note the switch) from 1955 covers a later Soupy on Detroit TV when he changed his name to “Sales”: It’s hard to believe he was ever that young. You can read a lot more about the early history of Soupy and Clyde Adler over on www.detroitkidshow.com. It’s interesting that the talented Mr. Adler didn’t do much performing outside of the “Soupy Sales Show”. His voice was so funny and forceful, he should have at least done cartoon voices. However, he preferred to be a film editor in Detroit, when Soupy wasn’t doing his regular show on TV. Clyde chose not to do the New York 1965 show. That’s why there are two “camps” of Soupy fans, those who like Clyde’s version of the puppets, and those who like Frank Nastasi’s more squeaky and nasal puppet voices. Nastasi was funny, though, and you can tell that Soupy really enjoyed working with him on the few kinescopes that are still around.

If you go to http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/23/remembering-soupy-sales/, you’ll be overwhelmed by the outpouring of love for this man and his old shows from many fans from all walks of life. Many of his old jokes and favorite “routines”, real or imaginary, are discussed on that blog. Soupy made it all look effortless, but a daily live TV show is and was a relentless grind. Here’s one of my favorite photos of Soupy at WNEW in 1965 from Life magazine, looking completely drained, as an assistant makes hot tea with honey in it for him:  Soupy smoked backstage to relieve the tension:  Outtakes are around on video from the KTLA 1979 show, revealing a driven comic, getting angry at himself for blowing a routine and using some “effen” strong language. Soupy’s live puppet-based shows usually only lasted for a few years at a time, Soupy needed to rest every once in awhile. By the time he did his last really good show, he was 53.

Looking back on his work, now, it all seems pretty remote. I love the friendly and silly slapstick of his programs, but comedy has changed. It’s now much more aggressive and coarse than Soupy’s show ever was. Of course, in a way, Soupy’s program was a more violent, faster paced version of the old TV puppet programs, which were fundamentally gentle. The show was aimed at a general audience, really, not just children. Have you ever seen Robert Homme’s “The Friendly Giant”? It’s about the coziest puppet show ever done, definitely wouldn’t have a chance on TV now.  The only puppet and live people show left is “Sesame Street”. It’s less gentle than the Giant, but there are no pies anywhere on the show, except where educationally appropriate.

Soupy, I will miss you, and the wonderful little off-stage world that you and your puppet brainchildren lived in. I will leave you in my mind as a happy man, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, right outside the Hollywood Roosevelt, surrounded by your fans and wife Trudy:  You do dat, and we’ll love you and give you a big kiss! Oh, sorry, Don’t Kiss (That’s a Black Tooth bit)!

A Dreadfully Hard Frost…

Hi Loyal Readers, I have some very sad news which I’ll save until the last part of the post.  That way, all those who like only the comics can skip the text. Here’s a “special” to lead off, the Dec. 18, 1924 episode of “Us Husbands” with the topper strip, “Mistakes Will Happen”. There’s been a book collection promised about Herriman’s “people” strips, but it has not been published as yet. This is the only newsprint example of the “Us Husbands” feature I have. Along with “Stumble Inn”, “Baron Mooch”, “Major Ozone”, “Mary’s Home From College”, “The Family Upstairs”  and many more, Herriman did a lot of “family” and “eccentric character” strips.  I like “The Family Upstairs” and “Stumble Inn” best. “Us Husbands” seems to lack the offstage surrealism of “The Family Upstairs”, or the vivid portrait of an old wayside hotel that “Stumble Inn” provided.  “Us Husbands” reminds me most of “Polly and Her Pals”, even the topper resembles “And So They Got Married”, the “Polly” topper.  I love this example for the little details of 1920s domestic life, such as the lack of electrical outlets, and the relatively high cost of electricity. The newfangled electric toaster has to be plugged in to the light socket overhead, and the coffee is being perked on the stove top.

Krazy Kat from 12-11 to 12-16-1939 concerns mostly Krazy’s encounters with “fitchs”.  In the 12-13 strip, Krazy talks to a Cuttle Fish and talks about “Bat” Fitchs and “Finnitch Hedda”, which is probably Finnan Haddie. Does anybody know what a “Bat” Fish refers to? Krazy’s puns and Yiddish accent do nothing but get the “fitchs” all riled up for the rest of the week.

Marvelous Mike takes over Bill Bell’s “Madeline” strip in this batch, originally published from 7/22 to 7/27/1957.  Mike draws the strip, but can’t sharpen a pencil without his sister’s help. Of course, Mike is a superior cartoonist and turns in a strip to Bell’s editor that the editor declares to be Bell’s “Best Stuff”.  We’ll see what that stuff is next time.

