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)Â :
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!
Stan Phillips’s Estate Sale
Hi Readers,
Last Friday, June 19th, I drove out near Granada Hills to an estate sale I came across in the Pennysaver. It stated that it was the estate of an animator, with artwork, film equipment and 35 and 16mm films! The Pennysaver listed the wrong address on Darla Ave., but I could tell from the people filing in and out that I’d come to the right house. It was a typical Valley residence, ranch style, large airy living room and many small rooms to be used for bed and utility. It turned out to be Stan Phillips’s house. Stan Phillips had a company of his own for several years in Colorado called Stan Phillips and Associates. He made non-theatrical cartoon short subjects and commercials, mostly for local clients. He made WATER FOLLIES and A SNORT HISTORY in the early 1970s. Stan animated WATER FOLLIES (gags concerning water conservation) and Pat Oliphant, the famous editorial cartoonist animated A SNORT HISTORY (about DUI through history). Prints of these two films show up on Ebay quite often. Stan gave employment to a good friend of mine in New Mexico many times. Evidently, Stan moved out to Granada Hills eventually and worked on such TV properties as “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, “Madeline”, a Christmas special or two, and so forth. He subcontracted storyboards and probably timed out exposure sheets like so many animators have done. It must not have been easy to be a corporate soldier after heading his own company for so long. I never got to meet Stan, but I’ve heard a few stories about him, so I almost feel I know him. His house was full of artwork he’d collected, cels and storyboards from the TV shows he’d worked on, old Indian pottery, an old RCA 16mm projector, 16/35 mm films and old children’s books. Stan had a whole bookcase full of those, including some rare first editions of Dr. Doolittle and Oz books on sale for very little money. He even collected tribal masks from New Guinea; the same sort of thing that Marc Davis used to like. I finally found the films in the garage, being stood over by a very stocky and gruff looking guy (typical film collector), who wouldn’t even let me LOOK at the films. He just glared at me when I explained that I had driven a long way to see what the films’s titles were. “Don’t even THINK about it”, he grunted. He bought them all for $100.00, and they all seemed to be prints or “elements” from Stan’s WATER FOLLIES and A SNORT HISTORY, judging by a sneak peek I took. If Stan had prints of anything else, I’ll never know. I can’t understand collectors with that kind of greedy attitude at all. Film should be shared, it HAS to be run every so often or it develops Vinegar Syndrome and shrivels up and dies. The guy carted off the stuff in a hurry, maybe he slept with it underneath his pillow that night, who knows? So anyway, there is another obscure little chapter in animation history discovered by accident in the Pennysaver, just as I found Ollie Johnston’s estate sale in there some time ago.
      This week’s comics are “Nize Baby” from 4/17/1927:
 Great Red Riding Hood strip by Milt Gross. “Nize Baby” was an offshoot of the “Gross Exaggerations” column that Milt wrote in 1917. The Feitlebaum family started in that column and were in fine slapstick form in the weekly comic page that started on Jan. 2, 1927. You’re seeing strips from early in the run here. It only ran about two years, until Feb. 17, 1929.
 
Krazy is from 9/18 to 9/23/1939, this week the cast pretend to be “Little People”, not exactly children. Mrs. Kwakk-wakk goes back to an egg, and Offissa Pupp and Ignatz play hide and seek. In the 9/23 strip, Offissa quits counting in the hide and seek game to yell “Ya Come”. Is this how they used to say “Ready or Not, hear I come” in the 1930s?
In Marvelous Mike from 4/29 to 5/3/1957, Cliff Crump finds a runaway orphan who has escaped from Mr. Meadows’s foundling home. The orphan explains that they mistreat and SELL the orphans that live at the home! Cliff doesn’t believe the orphan’s story. Another mystery to be solved soon. Remember to click on the thumbnails to see them at reading size.
