Mark Kausler’s CatBlog

Sagendorf Back When

Hi Folks, ever wonder what some famous comic strip cartoonists did between gigs or on the side for extra income? Here is an example of Bud Sagendorf’s comic book work from Coo-Coo Comics #4, March 1943. Tom Sims and Bela Zaboly were doing the Popeye comic strip at the time, I’m not sure if Sagendorf had started to do original work for Popeye comic books in 1943. Segar’s influence on his drawing is very much in evidence here, as is the unique “slant” on the Japanese in American comic books during World War Two. Here a Japanese spy wants to steal the four-legged chicken that Dusty and Littlechief are breeding, shades of Bernice the Whiffle Hen from “Thimble Theater”! I’ll run the next two pages in the next post.

In answer to a question from a reader, “Cinder the Cat” was originally published in 1931 by the American Book Company, written by Miriam Blanton Huber (any relation to Larry or Jack Huber I wonder?) and illustrated by A. Gladys Peck. It was one of the early books to use a small vocabulary of 242 words, to make it easy for grade school children to read. I have posted a scan of pages 6 and 7 this week, with Cinder getting friendly with Mr. Cook, the owner of the toy store where Cinder lives.

Comic strips this week are Marvelous Mike from 1-14 to 1-19-1957, Mr. Kimball’s doctor convinces Kimball that Cliff is trying to drive him crazy. Mike visits Mr. Kimball and sets him straight, the dialog in the last panel of 1-19 reads: “…the truth, as you see I am perfectly…” Krazy Kats are from 6-5 to 6-10-1939, this week Garge explores the worlds of Army worms and Doves of Peace, no doubt reflecting the state of the world in 1939 as war clouds grew stormy in Europe. I was a long time getting this post together, it was hard to get to the scanner which is in a remote location. Now I have enough material to last for a while. I will double-check that scene in “Saturday Evening Puss” that I believe was shared by Ken Muse and Ed Barge. Steven thinks it’s all Ken Muse. May the great comic “muse” watch over all my readers until we meet again.

Cinder comes back

Well, here’s another draft I put together for the Tom and Jerry cartoon “Saturday Evening Puss”, see if you agree with my animator choices:

Tom Sneaks thru house–Ed Barge

Mammy puts on jewelry–Ken Muse

Mammy Struts–Ed Barge

Mammy Struts Past Tom in Basket–Barge

Mammy Out Door–Barge

Tom imitates Mammy’s strut, laughs–Barge

Tom Whistles–Barge

Cats in Trash Cans–Barge

Tom holds up sign, “O.K. for Party”–Barge

Cats thru window–Muse

Cats Play Instruments–Muse

Tom out of kitchen with sandwiches–Muse

Tom feeds cats pies and sandwiches–Muse

Jerry’s head changes shape–Muse

Jerry yells at Tom’s feet–Barge

Jerry scolds Tom, standing on cymbal–Muse/Barge

Cats flip Jerry up in the air–Barge

Jerry lands in record player needles–Barge

Jerry smashes Meathead’s fingers in Piano lid–Spence

Three cats smash into zipped-up mouse-hole, become one cat–Spence

Tom puts stylus back on record–Spence

Jerry pulls plug out of wall–Spence

Little Cat tries to smash Jerry with trash can lid–Spence

Cats chase Jerry, all smash into Dutch door–Spence

Jerry hides behind curtain, smashes little cat in the face with trash can lid–Spence

Cats chase Jerry into Venetian blind–Spence

Tom ties Jerry with blind cord–Spence

Jerry dangles from cord–Spence

Tom plays cat’s tail–Muse

Orange cat plays little cat’s whiskers–Muse

Jerry crawls like a worm, tied up in cord, makes phone call–Barge

Mammy playing cards–Spence

Mammy runs to and away from camera–Spence

Mammy crashes thru front door, catches Tom by the tail–Barge

Totem Pole gag–Barge

Mammy plays records–Barge

Jerry’s head changes shape again–Muse

I’ve put up another page from the old school reader: “Cinder the Cat”. My wife and I both love black cats, see Cathy’s “Mangy” pages in earlier posts. This week’s strips are Marvelous Mike from 1-7-1957 to 1-12, Mike goes to the office with Cliff and nearly drives Mr. Kimball nuts! At this point, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch moved Mike off the color page and printed the strip in black and white at a larger size. Too bad they didn’t keep it that way! Krazy Kat this week should be titled “Habits”, from 5-29-1939 to 6/3. Pupp and Ignatz try to change their ways, Mrs. Kwakk-Wakk is satisfied with herself as she is. Ya’ll take care until next time!

Happy Blog Year!