I found two Felix Sunday page Scans that fit in to the dates I’m centering on. The two Sundays are from 6-21 and 6-28-1936 and feature Felix in a circus environment with some Messmer elephants. Note the topper strip, “Bobby Dazzler”. Bobby looks like a close cousin of “Jerry on the Job”.  Messmer loved adventures of little characters, little boys, little girls, little dogs and little cats. “The cat was the one that clicked”, Messmer commented. The dailies are from 6/30 to 7/4/1936. 6/29 and 7/2 are missing, does anyone have copies they could send me? Felix continues to play tricks on Snobbs the butler with his magic wand. Of course Felix already exists in the fourth dimension anyway, so doesn’t really need a magic wand to transform matter and disappear, but maybe he’s just “playing” with the wand. Remember to click on any of the strips to see them larger, dear readers.

2009 has not been kind to my loved ones and friends. First my cat, Little Grey passed on, then my friend Vincent Davis, and now, it’s so hard to even think of it, my dear Mother, June Hoertel Kausler, has gone to join my Father and Grandparents. Mother died on the night of Oct. 7th, of complications from cancer, she was 90. I have so many memories of her, mostly little things. She started me on my love of books by reading Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” to me when I was very young. She read a chapter or so each night, doing all the voices and singing the songs. I followed along with her, and she pointed out many of the words. It wasn’t long before I could recognize a lot of them. One day, Mother paused in her busy schedule to let me read a battered-up copy of a Dell Felix the Cat comic to her. I was so happy and proud to be able to read something out loud to my Mother, after all the reading she did for me. Felix meant something to both of us. Mother was a very accomplished musician and singer in her own right. Her highest achievement professionally was singing at the Kiel Opera House in St. Louis with Lauritz Melchior of the Metropolitan Opera. Here is an article about the event and picture of Mother in 1939, reprinted from the telephone company paper where she was employed:

A story my mother told about that night, is that just before they went on the stage, Mother wished Lauritz Melchior “Good Luck”.  Mr. Melchior replied (in his Swiss-German accent), “My dear young lady, in the theater we do not wish our fellow performers ‘Good Luck’. You should instead wish me maybe a swift kick in the pants.” Mother never went on to Julliard or had higher education in music, her parents couldn’t afford to send her, even with a scholarship. Nevertheless, her Coloratura Soprano voice was magnificent. In the early 1930s she made many home recordings direct to disc of enormously complicated arias. My favorite is the “Hymn to the Sun God” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Le Cog D’Or” (The Golden Cockerel). She gives it just the right feeling of Arabian exotica, while maintaining her characteristic sweetness of sound. Instead of the Opera, Mother devoted her singing voice to church choir, often taking the solos at the Christmas concerts. She could do both versions of “The Lord’s Prayer” perfectly. My brother and I loved the song “No Candle was There and No Fire” which she sang with a touching sincerity that brings tears to my eyes as I write this. “I Wonder as I Wander” and “Because” were two more songs she sang magnificently.

Mother gave me a little record player when I must have been four years old. It had blue stars on the side of it, and turned at 78 RPM. She bought me a lot of Little Golden Records and Capitol children’s records to play. I must have driven her crazy as I played them over and over. I memorized a few of them, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses”, and “The Whistler and His Dog”.  If Mother ever tired of hearing me recite “The Swing”, or “I Have a Little Shadow” as I stood next to her in the Kitchen as she washed dishes after supper, she never showed it. She got a lot of music appreciation records for me, such as “The Orchestra”, “Peer Gynt”, “Diana and the Golden Apples” and many more. I guess she was hoping I would fall in love with Classical Music as much as she had. I wound up mostly enamored of Bozo the Clown! I loved the story albums “Bozo Under the Sea”, “Bozo and His Rocket Ship” and “Honkety Hank”. Not exactly Chopin, or Percy Faith, either. I went from the cartooniness of old Capitol Kid’s records to the real cartoons shown on the local St. Louis program, “The Wrangler’s Cartoon Club”.  My favorites were the Clampett black and white Looney Tunes such as “Porky’s Hero Agency”, “Porky’s Movie Mystery” and especially “The Daffy Doc”, which KSD-TV played over and over again. I wanted to BE Daffy Duck, Betty Boop and of course, Popeye. I’m afraid my brother and I got into some fights because Popeye made fighting look like such fun. Poor Mother didn’t have much fun then. She used to say to me, “Cartoons, Cartoons, Cartoons! Mark, someday I’m afraid you’ll TURN IN TO a Cartoon!”