Post Toasties
I came across a small collection of Milt Gross’s “Nize Baby” from 1927 and 1928, mostly from the Los Angeles Examiner. This week’s strip is from 4-10-1927. I don’t have a scanner big enough, so I took digital photos and tried to enhance them as much as I could. These pages are literally falling apart, that’s why the dark chunks showing through. Those chunks are the rug on my floor.  Also from the LA Examiner, I’ve reprinted part of an article called, “Speaking of Wives of Our Great Men” (4-11-1926), illustrated by the creator of the “flypaper sequence” from “Playful Pluto”, Webb Smith! Webb Smith and Bob Kuwahara, creator of “Marvelous Mike” (who is a pretty “nize baby” himself), both worked in the story department at Disney, Smith was more of a concept artist who wrote with his drawings, and Kuwahara was the first Disney story sketch man, who specialized in visualizing scripted words.Â
     In the daily strips this week, Krazy Kat (9-11 to 9-16-1939), spends the week doing gags with a pop-up toaster that tosses bricks! Marvelous Mike (4-22 to 4-27-1957) this week concludes Mike’s stint as a stockbroker. The baby genius solves the trucking company mess by getting Tempo trucking to ship produce on Overall’s trucks, thus taking advantage of the lower shipping costs. With his managerial chops, he could be another Fred Hoertel! (Family joke.)
Vincent Lives
Hi Everyone,
Vincent Davis’s Memorial was celebrated at the home of LeeAnne and Monte Young out in Woodland Hills on Sunday, June 7th. Vince’s wife Hiroko organized it and almost 100 people turned out. In the photo third from the top, you can see Ted Woolery, Mariko Chouinard, Roger Chouinard and Chuck Swenson. In the fourth photo down, John Kafka and David Brain pose to be digitized. All these good people worked with and knew Vincent, Roger Chouinard went to school with Vince. There were so many old friends there, Libby Simon, Jill Stirdivant, Jim Duffy, Frank Furlong, Fred Wolf, Kunimi Terada, Robert Alvarez among the throng. Lunch was served, mostly from Brent’s Deli, but with a lot of home made concoctions, mostly desserts, supplied by good friends of Vince. “Dr. Octopus” played on DVD in the living room with a lot of Vince’s animated commercials and clips from shows he worked on. “Doc Oc” was just as funny and peculiar as it was the last time I saw it, almost 20 years ago! I had forgotten that Chuck Menville played the hero, and there was the unforgettable Sylvia Dees playing the heroine. I think Vincent played “Doc Oc”, but I don’t remember him actually admitting to it. There was a little boy watching it who got very anxious when any adults got too close to the TV set, he was afraid that the Octopus was going to be turned off! He took it very seriously, even though the whole thing was a spoof. When you’ve never seen an old serial chapter, maybe you think that “Doc Oc” is the real thing! Horrors!
      Fred Wolf told a funny story about Vince. Fred and Vince had a very serious business meeting to attend, and of course Vince dressed appropriately. In a camouflage outfit, complete with camouflage hat, camouflage sunglasses, camouflage shirt, camouflage jacket, camouflage tie, camouflage shoes and camouflage shoelaces! Fred told Vince that he looked ridiculous, and that he ought to change to something more sedate for the meeting. Fred said to Vince: “Why would you want to go to the meeting dressed in that camouflage outfit?” Vince replied: “I didn’t want them to see me.”
 That’s such a typical Davis dalliance, always be the most ridiculous at the most serious times, sticking pins to the pompous. That’s Vincent in one of his green polka-dot clown outfits in the photo at the top of the post, and posing by his beloved BMW motorcycle with the side car, which he bought from Chuck Swenson. Riding in that sidecar was like riding in a Mixmaster, you felt like a strawberry milkshake at the end of the ride.
There were so many great stories flowing out about Vince, and Cathy and I spent so much time talking to folks we hadn’t seen for years, that four o’clock seemed to come at one thirty! Vince’s spirit really took us all over for the afternoon. He got a lot of old friends back together again, I think he would have liked that.
I want to thank all of you who posted comments on my last article. I think “So Long, Vincent Davis” had more response than anything I’ve written on here so far.
In the strips this week, we have Krazy Kat from 9-4-1939 to 9-9. Ignatz thinks he’s Lindberg this week. Â Marvelous Mike this time is from 4-15-1957 to 4-20. Cliff Crump’s boss, Mr. Kimball, faints dead away when he finds out that Mike is the financial genius that got everybody to invest in Tempo Trucking. Kimball changes his mind and brings Mike to the stockholder’s meeting when Mike tells him he has a solution for disposing of the overvalued stock. Please remember to click on the small images to display the pictures larger for comfortable viewing. Enjoy!