In answer to reader Steven’s request, here is a “draft” that I put together on the Tom and Jerry cartoon, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse”. Please excuse me if this has been done by somebody else on some blog somewhere, I can’t read ’em all! Here ’tis:

Milkman delivers bottles–Al Grandmain

Tom through door with milk, Tom behind chair–Pete Burness

Tom lapping milk–Ray Patterson

Tom pushing bureau–Ed Barge

Jerry sipping straw–Ed Barge

Tom piling up suitcases–Ed Barge

Tom does multiple eye take–Pete Burness

Tom throws trunk in basement–Barge

Tom with milk–Barge

Tom and Jerry at wall safe–Mike Lah

Tom stirring chemicals with shadow behind him–Ken Muse

Fly drinking chemical–Muse

Tom with chemicals in milk bubbling–Muse

Jerry drinking tainted milk–Muse

Jerry becomes a muscle mouse–Muse

Jerry tears up phone book–Al Grandmain

Tom hits Jerry with poker–Grandmain

Tom braces door, door smashes down–Mike Lah

Jerry pulls Tom through wall safe–Mike Lah

Jerry turns back into himself–Lah

Jerry drinks again–Lah

Jerry body slams Tom–Lah

Jerry back to himself, ties Tom’s whiskers–Lah

Tom chases Jerry, waffle iron gag–Ed Barge

Jerry kicks Tom into refrigerator–Barge

Jerry remixes formula–Muse

Tom drinks–Muse

Tom swells bigger–Muse

Tiny Tom–Muse

Jerry chases Tom with flyswatter–Muse

There you have it, Steven, hope you agree with most of my animator scene assignments on this cartoon. I’m a bit reluctant to post a lot of my hard-won animation data on the blog, because there is too much free information on the web as it is. I won’t be doing this too often, so don’t get used to it!

I’ve posted the front cover to an old school reader called “Cinder the Cat”, just because I like it. It has some charming illustrations inside, one of which I’ll post next time. The comics for this week are: Marvelous Mike 12-31-1956, 1-2-1957 to 1-5. January 1st is missing, because the Post-Dispatch did not publish that day. Cliff makes a New Year’s resolution to spend more time with Mike and Merrie, but his boss Mr. Kimball won’t let him take a 2 week’s winter vacation. In a major turning point in the strip, Mike speaks directly to Cliff on Jan. 5th, there is no turning back from this point on, Cliff knows now for certain that Mike can talk! Krazy Kat from 5-22-1939 to 5-27 could be called “Photo Plot”, Ignatz takes a compromising photo of Offisa Pupp asleep on the job, and Mrs. Kwakk-Wakk takes her own photo of Ignatz taking the picture to prove that it’s really the Pupp napping. A lawyer gets involved, to the confusion of all. I didn’t know that Krazy was the editor of the Coconino County paper! A Happy New Year to you all. Thanks for the great comments on my piece on Lyn Joy Kroeger last week (year).

This just in: My friend and cartoon scholar Mike Kazahleh wrote me last night that his educated guess is that Al Grandmain was an effects animator at MGM, who received credit with the character animators as a favor from Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna for all his work on the effects in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse. There are a lot of special lighting effects, especially when Tom is mixing his chemicals in the water dish, and the exploding effects when Jerry takes a drink of the stuff, or the formula wears off and he goes back to normal. My only trouble with Mike’s theory is that most of the time, the effects in Tom and Jerry cartoons are handled by the character animators. Mike Lah had a special way of handling water, for instance. When the droplets break up on a Lah scene, they are in the shapes of jacks from the child’s game. Irv Spence always handled his shock effects and speed lines in what amounted to his graphic signature. As a side issue, some of the best water effects are in the Barney Bear cartoon: Goggle Fishing Bear. It’s my theory that Arnold Gillespie, who later did some effects on live action pictures, animated the water in Goggle Fishing Bear. My educated guess is that Al Grandmain was a character animator, but a “junior” animator, who may have worked his way up from an assistant. I believe he animated the milkman and Jerry tearing the phonebook by process of elimination, since I can identify the work of Burness, Muse, Barge and Mike Lah fairly accurately. Al didn’t work on too many Tom and Jerrys, Dr. Jekyll, Just Ducky, Safety Second and The Cat and the Mermouse. If the effects animator theory is correct, Safety Second and the Mermouse cartoon have a lot of explosion and underwater effects, Just Ducky has water effects to accompany the ducklings swimming in a pond. So who knows for sure? Step right up and make some comments! Or write to me at blogmolasses@att.net.

Remembering Lyn Joy

Hello Everyone! It’s almost Christmas Eve, the wood is gathered in against the approaching storm and we have food to eat, how blessed we are! I send a lot of Christmas cards around this time each year, and I think about friends I still hear from, and friends who are gone. Lyn Joy Kroeger was a friend who I heard from every Christmas for the past 20 years. She was my assistant animator and inbetweener on a few free-lance commercials I did for Duck Soup and Bob Kurtz in the 1970s. She started doing inbetweens on Lady and the Tramp in 1954. She left Disney’s after Lady wrapped and worked at a lot of the small studios, Quartet Films (Mike Lah), The Haboush Company, Murakami-Wolf, Levitow-Hansen, Duck Soup and Hanna-Barbera. She stopped doing animation in 1984, and passed away in March of this year at the age of 77. I used to drop off and pick up work from her at her house over on Figueroa St., which she inherited from her mother. It was a large old house in a rather bad neighborhood, with bars on all the windows and doors. She lived alone with her huge great dane, Tarzan IV, who was almost as big as she was, and Lyn Joy was quite tall. Lyn had at least six dogs named “Tarzan”, all fierce looking, but gentle once you got in the house. She liked to go walking through the neighborhood, and nobody bothered her with Tarzan along. Lyn was a very talented artist, who made “assemblages” out of her huge collection of household brick-a-brack. She did three-dimensional canvases that resembled Magritte’s floating heads and bowler hats, and made a lot of fake bowls of soup with clear resin; many of the bowls had little toy ducks floating in them (duck soup). The house was very large, the upstairs was filled with “junk”, things that had belonged to her mother, and things Lyn Joy found around the neighborhood, materials she used in her art. All of her Christmas cards were made out of old cards that were re-assembled to make new ones. She was an unrepentant individual, she was unhappily married at least once, and was quite a striking beauty when she worked at Disney in the 1950s (she appeared in person on a You Bet Your Life episode, where she traded quips with Groucho). Even though she had been through a lot of bitter experiences at the hands of the men in her life, Lyn Joy’s attitude was self-satiric, she could stand outside of her life and make fun of it and herself without losing your respect in any way (with Tarzan around, you’d BETTER have respect). Her drawing was very good, she did a great job on the commercial jobs we shared. I last heard from her at Christmas, 2005. She always sent letters and cartoons she had drawn along with her card, usually reacting to the cards I sent to her. Here are a few excerpts from her 2005 card:

Good News              Bad News

I’m Still Here           It Ain’t What It Use to Be

I Followed My Dream          I’m seeking SSI

I’m Still Trucking        I have fallen behind and can’t catch up

I Have a 1,000 Boxes of Collectables    My House Is A Mess

I Do Mom Art        They’re Only Buying Pop Art

2 of my 3 Toilets Are Working       I Have an Active Bladder

Tarzan and I Go Walking      The Time Limit is 30″

The Roof Doesn’t Leak        There’s A Lien On the House

You see what I mean about her sense of humor? Even though she was in reduced circumstances, she could de-fuse bad situations with her existential jokes. I think if Lyn Joy had not been as shy and embattled as she was, she could have been a fine stand-up comedian. Here are a couple of her humorous and bitter paragraphs:

“From the Baby’s View”–A Womb of One’s Own

1-26-05: Most men most of the time have no real understanding about women. They all have this emotional, sometimes a barrier, reaction to the first experience of action in his beginning namely, “Mother”….and how she related to him. Was it a good, happy experience, or was it hell on Earth…& this “Chinese Water Torture” would go on intensely for the first 5 yrs.

Post Disney  9-14-05

A. It’s A Dog Eat Dog World–Competitive

It’s A Dog Chases Cat World–he wants HER

But For What? To Kill, or Serve and Protect?

It’s a Dog Chase Pussy World–To Possess, Abuse, Use, Control

Be A Dog in the Manger?

Her attitude toward the men in her life, certainly comes through here, but you can perceive the artist in her, and her appreciation of childhood imprinting as a prime directive of mature sexual attitudes. Lyn Joy had not only a stormy relationship with men, but she evidently had battles with her mother as well. I never met her mother, but her influence was all around Lyn, the house, and all of her mother’s old things were with her all her life, and she made art out of all of it. Here’s a little of her last letter to me:

“..Tarzan -Good Dog & I are still hanging out, hanging in there. I’m 75, man, one slows down, so make hay & ha while you’re still in the running. I wish I had more time to draw, but everyday chores is a time thief…You, Mark, working with, for you–one of the nicest experiences I have had in my life.  You’re honest and you didn’t try to beat me out of anything. I’m sure you’re aware of how bad & cruel it is, but you shine like a rose, mixing metaphors—I like. …If the shoe fits, send it to the funny farm. Take Care…. Love, it’s a Lyn Joy & Tarzan VI”

I haven’t changed Lyn’s punctuation or spelling, I think it should be read just as she wrote it down. Lyn Joy Kroeger was one of the many artists who worked in the “rank and file” of the business, she never animated on professional jobs, but did finish one experimental film: “Mandela”, which may be on You Tube someplace. It was a film made of abstract designs, I can’t remember if the soundtrack was Ravi Shankar or not, but I’m sure you get the general idea of the film. It aired at least once on Los Angeles TV.  Most of all, her odd and unique life was her art. I have no idea what happened to her in 2006 and 2007, I didn’t hear from her and should have suspected something. I hope she had someone to care for her, when I knew her she didn’t have any family except for Tarzan, and I believe no close friends. She was a “prickly” person, but a very dear one. I miss her very much, especially at Christmas.

This week’s comics are the last two pages of Jim Tyer’s Hennery Hound from Barnyard Comics #7, on page 6, Hennery runs out of the graveyard so fast that he leaves his clothes behind. This story is signed “J.T.” Marvelous Mike this week is only four episodes. The strips from 12-25 and 12-28-1956 are missing, because the Post-Dispatch didn’t publish on Christmas, and the episode for the 28th was not in the microfilm. The homeless boy, Billy and his mom, Ellie, are re-united with Don, their long-lost papa. Cliff Crump lands the International Department Stores account, because amnesia victim Don was the President of the IDS. Mike solved the whole case through Billy’s locket, what a genius! Krazy Kat is from 5-15 to 5-20-1939, this week’s storylines are “Firecracker Crack-Ups” and  “Top Hat and Bricks”. Enjoy the strips, may Santa bring us World Peace. Love and Joy to all.

Gallery Christmas Cat

Very busy around here getting ready for Christmas. Our Catblog post leads off with a painting by my wife Cathy called “Gallery Cat”. We encountered this sleepy citizen in a chair in the middle of a bustling art gallery near Temecula a few years ago. Cathy did this small oil painting later from a photo that we made of the gallery’s mascot. I like the bright red that she used behind the black and white cat, it also feels in keeping with the season.

Our comics this week are the third and fourth pages of “Hennery Hound” by Jim Tyer from Barnyard Comics #7. Hennery tries to escape the noise pollution in the movie theater, the park and the library, with no luck. I wonder how he would have reacted to cel phones? Especially after next February.