I can still feel the cold winter mornings in St. Louis, as Mother prepared hot Cream of Wheat as the radio played the Cream of Wheat jingle. Percy Faith’s record of “The Poor People of Paris” was in heavy rotation on KMOX, then, and I can’t hear it today without being thrust back into my Mother’s kitchen and that warm, safe feeling before I bolted out the door to catch the bus or walk to school.

When my brother and I refused to eat our vegetables, especially Brussels Sprouts, Mother had a way of making us feel sorry for them. “Oh, those cute little Cabbages,” she used to say, “go ahead and eat your cute little Cabbages.” It usually worked on me, I don’t remember if my brother Kurt ate them or not. No amount of psychology worked with Eggplant, however. We could never stand that, no matter how Mother prepared it.

I think one of the biggest disappointments that I handed my Mother was in not pursuing my musical studies and wanting to make cartoons instead. I took piano lessons for five years, but never learned to play with much facility. She did provide the space and art supplies for me to make cartoons in the basement, so I don’t think she entirely disapproved.

My brother lived at home with Mother, and to him fell the burden of caregiver these last 5 years. He made her as comfortable as he could at home, and at the nursing facility where she spent about the last 6 weeks of her life. She improved enough to come back to her house for the weekend of Oct. 3rd, but had a relapse from her operation and went back to nursing care. She couldn’t be operated on again so soon after her first major surgery, which hadn’t even completely healed yet. So on the evening of Oct. 7th, she passed on quietly with Kurt holding her hands. She never lost faith that she would be well and eventually come back to the house she loved. At her 90th birthday, she declared that she would live to be 100, and actually celebrated the day four times with four parties given by her friends at Church, and at the YWCA club. How I wish she had lived to be that old. Mother was a courageous, fine, lovely person, whom Kurt and I both loved dearly. Kurt’s love for her was the greatest of all, he did the hard work of caring for her and the house they both lived in. Kurt organized Mother’s service at the Kutis Funeral Home in St. Louis, which I attended. It was a very meaningful service, Kurt wrote a fine tribute to Mom, read by his girlfriend of many years, Linda Kraft. The organist played “No Candle was There and No Fire”, among many selections. Kurt even played a tape of my Mother singing a beautiful number, with my Grandpa playing accompaniment on the Pipe Organ. All that attended had tears in their eyes, remembering her. Strangely, even though I felt strong pangs of emotion at my Mother’s services and at the cemetery while I was in St. Louis, the enormity of her passing is only now beginning to dawn on me. Mother, I will miss you very much. You’ll be singing in my heart always.

Transferred to a New Post

Hey All of Yez! In this week’s NIZE BABY, (5/26/1928) Morris gets a chiropractic treatment from two “experienced” chiropractors. Except they are really floor painters. Papa gets tied up like a pretzel. I love the “Banana Oil” topper, with “Ginsberg’s Seeds”. It’s nice to see the page in color, I only have two examples of the feature this way. This will be the last Nize Baby for awhile, I’m keeping one in reserve until later. Sorry about the shadow on this photo, the page was so big that I had a hard time getting even lighting on it.

Krazy Kat from 12/4 to 12/9/1939 is really a “non-themed” week. My favorite strip in this batch is 12/8, with Krazy and the two worms. The scans of these aren’t as clear as usual, because this week of Kat strips proved especially rare and difficult to find.  Therefore, we takes what we can gets.

In Marvelous Mike this time, from 7/15 to 7/20/1957, Cliff Crump introduces Mike to Bill Bell, the exhausted comic strip cartoonist. I love Bill’s reaction to meeting Mike in the 7/16 strip, “He’s like a character out of a comic strip!” Mike does word association on Bill and puts him to sleep, clearing the stage for Mike’s take-over of the “Madeline” strip. I wonder if the character of Bill Bell is a backhanded tribute to the Bell Syndicate, an independent distributor of comic strips in the mid Twentieth century. Maybe Kuwahara was trying to interest Bell in the Mike strip, United Features distribution of the feature was very low by this time.

Felix the Cat this week, from 6/22 to 6/27/1936 (6/25 is missing), shows Messmer at his best, as Felix confronts the mysterious Swami.  Messmer is hard to beat at Gothic imagery, moody blacks, mysterious old houses and magic spells. Felix can now make himself disappear with the Swami’s magic wand, mystifying Snobbs the butler in the 6/27. I love the little marginal characters that pop on and off in the Felix strips, such as the dog peering around the corner of a building in the 6/24. 