 
So long, Vincent Davis-1944-2009
Hi again, Readers. Here is the post I promised to publish. It has now been approved, and I’ve posted my favorite photo of Vincent and me.  He was a very dear friend of mine, and will be sadly missed, read on:
How do I say good-bye to a person who was practically a second father to me, who made me take down endless lists of my faults over the telephone and made me laugh about them, consoled and counseled me through many hard times and bleak patches, got Cathy and I to visit him and his wife-to-be Hiroko in Tokyo, took us up with him in a Cessna (he had a pilot’s license) many times over the Los Angeles basin and over Catalina, scattering the native bison as we came in for a landing. He sheltered my film collection in his house from the FBI back in the paranoid-1970s, took me horseback riding along the roads of Shadow Hills, got together with Cathy and me every year on my birthday for at least the last 15 years and was generally “there” for me in a friendship that lasted for 38 years!
Vincent Davis is little-known outside of the animation industry. He had many nick-names, “Vincent”, “Vince”, “V.D.”(he almost always called himself V.D. when he called me on the phone), “Been-Sent” was what his wife Hiroko often called him, “Red” was one of the last nicknames he went by, used by only a select group of friends from his neighborhood. He was a really good cartoonist, who really aspired to do a comic strip, but never sold one. He and his friend of the time, Bob Foster, did several issues of MYRON MOOSE FUNNIES in the early 1970s. Vince did a great critique of fandom in his two page masterpiece; “Comic Book Fans” published in GRAPHIC STORY MAGAZINE, edited by his friend Bill Spicer, comics afficiando and great lettering man. He also did a two page comic story about his adventures with becoming legally self-employed and his close encounter with the State Board of Equalization (they collect sales tax in California). He found a representative of the State Board literally waiting for him on his doorstep when he came home one night. Vince had not been charging his customers sales tax on his free lance animation jobs, and the Board wanted their cut and a fine! Vince looked at the whole episode through a jaundiced eye, and turned it into a comic book story. It was also printed as a poster, back in the “big poster” days of the 1970s. Vince could draw anything and make it funny, his sketch books were a delight to look upon. He showed me a book years ago with one page after another of funny birds, that just flowed from his pen. In the late 1960s and though the early 1980s, Vincent was a top free-lancer in the animation business, picking up many commercials and bits and pieces of TV shows and the occasional animated feature. We worked together on one, THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD (1974). Vince had picked up a long sequence on the picture in which the wind-up toys, the Mouse and his Child, tried to become self-winding. There was some dialog with an owl character, which I helped Vince to write. He gave me a few scenes of his sequence to animate with the Mouse tossing his little kid up in the air and down, he liked what I did with it. Alas, we worked together very little, I received no credit on the picture, as this was Vince’s sequence. Vince was highly respected by his peers, the cartoonist Bob Zamboni once told a friend of mine; “You’ll Never Touch Vince.”
In the 1990s, Vince made a transition from free-lance animator to a producer. He worked on GARFIELD AND FRIENDS for Film Roman, directed C. BEAR AND JAMAL in 1998 for Film Roman, was a producer on COW AND CHICKEN for Hanna-Barbera in 1998, and produced THE GRIM ADVENTURES OF BILLY AND MANDY for Cartoon Network in 2005. Vince animated on the Emmy Award winning children’s special “Free to Be, You and Me” which Marlo Thomas produced for Murakami-Wolf films. He worked on the DUCK TALES program for Disney TV, which Vince was highly critical of, being a charter member of the Carl Barks fan club. One of the last shows he worked on was the BATMAN show for Warner Bros. TV in 2006-2007. Vince would kill me if he knew that I was writing about his credits, he hated almost everything he ever worked on. He used to tell me, “Name the worst thing you’ve ever done, I’ll BOTTOM it!” He did win the Annie Award for producing, however. He made fun of the award, sarcastically stating, “I’ve had SO MANY offers and my prices have gone up since I won this award.”