Marvelous Mike from 12-17 to 12-22-1956 continues the Christmas tale we started last time. Mike and Merrie are trying to get the homeless boy and his mother to their house for Christmas, but have to get their idea past the depressed Cliff, who can’t seem to catch a break landing the International Department Stores account. Krazy Kat this week from 5-8 to 5-13-1939 is about, what else?, bricks! I especially like 5-12, with the unusual pose of Krazy winding up to toss a brick at Ignatz! It looks like Los Angeles is in for torrential rains the next few days. I sure hope I can post again here soon, but if you don’t hear from me, I may be dealing with situations. Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah!

Howdy!

Hello, fellow prisoners! Thanks to Mark Evanier’s website, I scored a $10 copy of the new Howdy Doody 40 Episode collection from NBC-Universal. The earliest episode on the collection seems to be from Feb. 1949, when the whole show was done live. You can hear Howdy’s mouth making little clicking sounds on the live microphone, and there are no scenes in these early shows with Bob Smith and Howdy talking in the same set-up. After all, Mr. Smith (as Howdy addresses him in the early shows) did Howdy’s voice live and not being a ventriloquist, he had to do the marionette’s lines off-camera. Bob Keeshan is very funny as Clarabelle the clown, in one episode the clown gets frustrated trying to do a magic trick and spends most of his screen time flailing around on the floor attempting to tie knots in a scarf without actually touching it. Keeshan’s Clarabelle is a small child in a clown suit who speaks through his horns. Paradoxically, he was the spear-carrier and on-camera engineer for the show as well, producing live rabbits from the Flapdoodle and running old Jones Family and Mickey McGuire silent comedies on the Scopedoodle. The quality of the old kinescopes is pretty sharp for their age and the audio levels are just fine for comfortable listening. This is a 5 disc set, and includes many extras, even the last episode broadcast in 1960. If you love 1950s television, try to pick this one up. It’s a window on a world before the mean-spirited scatology that passes for comedy became the norm in our 21st century world. It’s especially heartening to see the adoring reaction to the family of rabbits that Clarabelle produces from the Flapdoodle from the kids in the Peanut Gallery. They seem enchanted by the family of angoras. Bob Smith was one of the warmest on-air kid’s show hosts ever, he always seemed to have a loving and respectful relationship with the “little guy”, Howdy, which enhances the family atmosphere on the set.  I’ll report on some of the other features in the collection when I get to see them.

Our comics this week are, Hennery Hound from Barnyard Comics #7, by Jim Tyer. It looks like Jim inked this one with a brush. Hennery seems to be a forerunner of Huckleberry Hound, he looks a little like Huck, and is the same hard luck type of character as Huck was in the TV cartoons. His Hippo wife is a very funny touch. When her bridge club steps all over Hennery on the second page, a high-heel goes right into his eye! While we are looking at Tyer, here are the last two pages of the Flebus story, “Thumb’s Up”. I love that distorted thumb on Rudolph, and Flebus as a tall, cranky old man takes the story out with a laugh.

Marvelous Mike this week is from 12-10 to 12-15-1956. In a new story line, Mike wants to feed the homeless on Christmas Day, and finds a needy boy in the local department store that he wants to care for. Liz Crump wants to invite the boy and his mother for Christmas dinner, but Cliff is feeling the pinch financially and his inner Scrooge is emerging. Let’s give a birthday shout out to my brother Kurt (Dec. 10), who braved the somewhat “charged” atmosphere at the downtown St. Louis Public Library to copy all these strips from microfilm for our reading pleasure. Krazy Kat is from 5/1 to 5/6/1939 and continues Mimi the poodle(?)’s appearance from last week. Mimi is a heavy user of “Pomme d’or” perfume, much to Ignatz’s delight. Ig’s wife, Molly, is jealous of Mimi’s perfume and starts to use some of it herself. Garge gets a week’s worth of gags out of these olfactory antics.

Thanksgiving Comics

Hi Ya Pals, Happy Tanks’Givin’. I couldn’t resist reprinting this TV ad from the old St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1956, promoting “The Cisco Kid”. I especially loved the beginning of each episode: “Here’s Adventure! Here’s Romance! Here’s That Robin Hood of the Old West, The Cisco Kid!” Of course Pancho, played by Leo Carrillo, was my favorite character, the funny guy. Westerns have just about vanished from TV now, the younger viewers can’t even relate to them at all. I have a few DVDs of the earliest “Gunsmoke” shows. I think they are the best TV westerns of all, especially the episodes that Sam Peckinpah wrote and that Robert Stevenson directed.

In comics this week, pgs. 3 and 4 of Flebus in “Thumb’s Up”, with a hilarious depiction of corporal punishment by Jim Tyer. Also, the last two pages of Sourpuss in “Moving Day”, evidently by Tom Morrison, veteran Terry storyman and the TV voice of Mighty Mouse. The drawing style is very close to Kuwahara’s, but I defer to Milton Knight’s opinion that the story is Morrison’s. Milton really knows Terry comics and the cartoonists’s graphic thumbprints. Maybe one of you collectors out there can send me a scan of a page of Bob Kuwahara’s comic book work, I feel he must have done some. Marvelous Mike wraps up the Madame Le Moult story in episodes from Dec. 3, 1956 to Dec. 8th. Mike’s psychic abilities actually mystify HIM in this story! Krazy Kat from April 24, 1939 to April 28, 1939 (April 29th is missing) concerns “Mimi”, one of the strangest characters in the strip. Mimi is a French animal of some kind, perhaps a Poodle, who speaks in broadly accented French/English. Everyone in Coconino County seems a little in love with her, in this week’s strips, Krazy Kat is jealous of her. Mimi seems out of place in the desert environment of the Navajo Tribal Park, but most everything in Herriman’s world is one “brick” short of a monument.