Cathy and I have been out painting quite a lot lately, we spent a week painting in nearby Eagle Rock, Ca. The big rock that the town was named for, was actually in danger of being blasted out for condos. Our friend John Stillian formed CERB, the Committee for Eagle Rock Beautiful, and built a nature trail on the land surrounding the Eagle Rock, thus keeping the Rock from being torn down. The last two years, we plein air painters have gathered for a week in late Sept. to paint outdoor scenes in the town of Eagle Rock. We then sell, or try to sell them to patrons on the last weekend in the month. This year, the temperature climbed to 101 degrees on Saturday and then about the same on Sunday. Needless to say, it made the event most uncomfortable for everybody. One of the painters almost passed out from heat exhaustion, not from painting, but from standing around trying to sell her work to the few hardy souls who showed up. I managed to sell three of my watercolor paintings. It was pretty gratifying to have some total strangers buy my stuff for a change. This makes me feel that they really want the paintings because they like them, not because they are trying to please me. Of course, I don’t charge very high prices for them, either. On Thursday we managed to get all the way down to Laguna Beach and painted there for the afternoon. We were at a place called Heisler Park, near the beach. It’s a lovely spot, pink, lavender and burnt umber rocks define the edge of the land. We met a couple from Texas who almost bought a painting, but didn’t have enough cash on hand. They said they would write us later about the painting, but, it’s an impulse buy. See you again soon with more old comics.

Post-Age Due

Hello all you fans of old cartoons. First up this week, NIZE BABY from 1/9/1928 by Milt Gross. Battling stereotypes this week, Jewish Vs. Italian. The Italian mother mistakes Papa for the school Principal and beats him full sore. Then, it’s Isidore’s turn to get corporal-ed again by Papa, right in front of the Principal who whacked Izzy in the fourth panel! Milt’s drawings of the Italian Mama beating Papa (“Ajabesto!”) are cherce, I like the double wide panel with Goomba Mama chasing Papa as Isidore and Dominick casually walk in to the scene.

Krazy Kat from 11/27/1939 to 12/2, has no theme this week, no Kontinuity. Just  “Warped with Fancy, Woofed with Dreams”. I favor 12/2, with Mrs. Kwakk-Wakk and a Magpie friend having a gossip, while the three stalwarts walk behind them with ears akimbo.

Marvelous Mike from 7/8 ro 7/13/1957, introduces a new story line featuring Mr. Bell, a comic strip cartoonist suffering from a major writer’s block. In 36 hours at the board, he has only come up with four blank panels. Cliff Crump learns that Mr. Bell’s strip features a little girl named “Madeline”, and in the 7/13 is starting to hatch an idea. See next time for more episodes in one of the top stories in the Mike saga.

Felix the Cat, from 6/15 to 6/20/1936 (6/19 missing), continues Felix’s dalliance with the Dooits. Uncle Minus’s ten gallon hat provides a combination shelter and disguise for Felix, until a Swami puts a bulldog into the hat with him. One of the most charming aspects of the Felix strip is the little cat’s longing to be wanted and find a loving home. He never really finds the love he’s looking for, but you can’t help rooting for him and his quest. I think the jokes are really secondary to the character’s essential likability.

I had fun posting the video of the “water cat” last week. I got one good comment from Charlie and a whole lot of spam. Maybe linking to You Tube puts the site into Spam mailers’s talons. I don’t link to the Tube often, but couldn’t resist last week. If you want to see the show, go to last week and click the link before it becomes non-operational. Remember to “Tip” your favorite blogger by going over to www.itsthecat.com and buying a cel or two. Several folks have written to me wondering when my next short will be out. I really don’t know, but if you buy a cel, maybe the new film will be out a few weeks sooner than if you choose not to.

Mucha Posta

Hey Everybody, the fires in the Angeles National Forest are almost contained and we were spared, thanks be to God (and the firefighters).  It’s very sad that the authorities believe that this fire was set. It won’t be easy to find out who lit it.

Now let’s get lit up with old comic strips, first one this time is NIZE BABY from 1/1/1928. Papa is beat up by a pair of ladies as he tries to find Isidore on a passenger train. I don’t quite understand why he is dressed up like a kid in the penultimate panel. Maybe he’s trying to escape detection by the railroad conductors with his disguise? Isidore once again receives corporal punishment in the denouement.

Krazy Kat this time, from 11/20 to 11/25/1939 is also about disguises. First, a brick in disguise is the discussion topic, then after a potato gag, the balance of the week uses one of Garge’s favorite gag devices, the characters dressed up in total camouflage disguises. All to their utter confusion, of course.

MARVELOUS MIKE this time, from 7/1 to 7/6/1957, continues the golf match between Smith and Crump. July 4th is missing, the Post-Dispatch did not print on holidays. Mike overcomes his scruples to sink an impossible putt for his Dad, thus winning the game for Mr. Kimball and the account! Kimball awards the account to Mike, will he set up his own agency? Come back next time and find out!