Vince was a cartoonist to the core, taking no one and no body seriously. He almost always avoided personal questions, preferring to keep his friends on the defensive. Those on the receiving end of his wit almost always laughed, through their blushes. He could get intensely personal, asking questions that an ordained minister or a psychologist might ask. This was ironic, as Vince was neither a preacher (very non-religious) nor a trained psychologist. Vince was a wonder at communicating with strangers. He could get very intense with a new acquaintance very fast. Vince looked very funny to begin with (he often dressed in a green polka-dot clown suit on Halloween), and his looks plus a penetrating wit made a lot of instant friends for him. Yet, Vincent didn’t seem to like it when friends tried to find out too much personal information about HIM. Vince preferred to be the revealer, NOT the revealed. He was a voracious reader and student of everything, especially his fellow humans. When I first met Vincent, I was going to Chouinard Art Institute in downtown L.A. One of my teachers was Ruben Apodoca, a great Disney assistant animator, who taught us basic animation. Vince and his pal Bob Zamboni, came down to the school many evenings to visit Ruben and hang out with us neophytes and talk pro animation. Us kids were always so flattered and happy to be visited by real working cartoonists. Vince could be quite cutting and withering in his criticism of our drawings, he often told me, “You’ll never make it.” I think around the time I completed my senior film at Chouinard, “Mike Mouse in ‘City Life’”, Vince started to revise his opinion of me and we got to know each other better. When I got started on staff at Spungbuggy Works and then went free-lance, I saw Vince more as we often bid on the same jobs. He invited me over to his ramshackle apartment near Normandie street in Hollywood, where he showed me his wonderful collection of old cartooning books, comic strips he had saved, his old time radio tapes and his old records of bands like the Coon-Sanders Night Hawks and the early records of the R. Crumb Cheap Suit Serenaders. Vince introduced me to the first old time radio I ever heard, sparking a life-long love of the sounds. I learned little tidbits of information about Vince’s life, he was born in Brisbane, Australia. He had gone to school there and had to wear a school uniform with a little straw hat every day. He still had that straw hat, it meant a lot to him. Vince was a great collector and saver of things. Vince loved old books and introduced me to many old book and antique stores in the Los Angeles Area. We made many trips to Long Beach to visit Richard Kyle’s Graphic Story Bookshop, and sometimes stayed for 5 hours in the Acres of Books store, the biggest book store in Long Beach!
Vince had a great affection for the culture of the early twentieth century in the United States. He loved old cartoons, two-reel comedies, serials, comic strips, Carl Barks, old time radio, old time country music, jazz, many things. His love of serials emerged in his student film: “Dr. Octopus”, or as he called it, “Doc Oc”. The 20 minute picture parodied the silent and sound serial chapters of the 1920s and 30s; filmed in live action on 16mm film, but edited on a video system, then transferred back onto 16mm film, which gave it a primitive kinescope look. The dialog was over the top, and a lot of the scenes were “undercranked” to give a slightly sped up look to the action. The lovely Sylvia Dees, who was an instructor in camera techniques at Chouinard, played the heroine, who was abducted by Doctor Octopus on board the Angel’s Flight trolley ride in downtown Los Angeles. Vince filmed this sequence while Angels’s Flight was still in it’s original location below Bunker Hill. The trolley was torn down shortly after Doc Oc was made. We often ran 16mm film shows at Vince’s house in the 1970s and 80s, and Vincent delighted in “torturing” his guests with Doc Oc.
I got to know his first wife, Pot (Theresa) Davis. Her nick-name was Pot because she was a talented ceramicist and master of the potter’s wheel. She made wonderful cartoony clay sculptures like “Mickey Duck”, a hybird of Donald and the Mouse with a rubber tail planted into his clay behind. Pot, Vince and I usually went to the San Diego Comic-Con together every year at the El Cortez hotel. I usually had no money for hotel rooms, so Vince and Pot let me sleep on the floor in their hotel coat room.Vince knew so many people through his love of comic books, especially Bob Sidebottom and Bud Plant, who Vince used to call “Pud Blant”. He liked to reverse letters on famous people’s names, such as “Cob Blampett” and “Juck Chones”. It was just another way that Vince had of taking the pomposity out of fannish worship of big-time cartoonists. Vince never took anything too seriously, especially cartoonists, yet, he secretly was an avid fan. He really loved Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson. I think he was secretly thrilled to meet Carl Barks at the Comic-Con; he might have gone to visit Carl on his own, I don’t remember now. Vince’s irreverence often offended the devout, and probably lost him some friends.