Flebus and Iwao

Hi everyone! I’ve been reading a proof copy of a new autobiography by Iwao Takamoto and Michael Mallory called: “Iwao Takamoto: My Life With A Thousand Characters”. It’s going to be published next year by the University of Mississippi. I will admit that I’m not the greatest fan of Iwao’s character designs, but I have a lot of respect for him as an artist. When you read the account of his life, including his experience in Manzanar internment camp during World War Two, you can’t help but empathize with him. I don’t want to reveal too much about the book right now, but I thought it was worth my time to read it. Watch for it next year! THIS year, get yourself a copy of the new Baby Huey comics collection which was compiled by Jerry Beck and Leslie Cabarga. It’s a real trove of Huey art and lore, the reproductions are from high quality stats made from the original artwork and there are lots of Dave Tendlar and Marty Taras pages along with excerpts from interviews with these two great cartoonists. Pick it up if you can, I’m really enjoying it. Marty Taras did that wild scene in “Quack A Doodle Doo” (1950) when Huey pulls the fur off Mr. Fox’s head and the fur resembles a mask! The arcs and knowledge of weight and timing delay makes this scene fun to watch. Marty was one of the greatest New York animators, and his comics are very good too.

This week’s comics are the first two pages of Flebus in “Thumb’s Up” from a Mighty Mouse Fun Club Magazine. Of course it’s drawn by Jim Tyer, no one drew Flebus with as much flair and comic expression as Jim. When I was a child, I used to draw Flebus over and over again. He seemed so simple to draw, just a walking head really. I could never get him as funny as Tyer made him, Flebus is a lot harder to get down than you’d think. I have also re-printed the third and fourth pages of Sourpuss in “Moving Day” from the Mighty Mouse Fun Club Magazine. I still haven’t heard from anyone about whether this is Bob Kuwahara’s art or not. Please let me know what you think.

The dailies are Marvelous Mike from 11/26/1956 to 12/1. The phony mediums persist as Mike breaks up the seance of Madame Le Moult! Krazy Kat from 4/17/1939 to 4/22, the story this time could be called “Devil or Angel”. You decide.

Bob Kuwahara’s Terrytoons Comics

Hi Folks, this week I’m going to ask a few questions about Bob Kuwahara, who drew the Marvelous Mike strip that we feature each week. He worked for Paul Terry in New York and later was part of the Gene Deitch Terrytoons and Bill Weiss shops, where he created Hashimoto the Mouse for theatrical release. I think he also contributed to the St. John Publishing and Pines Terrytoons comics, drawing mainly Gandy and Sourpuss stories. I’m reprinting the first two pages of a Sourpuss story called “Moving Day”, in an attempt to nail Kuwahara’s contribution. Is this his drawing, and writing too? It sure looks like it to me. Marvelous Mike is a bit more ambitious in the staging and story department, but it paid better than the comic book work and was Bob’s personal creation. If any of you Terry experts would help me out on this, we fans of obscure panels would love to find out!

In addition to “Moving Day”, I’ve reprinted the final page of “Tippy Takes A Trip” from Coo-Coo Comics #16, March 1945, drawn by Jim Tyer: Tippy trades Oatmeal for Ice Cream with the Star King, but wakes up Issac Newton style. Marvelous Mike this week is from 11/19/1956 to 11/24/1956, Mike is determined to expose the fake mystics that have moved in next door to the Crumps: Madame Le Moult and Cie. The Mike episode from 11/22 was missing from the Post-Dispatch microfilm, so I substituted a better scan of the 11/3/1956 strip.  Krazy Kat is from 4/10/1939 to 4/15 this week, with an obscure set of jokes revolving around “gloom clouds”. Sometimes these clouds are generated by emotion, and sometimes they are faked by smuge pots. Any California or Florida resident is familiar with them, they keep the citrus trees warm on frosty nights. This is certainly one of the more mysterious KK sequences. Even Ignatz’s brick is gloomy at the end of the week’s strips.

Any comments, just post below, or write to me at blogmolasses@att.net. Please write especially if you know anything about the Bob Kuwahara Terry comics!

Vote!

So, don’t just sit there, get down to the polls! Please take something to read with you, the lines could be long; maybe you can read this blog while you are waiting for a Diebolt if you have a Blackberry or Laptop. Above all, don’t kill any kittens. Please check your ballot carefully after voting, we’re trying not to let the Repub-bots steal another election.

This week’s comics are “Tippy Takes A Trip”, pages four and five from Coo-Coo comics #16, March 1945, art by Jim Tyer. Tippy comes to the star of his dreams, where the inhabitants want to trade candy for spinach and oatmeal. Marvelous Mike this week is from 11/12 to 11/17/1956 and concludes the “Relaxo” storyline and begins a new tale, “Madame Le Moult”. It looks like vaguely sinister “Cold War” types are moving in next door to the Crumps.  Krazy Kat is from 4/3 to 4/8/1939. The first three strips are about Krazy Kat kneading bread dough from every angle to avoid back strain, and the week concludes with Ignatz sprung from jail by door mice! Garge loved that pun. Speaking of puns, I’ll be “Barack” next week, remember to go to the polls and vote!