 By the way, this is an actual promotional poster tacked on the front of the metal newsstands in St. Louis to promote Mike and Rev’rend, another new United Feature Syndicate strip that the St. Louis Post Dispatch introduced about the same time (1956-57).  Mike was a minor celebrity in old St. Louis, they stuck with him to the end of the run.

Felix the Cat, this time from 6/8 to 6/13/36 continues Felix’s stay with the Dooit family. Felix is a real punching bag in this week’s strips.  The poor little guy is kicked under the table, and in my favorite gag from this batch is punched out by “Socky” (6/13). Speaking of cats, did y’all see the You Tube video (or is it Yahoo?) of the cat putting his head under a running faucet, several TIMES? Cats aren’t supposed to like water, but this one not only likes to put his head under a faucet, but also enjoys drinking the drips of water that trickle into his mouth. View it at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KswnjMa-MQ&feature=player_embedded#t=21 . Enjoy!

Hot Post

Folks, it’s hot out here in Glendale. Fires are burning in the hills, all the way out to Acton and Palmdale. Let’s cool down with a few old comic strips. Up first is NIZE BABY from 12/18/1927. Louie brings in a sailor-trained parrot into Baba’s broadcast and creates havoc on the air when the parrot goes into a cussin’ fit. I love the panel when Papa jumps out of the window with his umbrella open and says, “Lindboig took a chance.”

Krazy Kat from 11/13 to 11/18/1939 shows Garge at the top of his cartooning form with this sequence. It features Krazy dancing in a tutu to the annoyance of Ignatz mouse who gets Offissa Pupp to imprison Krazy’s flute player, then tries to stop the Kat’s terpsichorean moves with tacks. Krazy’s dance is unstoppable, and he can’t be arrested, so the Mouse and Pupp decide to join him on Saturday. I love the dancing poses on KK, especially in the 11/13 episode.

Marvelous Mike from 6/24 to 6/29/1957 is in the midst of the Crump/Smith golf match, with a valuable advertising account as stakes. Mike decides it would be unethical to hit his dad’s putts for him, so opts to coach Cliff instead. From the authentic feel of the writing, it might be a fair guess to think that Bob Kuwahara was an avid golfer. This is certainly one of the more lengthy continuities in the Mike saga.

Felix from 6/1 to 6/6/1936 features more of the adventures of the Dooit family. “Socky”, Mr. Dooit’s bodyguard, is quite the punch drunk character. Uncle Minus’s mule figures in two of the dailies, but Snobbs the butler is off this week.

It’s too darn hot! I wish Cathy and I were out painting today, but the air is unhealthful, due to the fires. California is not a paradise today, more like hell, it’s getting hard to breathe. Enjoy the strips and stay temperate!

Hitchin’ Post

It looks like Isidore is up to no good in NIZE BABY from 10/16/1927.  Again, Milt Gross the wanna-be animator comes to the fore as “Baba” struggles manfully to keep from waking up the baby. Gross uses speed lines galore and some really tortured anatomy to show Papa’s extreme caution. I love the dialog in the last panel, “Morris, not in the head…”

 

Krazy Kat (11/6/1939 to 11/11) is mostly visual gags about a “Road Closed” sign, with Krazy, Ignatz and Pupp mixing it up along the route. Garge evidently ran out of Road gags about Friday, so brings in Joe Stork to wind up the week. Krazy, Ignatz and Pupp run away from the stork when they suspect that he carries an infant. Ignatz has the most right to run off, he already has three kids!

Marvelous Mike (6/17/1957 to 6/22) continues the “Puttin’ Mike” storyline as Crump gears up for the big match against Smith. Smith has agreed to let Mike hit Crump’s putt shots for him, but first Cliff has to get a ball on the green and in the 6/22 he makes a real duffer shot into the rough. We’ll see if he can recover the match next time.

 Felix the Cat (5/25/1936  to 5/29) continues Felix’s adventures in the Dooit home. I love the visual pun of Snobb’s dropping his “H’s” on Felix’s tail in the 5/27 episode. Uncle Minus figures quite a bit in these strips as well. Otto Messmer gets a lot of comedy mileage out of Snobb’s easily offended aristocratic attitude. The run of Felix dailies I am using has quite a lot of missing episodes, like 5/30/1936 this time, which was a Saturday. These are rare, so I’ll keep running what I can find. Does anyone know if Dell’s “Popular Comics” from the 1940s ever ran these Felix dailies?