Vince was quite physically active in the early years that I knew him. He loved to play handball, and was quite good at it, until he fell and injured his knee. He owned and loved to ride horses, I went riding with him a few times through Shadow Hills, which is horse country. He lived right across the street from a big feed and tack store and knew many of the horse owners in his neighborhood. He even dated a female jockey for awhile. In the early 1980s, Vince went to Tokyo Japan to work with the Toei company. They were sub-contracting animation production on “The Gallavants” TV series for Murakami-Wolf, and Vince was the animation director. He went over to Japan and back many times, and that’s where he met Hiroko. Hiroko came along to Los Angeles with him and that’s where Cathy and I met her. “Hiro-ki-o from Toki-yo” was how Vince first introduced her to us. She was (and still is) very tiny, cute, with very long dark hair, actually shorter than Vince (did I mention that Vince was barely over 5 feet?). In 1985, Vince con”vince”d us to visit Hiroko and himself in Tokyo. We stayed in Vince’s small apartment in Tokyo and were amazed at the ambiance of the city. You could buy whisky out of vending machines! You could buy futuristic watches and radios! You could buy steamed squid and octopus from sidewalk vendors! You could see Vincent grab Hiroko and turn her upside down! One thing that was hard to find in Tokyo was thrift stores, the Japanese don’t like to wear used clothing. We found one, and I bought a red jacket from them which I still have. Vince and Hiroko seemed to like each other a lot and loved to laugh at the same things. Okonomiaki was one of their favorite dishes in Tokyo restaurants. They even taught us a few Japanese words, such as “Domo Arigato”. We had such a good time with them, taking showers in the apartment’s very small tub, seeing great piles of manga stacked like cord wood in the apartment building’s hallways and seeing the actual miniature Tokyo buildings that Godzilla smashed underfoot next door to the Toei Doga studios.
As the years went by, Vince put on a bit of weight, due to his bad knee. At a long-ago picnic, he confided in me that he feared he hadn’t long to live, he was starting to lose kidney function. His kidney deteriorated to the point that he had to go on dialysis for a short time every night. Hiroko and Vince liked to travel to a little mountain town named Julian every winter and Vince used to play cards with us there while hooked up to the dialysis machine. Luckily, the machine wasn’t much bigger than a Sony Betamax VCR, so he could take it with him. At last, Vince received a new kidney from a donor, and was able to free himself from the machine for several years. His outlook brightened a bit, and he regained some of his old acerbic wit. He used to invite Cathy and I over to his house (a wonderful old place made of big stones) each year on my birthday, with dinner provided by the charming Hiroko who could make a really delicious Shabu-Shabu. How sad it was when Vince’s other kidney started to fail, and he got weaker again. We were returning from a birthday dinner a few years ago at a Shadow Hills restaurant. When we got to Vince and Hiroko’s house, he was so weak that I had to lift him out of the car. I was amazed how light and small he was compared with the rather portly clown of not so many years ago. The last few years of his life saw Vince in and out of the Cedars/Sinai hospital in West L.A., dealing with his continuing renal failure. His longest stay was about 6 weeks. I went to visit him at Cedars and found great changes in my friend, he was no longer able to talk very well or breathe very well. He didn’t laugh much and was pretty down. About all we could do was watch old Andy Williams shows on the hospital TV, but I still enjoyed his company. Then in May of 2009, Vince and Hiroko decided that he wasn’t well enough to accept another kidney donation, even if one became available, so Vince removed himself from dialysis and died at home under Hiroko’s care on May 6th, 2009. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of him, and often reflect on things he said to us. Vince could get very reflective and wise as well as be the clown. He always used to say, “Who Cares? Nobody Cares”, when it came down to permission to do something. It was his way of making us feel better about trying new things, about encountering the unknown, and dealing with impossible or unfair situations. “Nobody Cares” means that it’s OK to go to Tokyo, to pilot a plane, play handball, ride a horse, be a cartoonist and make endless fun of the gullible and the witless. “Who Cares?” Vincent, we do. We miss you, old friend.
I’m going to conclude the post by continuing the comics reprints from last time. Vince really loved Krazy Kat, so I’m doing this in honor of him. See you next time.