    Tues. Night, Thanks for not killing the kittens, fellow voters! I hope Barack Obama will be a great President!

Getting Tyer-ed

Hi Reader(s)! I have had some quality responses to the old blog from Dan Variano and Bob Jaques. Dan likes the Rock and Rollo story from Felix #8, the concluding page is north of this text. He points out that the wallpapering gag is very similar to the Heckle and Jeckle story that Tyer did called “The Misdirected Scarecrow”. If you want to compare the stories, head over to www.animationarchive.org/2006/06/media-jim-tyer-comic-books.html. There you can see several Tyer stories, including the Heckle and Jeckle. The wallpaper idea is much funnier and more fleshed-out in the H and J, but it seems to confirm that Jim wrote a lot of his own stories. I can’t tell if he wrote “Tippy Takes A Trip” from Coo-Coo Comics #16 above, but it is certainly one of his earlier epics. If any of you readers would like to see them, I can reprint his Felix Four-Color stories which he drew together with Joe Oriolo and Otto Messmer. I believe they are Tyer’s first comic book work. I would speculate that he did some newspaper cartooning in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but I’ve never seen any of it. Bob Jaques would like to see a Tyer index of all his comic book work, I don’t have it all, but for a real hard core collector like Milton Knight, or Marc Schirmeister that would be a slam. Thanks to you guys for reading this here tattered blog!

     The dailies this week are Marvelous Mike from November THIRD through Nov. 10, 1956.  I screwed up last week and left a strip out, please excuse the poor repro, I couldn’t get to the scanner and had to paste a copy together from the camera. Relaxo tonic has some amazing properties, as Mike is about to discover in this week’s strips. Now you can actually SEE Mr. Fencemetal packing up to leave “bag and baggage”. What a great era when all a crook had to do was LOOK at a letter from the Better Business Bureau to be scared out of town. Nobody cares about the BBB in our Super Robber Barons age. They aren’t scared of the League of Women Voters, either, more’s the pity.

Krazy Kat this week is from 3/27/1939 to 4/1.  Offissa Pupp actually arrests Ignatz’s brick, and the brick is represented by Lawyer Foxx Potts. Ignatz “springs’ the brick at the end of the sequence. Does anyone know what the reference to “Spaniola” means in the 3/28 strip? Write in and tell me, either post below or write to blogmolasses@att.net. Enjoy the strips!

Managing Comments, etc.

Hi Folk! I’m learning how to manage comments, now that WordPress is screening them for me. I’m getting the usual amount of “crank” emails, notably from Hotmail addresses. It seems that “sonic 3D”, “Vauen”, “Converse37”, “Butler Shrimp” and “Fosteria Glass Ware” are trying to jam all the comments with emails that seem to advertise something. Hotmail and Geocities seem to be the source of most of these attempts at jamming up my blog. SO you $$##((&& of b***%%%es, cut it out! The most recent allowed comments came from Thad and Paul Etcheverry, under the Jerry Lewis post, so if you want to read what they had to say, scroll on down there. Please feel free to comment on anything, I now know how to edit the comments. You can also write to me at blogmolasses@att.net.

The comics this week feature the start of a Jim Tyer story from Coo-Coo comics #16, from March, 1945. This story seems to have been influential on Milton Knight, especially that crazy planet Saturn in the first panel. Come join Tippy as he voyages among the solar system in the next few weeks.  MARVELOUS MIKE this week is from 10/29/1956 to 11/3, Cliff’s old friend Fencemetal, palms off his tonic formula, “Relaxo” on Crump’s boss, Mr. Kimball, then vanishes “bag and baggage”. Of course, Mike is on hand, quoting from Alexander Pope, and ready to help his “dad” out. KRAZY KAT this week is from 3/20 to 3/25/1939, and features Offissa Pupp wagering dimes on Ignatz’s well-worn behavior of tossing bricks, leaving poor Krazy weeping at the end of the sequence. We end with the next two pages of the “Rock and Rollo” story “Too Much Energy” from Felix #8 that we began last week. Rock really gets pepped up on the Professor’s formula and wall papers the whole house, including the TV screen! Exciting conclusion of this Tyer mini-story next week.

For Your Reading Pleasure

Hi Reader(s), in this crazy world it’s hard to tell if we will be with each other from one week to the next, so without further adieu, here are this week’s comics!

The final page of the final published Mangy story: “Mangy’s Stormy Night”, from Mad Raccoons #7 leads off. Mangy was only trying to warn Virgil about his leaky roof. I love Cathy’s drawings of Mangy, especially the sleeping pose on the bed in the last panel. This will be the last appearance of Mangy in this blog, unless I can talk Cathy into doing more.

Marvelous Mike this week is from 10/22-10/29/1956 and features Cliff Crump’s old school chum, Edgar Fencemetal. I wonder if Bob Kuwahara came up with all the names for his characters himself? Fencemetal has a product for Mr. Kimball, Cliff’s boss, to market, and Edgar moves right in on the Crump’s, much to Liz’s disgust.

Krazy Kat (from 3/13-3/18/1939) is a story based on the old saying: “A Cat May Look At A King”, except in this case it’s a Queen Bee that’s the recipient of all the ogling. 3-16 is especially interesting, as Krazy’s gender is called into question by Ignatz.