Look out in stores or on Amazon for “The Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics”, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, published by Abrams ComicArts, New York. Mike Barrier and Kim Deitch were both advisers on the book, which is a collection of comic book stories from the 1940s and 1950s aimed at children. Of course at $40.00 a copy, I doubt if many children today will be buying this one. Hopefully their local libraries will carry it. It’s a nice selection of stories by Barks, Kelly, Carlson, Davis, Mayer and many more. The reason I have the book is, Francoise Mouly borrowed my copy of “Laffy-Daffy Comics #1” at Mike Barrier’s suggestion (Thanks, Mike!). They used one page from it, “Droopy (not Avery’s) in ‘Snow Day'” by Dan Gordon. Look for it on page 206, an eerie little story. The reproduction in the book is good, not too fussed over or “restored” looking, I like my comic book reprints looking a bit yellowed with out-of-register color, and that’s what you will get here. Of course for your $40.00, you now have these comic pages on much better paper with much less acid. I don’t think we’ll ever see such a rich legacy of so-called “children’s” comic book stories ever again. These days, it’s “Super-Heroes” or die! This old kid will really enjoy this book, that’s certain.

The Cat’s Out! Scanner Log-Jam Broken!

Hi again, Folks! I finally managed to scan some Felix The Cat dailies from 1936, the first three will be in this post. We lead off with an episode of Nize Baby, in color this time, from 10/9/1927.  In the “Banana Oil” topper, the convict doesn’t get out until 1994, really puts the Gross era into time perspective. This episode has even more animation than some of the previous strips I’ve posted. The drawings of Papa wrestling with the gum machine “scan” well, would look delightful animated. I love the payoff panel with Papa’s  hand stuck to his son’s well-paddled rear end, no “time-outs” here!

Krazy Kat this time is from 10/30/1939 to 11/4.  It’s “Mostly Spuds” week, with the gags centering about potatoes, and their “eyes”. I love the talking spud in 11/3; it should have been a recurring character.

Marvelous Mike is from 6/10/1957 to 6/15 this time. Mike astounds Cliff on the clubhouse green with his scientific putting. It looks like Mike is going to hit Cliff’s putts for him in the match with Mr. Smith, although Mike is developing some theories about mental application in golf that will bear watching!

Out first Felix dailies come from 5/20 to 5/22/1936. At this point in the continuity, Felix is a house pet of the Dooit family. His best friend in the family is the little boy, Danny Dooit, his worst enemy is Snobbs, the butler. Cousin Minus from Texas visits in the 5/21 strip, much to Snobbs’s disgust. Felix at times seems to be a minor character in his own strip! Felix constantly wins and loses, being thrown out and sneaking back in the house again.

Wow, look what the scanner can do with 35mm Technicolor frames! This is a frame from Bob Clampett’s “Book Revue”, Harry James on trumpet. I even “tricked” the scanner into doing some 16mm frame enlargements that look quite nice, almost like projected film. I’ll sprinkle them into the mix here from time to time, just to keep the animated cartoons from fading out of the blog. Remember to click on the small images to see them larger. Did ya know that this little blog is among the TOP 16 Comic Scannin’ Blogs according to the STWALLSKULL blog list which reviews comic sites! Check it out at www.stwallskull.com/blog. It’s humbling to be singled out like that, I hope whatever readers I have will keep coming back.

Emily Post

Hi Folks, this is NIZE BABY from 8/21/27.  Looey just can’t please Papa with his present of a mirror won at auction. “Gertrude Ederle” whom Papa refers to when he’s in the tub, was big news in 1926. She was the first woman to swim the English Channel and was known as “Queen of the Waves”.  She lived quite a long time, dying in 2003 at the age of 98. Completely deaf in her later years, she taught deaf children how to swim. Please excuse some of the missing chunks from Nize Baby this time, the original was very brittle and had to be pieced together on the basement floor for it’s appearance here.

Krazy Kat from 10/23/1939 to 10/28 is about throwing curves. Not with a baseball, but with bricks and bats. Offissa Pupp unwittingly beans Krazy with a brick, and in the 10/28 strip, humors Krazy by letting him toss a brick. I love the last panel as Pupp runs through a Herriman forest of trees, dodging the brick as it makes it’s circuitous route through the thick trunks.

Marvelous Mike this time is from 6/3/1957 to 6/8. The storyline is beginning to feel a bit like AMC’s “Mad Men” series, as Cliff Crump is matched in a golf game with Bill Smith, of a rival ad agency. Mr. Kimball gives orders to Cliff to “win that match or else”. Cliff’s weak spot is putting. Naturally, baby Mike is a whizz at putting, knocking 500 straight putts into a glass on the living room carpet! Can Mike do that on a green? Come back next time and find out! The sepia tint to the Mike episodes this week was accidentally mixed into my resizing and enhancing efforts from the original microfilm print-outs. It makes the strip look a bit more antique, but, it’s readable.