Flip-Flap
Sorry, Readers! I’m working on a very large post, but it requires approval from a dear friend, and I want to give her time to respond. So here is the promised Marty Taras’s “Flip-Flap and the Crying Hyena” from CALLING ALL KIDS #7, Feb. 1947 issue. This comic came out a year BEFORE the Famous Studios cartoon “Flip-Flap” was released (Feb. 13, 1948). I. Sparber was the credited director, but I’ll bet that Marty was a key artist on it, both story and animation. This story has nothing to do with the cartoon, but tells about an incident in Flip-Flap’s life AFTER he goes to the zoo. The cartoon story dealt with the seal’s origins in the North Pole. Part two coming very soon.
In comic strips this week, MARVELOUS MIKE’s (4/1/1957-4/6) got a sure stock tip on a trucking company, in which Cliff Crump promptly involves Mr. Kimball. I hear George O’Hanlon’s voice every time I read Cliff’s dialog. Mike’s stock tip may not be such a sure thing, we’ll see next time. Krazy Kat celebrates “music week” (8/21/1939 to 8/26), but has to settle for canned music instead of live at the end of the sequence. This is brief, but maybe next time I will have approval for my longer piece, it means a lot to me, so watch for it!
The Night Before Christmas Pt. Two, aka “Not Even A Mouse”
Hi Readers! Don’t forget your mothers on Mother’s Day coming up in a few days. You know how Moms are, they really resent being forgotten on their day. Flowers, candy and jewelry are gratefully accepted, but I can’t figure out why a mother would want an ipod, a lap-top, Microsoft Word, etc. Most mothers I know are well across the Digital Divide from us, unless your mother was married at 13, or something. Trying to teach my mother how to operate an ipod would be nearly impossible. She wouldn’t want an mp3 disc player either, and they are relatively easy to operate. Flowers and a card don’t need batteries and don’t have to be plugged in to be appreciated, maybe the moms have got something there.
Here is the second installment of “The Night Before Christmas” draft:
Sc.30: Tom kisses Jerry in close-up.  Zander
Sc. 30A: CU of Tom embarrassed.  Zander
Sc. 31: Jerry kicks Tom and exits fast.  Zander
Sc. 32: Jerry jumps through the mail slot. Surry
Sc. 33: Jerry outside in snow, up with snowball. Surry
Sc. 34: Tom gets snow in the face, props furniture against the door, exits. Surry
Sc. 36: Tom gets comfortable on pillow in front of the fireplace.  Spence
Sc. 37: Field cut-in, Tom looks over to window and looks outside. Spence
Sc. 38: Jerry walks up and down in the snow outside, flapping his arms. Surry
Sc. 38A: Tom at fireplace, registers remorse, plops pillow over his head. Spence
Sc. 39:Â Â Jerry is just a hump under the snow now, walking back and forth. Surry
Sc. 40: Tom tiptoes over to the door.  Surry
Sc. 41: Tom watches the door from around the corner, but Jerry doesn’t come in. Gordon
Sc. 42: Tom comes into sc. fast, wipes frost from the window, looks out. Gordon
Sc. 43:Â Outside, Tom plucks Jerry’s tail from snow mound. He looks like a “Good Humor” ice cream bar. Tom shakes Jerry, and the “Good Humor” chimes are heard in the background. Spence
Sc. 44: Tom takes Jerry over to the fireplace and tries to thaw him out. Gordon
Sc. 45: Jerry thaws out in C.U., Tom puts him on a pillow. Gordon
Sc. 47: Jerry is groggy, comes to and ducks down in fright. Zander
Sc. 48: Tom grins down at Jerry self-consciously (ala Wallace Beery). He presents Jerry with a candy cane and draws back with a big bashful grin.  Zander
Sc. 49: Jerry licks the candy cane happily, looks up at Tom, goes into a frantic “take”. Zander
Sc. 50: Jerry stops Tom from lapping a booby trapped bowl of milk. He sticks the candy cane into the milk, a “snap” is heard, and Jerry lifts a very heavy mousetrap out of the bowl of milk with the candy cane. Zander (23 feet)
Sc. 50A: Tom looking at Jerry in friendly grin with his paws on his hips. Zander
Sc. 50B: C.U. Jerry looking at Tom, snaps the candy cane off the trap and exits. Zander
Sc. 51: 94 feet! Jerry runs into shot by his mousehole, lifts the Christmas Cheese off the trap with the candy cane, and listens to the clip on the mousetrap play “Jingle Bells” as the cartoon ends. Zander
This picture is a great showcase for Jack Zander. It remains the highpoint of personality animation for Tom and Jerry. You can probably tell that my notes this time came from the original draft. The working title was “Not Even A Mouse”, the draft was made on July 9th, 1941, most Hollywood Christmas movies were done in the summertime.