From Dell Felix #8 we have the final page of “Looks Are Deceiving” by Jim Tyer. Felix slammed Pussyfoot with a Judo manoeuver. This is the last Felix page that Jim Tyer ever drew, as far as I know, by Felix #9, he was out of the book, never to return. Tyer did do one last story in #8, however, featuring Rock and Rollo. It’s called “Too Much Energy”, and is a drug story featuring a new character called “Professor Sauerkraut”, a funny design drawn in Tyer’s “modern but ancient” style. See more of Rock’s antics next week!

Comments may be made right below, or write to me at blogmolasses@att.net.

Not Much

Hi Reader (s). Sorry it’s been a long time since my last post, but I needed to scan some more material and the scanner is far away. Now at last I have more comics to entertain you with. A lot of scary stuff going on with the nation and the ecomomy. I believe it’s compounded by having a Presidential election at the same time as the Stock Market and Credit problems. It’s really hard to know who or what to believe. I have my own theory of economics, I call it the “cat food” theory. A few years ago, some poison meat crept into the pet food industry by way of China and Canada, then came across the border into the U.S. market. A lot of compromised cat food and dog food disappeared from store shelves, and when the kibble settled, what had been a fairly competitive market, with at least five manufacturers of pet food, shrunk to three, two national brands and one store brand. The two pet food makers, and others, who had trouble with their products, never returned. Cat food used to be 25 to 35 cents before the big shakeout, now it’s 50 cents a can and up, why? Reduced competition. The current economic crisis is shaking down the bank industry with the “poison” of bad mortgage loans made during an artificially created housing “boom”. This poison is now spreading through the banking industry and economy, felling one big bank after another. When the gold dust settles, it looks like we will have a lot fewer (and bigger) banks making a lot fewer loans. It will be harder to qualify for a loan and the interest rates will be higher. Why? Reduced competition.  Was this whole crisis engineered? You be the judge as you buy your 50 cent can of cat food made by either Purina or Friskies (no other choice around here), and try to get a small loan from an institution “too big to fail”.

        In this week’s comics, we have the last Mangy story to see print, originally in MAD RACCOONS #7, I call it “Mangy’s Stormy Night”. It’s a charming and beautifully inked comic story by Cathy Hill. I especially love the beautiful use of black in the first page as Mangy is awakened by the lightning flash. Page two is fun to look at as well, as Mangy leans over Virgil with her food bowl in the first panel. I like the distortion Cathy put into that drawing, as Mangy’s head moves toward Virgil’s nose. The conclusion of this story will be in the next post. Marvelous Mike this week is from 10/15 to 10/20/1956. I think this is the windup to the “Big Donation” story. Mike solves Cliff’s amnesia with the old cartoon cure, a hammer blow to Cliff’s head. When he awakens, Cliff finds that Mike has won the contest for him but he still doesn’t believe it. Krazy Kat is from 3/6 to 3/11/1939 and involves Ignatz’s two pals, Church and Door Mouse. They make things very confusing for Offissa Pupp. “Looks Are Deceiving” continues from Felix #8 by Jim Tyer. The drawing and staging are up with Tyer’s best stuff here, Pussyfoot’s laughing poses are amusing to look at and the inking is really dynamic. I like the comic action of Felix spinning the cocky Pussyfoot around by his tail in the second page, so typical of Tyer’s animation. I hope you enjoy the comics, there will be some more vintage Tyer to come after Felix #8. Please come back and see. If anybody asks you what you’re doing when reading this humble blog, just say “Not Much”. Any comments, either click the link below or write me at blogmolasses@att.net.

Best of the Best!

Hi Everyone! At the Huntington Beach Plein Air Painting Event last weekend, my wife Cathy painted outdoors on Saturday, Sept. 13th, painting sights on the streets of Huntington Beach. She settled on a charming little bungalow court called the “Beach Court”, built in 1923 on 6th street. There were dark, cool shadows on the stucco walls outside the courtyard, and the walls of two of the bungalows inside the courtyard were glowing invitingly in the bright afternoon sun. She set up her easel outside the walls on the street and painted the scene in oil, capturing the welcoming charm of the old bungalow court. At the end of the afternoon, she turned her painting in to the Huntington Beach Art Center to be judged in the “Painting In The Streets” competition, the first award the Art Center has made for a (so-called) “quick draw”. This “quick draw” was about the slowest one Cathy has ever been part of, she had about four hours to create her painting, instead of only one or two hours. When the judging was complete, she found she had won the top prize, called “The Best of the Best”. The prize, a check! She thought the title of the prize, “The Best of the Best”, was a bit immodest, but winning a check for a “quick draw” painting was a most joyous and momentous occasion! Her fellow painters, such as Michael Situ and Val Carson, effusively congratulated her with hugs and smiles. There is such good will and fellowship among fine artists. They are all up against the same difficult market and tight deadlines in painting competitions, but they still love to be part of them. Your appreciation of your surroundings is so greatly enhanced by sitting or standing in front of them and capturing their beauty on canvas or paper. Cathy and I have developed a real love for Huntington Beach over the three years we have painted in this event! From it’s charming pier, to the Dog Beach, old Ice House, Library Park, Equestrian center and of course, the Pacific Ocean and the surfers, there is a lot of light and subject matter to cover!