I’ll Give You Such A Post!

Hi Readers! Here’s Milt Gross’s Nize Baby from 6/5/1927.  Can’t you just FEEL the movement and the animation in Milt’s drawings? Papa wrapping the laundry with the baby inside, and the top hatted guy banging on the elevator door animate as you scan over the panels. Papa hitting Isidore on every floor of the hotel for buying a lollipop might seem like extreme corporal punishment in this day and age of “time-outs” for kids. That’s the “roaring twenties”!

In Krazy Kat, 10/16/1939 to 10/21, Ignatz tries celebrating his and Krazy’s birthday by tossing bricks, but Offisa Pupp celebrates his natal day by jailing Ignatz. I love the last panel in 10/18, a little tableaux as Pupp and Krazy set up a birthday cake outside the jail as Ignatz looks out. The balance of the week involves Garge’s love of puns, “peace” pipe /”piece” pipe, with Offisa Pupp getting away with it because he is the law, much to Ignatz’s disgust.

Marvelous Mike this week, from 5/27/1957 to 5/29 (5/30 missing) then 5/31 and 6/1, concludes the foundling home story with the crooks entrapped by Mike’s scheme. Mike generously gives little Billy, the runaway orphan, all the credit for the bust. Mike returns home from the “home”, then tries to coach Cliff Crump on the fine points of his golf game. Now Cliff ought to know better than to resist Mike’s kibitzing by this time!

 Here’s the “conclusion” of the Felix story we began last time, from 12/11/1939. The spook runs off into the woods as Felix and the “gnomes” look on. I had a bit of positive reaction to Felix, so I’m “grooming” some 1936 strips to run here very soon. Watch for them! Remember to click on the small strips to view them at full size.

Left at the Post

Here’s NIZE BABY from 5/29/1927.  In this episode Mr. Feitlebaum has a first name, Morris. Isidore gets a Katzenjammer punishment and Milt Gross leaves us with a blackface joke. This strip should definitely appeal to the rail fans out there, I love steam and diesel engines too.

Krazy this week is from 10/9/1939 to 10/14. A lot of Toot’n and Clang’n this week as Offissa Pupp devises a horn alarm to warn him of “sin” in progress. Ignatz winds up in jail for sending out a false Toot, but Krazy ends the week with a happy Glong Ka lang.

Marvelous Mike is from 5/20/1957 to 5/25 this time. The Black Market Babies storyline thickens as Mr. Smith, the gangster behind the Meadows foundling home, takes the stage. It’s interesting that Smith’s assistant originally suggests getting $1000.00 for Mike out of Cliff Crump, but in the 5/24 strip, Smith drops the price to $500.00 cash. Of course, Mike’s hep to the whole racket.

As a bonus, here’s a week of the Felix the Cat daily strip by Otto Messmer from 12/4/1939 to 12/9. It’s a spooky story line in which Felix gets rid of a pesky ghost by getting him so drunk that he is chased out of the castle by the goblin D.T.s! “Messmer-izing” art by the incomparable Otto. If you like this strip, maybe it will continue, it’s up to you. If there is no reaction, then no more Felix. This is the Catblog, after all. Have a great time in San Diego this coming weekend.  I won’t be there, but even if I was there, I wouldn’t see anyone I know in that Peripatetic mob!

Your Friendly Post-Man

Hi Folks,

      Not much going on this week. We saw the newly refurbished Griffith Park Observatory on Thursday with our painting group. Cathy and I did a painting apiece of the newly rebuilt L.A. landmark while being regaled by a travelling musician, who composed his own songs about people’s bathroom habits (what else?). You owe it to yourself to see all the new things that have been added to the underground, downstairs portion of the Observatory, big solar system models, comparative size models of the planets (Pluto is still included), a new Leonard Nimoy theatre, Wolfgang Puck’s Cafe at the End of the Universe and a new gift shop! It took almost four years to rebuild, but it was worth it. Admission is still free, but it costs adults seven bucks to see a Planetarium show.

In comics this week, here’s Nize Baby from 5/08/1927:

Poor Papa Feitelbaum definitely has a rabbit problem in this strip.  I love the third panel with Mama getting speared by a goat!

Krazy Kat this week is from 10/2 to 10/7/1939:

Ignatz can’t appease Offissa Pupp with apples no matter how hard he tries. Mrs. Kwakk-wakk’s no help either.