On Sunday the 14th, we went to the “Friends of the Rock” celebration in Eagle Rock. I wish more people would have turned out for the event; earlier in the day there were very few visitors. Later in the afternoon, towards the Gala, more people showed up and the President of the Eagle Rock Historical Society bought two of my watercolors! The money will help the preservation of the Eagle Rock. I helped a little in organizing the event, by talking to some musicians who play classical woodwinds and enticing them into playing for the customers for free! For their trouble they got some “CERB” T-shirts, food and champagne. Their music made us feel at peace and created an atmosphere of artful reflection, that’s sales to you! I hope the event did some good, it was wonderful to be there. Cathy and I painted some still life studies of succulent plants that were also on sale, along with our paintings. I hope some of you readers stopped by the GLAD center that day.

Another giant has passed on, George Putnam, the veteran newscaster and Southern California anchor since the early 1950s, and prominent in New York radio and the Movietone newsreels before that. He lived to be 94, and in that time met and interviewed many prominent men and women, even narrowly escaping the romantic clutches of Mae West! He knew W.C. Handy (as did Grim Natwick), Eleanor Roosevelt, H.V. Kaltenborn, Graham McNamee, every U.S. President since Herbert Hoover, Mort Sahl and many many others. To me, he WAS the voice of Southern California, and what a voice. He had an almost musical way of speaking that really drew me in. I only saw him in person one time, when he was broadcasting from the Arco plaza in downtown Los Angeles. He had a glass studio that was visible from the outside. I was going to my parked car in the plaza, and noticed him as I was opening the door. I waved to him, and he waved back with a big smile. He had no idea who I was, but was friendly to me as a spectator. In the many years that have passed since that time, I’ve heard George on television, and more importantly, on the radio. His radio show was the most fun, and he was obviously more relaxed off the TV cameras. He liked to laugh and joked a lot with his long-time co-host, Chuck Wilder. George liked to tell stories of his ranch in Chino, California, his many horses, thirty cats, and at least that many dogs. He rode his palomino horse every year in the Rose Parade until the horse passed on. If you listened carefully to his radio broadcasts from the Chino ranch, you could hear his pet exotic birds in the background chirping away, almost like the audio atmosphere of a Hindu or Buddhist temple. At first, George’s radio show was about a lot of different subjects, both personal and political. In the last twenty years, his show was about mostly one controversial subject, illegal immigration. He talked every day about the “invasion” of Southern California by illegals, mostly from Mexico, of course. George paid the price in his prestige by being marginalized by the news media for his one-note stridency on the issue, but in recent years, with the threat of terrorism and the very real overloading of our public schools and health-care system in California by the undocumented, George’s subject matter became timely. Let’s face it, George was a right-winger, and I am not a fan of most right-wing talk show hosts. I think Rush Limbaugh should be deported! George had a talk show on L.A. television in the late 1960’s with Mort Sahl called “Both Sides Now”, named after the Joni Mitchell song. You can probably guess who took what side of the issues at hand. I have an out-take from this show on video tape, in which Mort and George almost came to blows over an issue. Mort yelled at George: “Back up, Godzilla, or I’ll pick ya up with a sieve!” George responded in a hurt fashion, “Cut the tape, there’s no sense in proceeding…You’re a damned fool, Mort!” Years later, Mort Sahl was a frequent caller on George’s radio show, however. Evidently, even those on the left could fight and disagree with Putnam, yet remain friends. George had nothing but kind things to say about Sahl on his radio show. To me, George Putnam’s voice was sort of like the Santa Monica or San Gabriel mountains, majestic and seemingly eternal. His voice was stilled on Sept. 12th, 2008, not eternal after all. It’s hard to convey how much I will miss him, I listened to his last broadcast today in re-run from July 14th, when he celebrated his final birthday on the air. His voice was a bit unsteady due to his failing health, but still strong, he took a call from fellow animal-lover Doris Day, and joked with her about dancing with her mother! He finished the broadcast with a jolly anecdote about interviewing Eleanor Roosevelt, in which she told George, “Now don’t let me get too high and squeaky, my voice always gets too high when I get excited, just wave me down when I do that.” George chuckled as he remembered how he had to do just that. Then he signed off with a “see you then”. That was the last time he would ever say those words on the air. Chuck Wilder joked that the Glendale fire department wouldn’t let him light George’s birthday cake! Goodbye, George.

The comics this week are, the last two pages of “Mangy’s Blues”, by Cathy Hill. Mangy is tossed out by Virgil, gets her dinner, rejects her dinner (cats do that), and then decides to spread her greatness around to the other raccoons some more, making a circular conclusion to the story. We will start a new Mangy tale next week, I hope you enjoy them. MARVELOUS MIKE this week (10/8 to 10/13/1956) continues the “Big Donation” quiz program story. Clifford Crump, suffering from amnesia, actually has a conversation with Mike. Mike feels safe, knowing Cliff will recover eventually from his amnesia and forget all about his son’s power of speech. Mike agrees to provide the answers in the quiz to his “dad”, look for yourself! In Krazy Kat (2-27 to 3/4/1939), I call the story line: “Watch the Birdie”, as Pupp tries to distract Ignatz from his terra cotta tossing with birds, mechanical and otherwise. Felix the Cat re-appears in the last page of “A Biscuit, A Basket” from #7, gee, Kitty’s a good sport about her cooking! In the first page of what turned out to by Jim Tyer’s final Felix story, “Looks Are Deceiving” (Felix #8), Kitty and Pussyfoot co-star. Kitty is really getting Boop-ish in this story. I wonder if John Stanley wrote these? Remember, you may leave comments right here, or write me at blogmolasses@att.net.