In Marvelous Mike this week (5/13 to 5/18/1957) :

Mike uses the IRS and the FBI to put himself in the infamous Mr. Meadows’s foundling home. It looks like the baby-sellers are already on the move! I like how attached Cliff Crump has become to baby Mike. In the 5/12 strip, he declares that he “can’t stand being without him (Mike)..” Cliff’s attitude is slowly changing from being jealous and suspicious of Mike’s intelligence, to becoming dependent on it, and loving the baby more. I made a numbering error in my San Clemente and Comics post last time, the Marvelous Mike strips were actually from May SIXTH through May ELEVENTH, not the Fifth through the Tenth, 1957. It’s sometimes a little hard to read the dates on the strips themselves, so bear with me. As always, thanks to my brother Kurt in St. Louis, the most dangerous city in the U.S.! Kurt braved the hostile atmosphere of the downtown St. Louis public library to print out the microfilm copies of Marvelous Mike that you are reading here. This is a really rare strip, which I hope you are getting a kick out of reading. The promotional ad at the top of the post this week was from April 3rd of 1957. Newspapers still cared about the comic strips in the 1950s. And today….the Los Angeles Times just reduced the Sunday comics from 8 pages to 6, dropping two strips but cramming the remaining strips into such a cramped looking layout that only the faithful will still bother to read. Remember to click on any strip here to see it at readable size.

San Clemente and Comics

 

 Hi everyone,

Cathy and I spent last weekend (June 26th and 27th) painting in the beach town of San Clemente at the annual San Clemente Plein Air festival. We painted from a model named Peter at the “Quick Draw”, at Ole Hanson’s (the founder of San Clemente) home: the Casa Romantica, and at the San Clemente State Park Campground, where Cathy did this oil study of an airstream trailer. She loves the streamlined classic look of these old trailers. Click on the image to enlarge it and study how she created her twilight lighting effects up close.

In comics, here’s Milt Gross’s NIZE BABY from 4/24/1927:

It looks like Looie Dot Dope is at fault for stuffing Isidore’s mouth with that pool ball. I love the panel with the Italian grocer chasing and hitting Papa with a banana stalk. The last panel with Looie hiding under the stairs ties the story up well. This strip was really brittle, I had to piece it together to take the picture. I used to tape newspapers together when I was a kid, now I never get any adhesive anywhere NEAR old newspapers. The tape just winds up staining whatever it touches. Much better to just piece them together, then photo or scan. If I knew Photoshop, I could make the joins in that program, but it’s too expensive for me.

Krazy this week is from 9/25 to 9/30/1939. Garge does a whole week’s worth of gags featuring a half-a-brick. We get to meet a mouse pal of Ignatz’s: “Skweeky” (9/28)! I think this is one of Herriman’s more inspired strings of gags. He might have been tempted to do just half-a-strip for one of the dailies, but maybe his editor wouldn’t have understood.

In Marvelous Mike this week (5/5 to 5/10/1957) Cliff puts Billy the orphan in the foundling home. (By the way, did you notice that in the first panel of the May fifth strip, Kuwahara drew the wrong arrow on the speech balloon, Mike isn’t talking, Billy is! Another clue is that the balloon isn’t lettered in Mike’s special font.) Mike feels like a fink for “ratting” on Billy, so he turns Cliff in to the IRS!  Talk about being a fink! We’ll see how this strange move fits Mike’s plans next time. Enjoy the strips over the Fourth of July weekend!

THIS JUST IN: Cathy and I were in San Clemente over June 26 and 27th, so we missed an historic Estate Sale in Van Nuys. It was the estate of Manuel Gonzales, the great Disney comic strip artist who drew the Mickey Mouse Sunday page for many years. His wife is moving into a care facility, so she sold the house and all the contents. There were many King Features Syndicate proof sheets on Mickey Sunday pages, Courvoisier cels from Snow White, many old art books, antiques, all sorts of things. If you go to www.AversaEstateSales.Com right away, you will find pictures of the three Snow White cels, all Dwarf images. They are still up for grabs. I met Manuel, or Manny as they used to call him, many years ago when I visited the ramshackle building that held the Disney comic strip department on the lot in Burbank. I also met Floyd Gottfredson that day, I was absolutely in awe of him. Meeting Floyd for me was better than meeting Clark Gable, or Ronald Colman! He was such a modest man, who drew his Mickey dailies with a crippled hand. Imagine that beautiful ink line coming from a hand that was too crippled to be good for anything but holding the pen! Manny told me that Floyd was the grand old man of the department, and much admired by all. Manny and his wife lived at 15215 Marlin Place in Van Nuys, should any of you want to make a pilgrimage to the shrine!