In the conclusion of the “Twinkle” story from Calling All Kids comics #7, you will note that the story ends with a plea for children to send “Friendship Boxes” filled with goodies to children all over the world, with Twinkle stickers on them! This must pre-date the “CARE Package” idea. Twinkle was working for world peace back in 1947!
In the strips this week, Marvelous Mike from 3/25 to 3/30/57 concludes the story of Peggy Kimball happily. Mr. Kimball runs up to his crashed car in the strip for 3/25/1957 and sees that Peggy is alright. The dialog in the last panel was cut off by the microfilm, the policeman replies to Mr. Kimball: “You’re lucky only your car was smashed!” Cliff Crump is accepted back into Kimball’s good graces when he lets his daughter off from all charges. A new story line begins as Mike becomes an expert on stocks!
Krazy this week from 8/14 to 8/19/1939 has a storyline called “No Jail, No Brick Week”. Kolin Kelly the brick dealer is the main one hurt by Offissa Pupp’s policy and takes it out on the Pupp. Krazy also throws a brick at Ignatz, but of course neither Kelly nor Krazy are jailed by Pupp. There is definitely unequal justice in Coconino.
I do a rare commentary on film collecting in the latest issue of “Flip”, the on-line magazine devoted to the “Lifestyles of the Hunched and Goofy”, edited by Steve Moore. To read the article and to see a strange animated image of yours truly go to: http://www.flipanimation.net/flipcover.htm . See if you agree with my bon mots.
Walt Stanchfield/”The Night Before Christmas” Pt. One
Hi Folks,
My friend Don Hahn has put together a two-volume set of books that took him almost 20 years to get published. It is called DRAWN TO LIFE, and comprises the entire set of “handouts” that our gesture drawing teacher at Disney, Walt Stanchfield, distributed to all takers every week in the late 1980s and 1990s. Walt was one of those rare art teachers who made figure drawing accessible to us “cartoonists”, by making the poses and the ideas behind the poses the point of the drawing lesson, rather than the fine points of anatomy. These were “gesture” drawing classes that usually used clothed models holding props. It was OK with Walt to be as creative as we wanted to be with the poses, even turn them into Donald Duck if we wanted to, just as long as we caricatured the model’s gesture in a few well chosen lines. These books would enhance any art school that prizes traditional drawing skills, as the lessons transcend animation and give a lot of inspiration along with the lectures. Walt Stanchfield was an assistant and animator at Disney during the years 1949-1986. Before that he worked for the Charles Mintz studio in 1937 and Walter Lantz in the mid to late 1940s (the Fred Moore/Ed Love era). He started his classes in the late 1980s and taught through the 1990s, he died in 2000. Walt was amiable, sometimes he would draw a real quick little doodle right next to my labored-over gesture drawing, that got right to the heart of the pose in a few seconds. Sometimes, Walt wouldn’t get the pose either, and he was quick to admit his failures. He lived in Solvang, CA with his wife Dee and was a very good watercolorist as well as being a whiz at gesture. Walt was a very modest man, who played tennis nearly every day before work. He always described himself as “just a plodder”, nothing special in animation. If you praised him too much to his face, he could get riled, he thought compliments were insincere. I really learned a lot from him, though. If you get Vol. 2, there are about a dozen of my little sketches reproduced, even indexed! I never thought those little drawings would be in a nice textbook like this one, what an honor! These books have a cover price of $29.95, and well worth the tab, but if you lurk about Amazon, etc., you can probably grab a copy or two off for less. The great Focal Press of England is the publisher, they also did the little paperback “How To Cartoon” by John Halas and Bob Privett, in the late 1940s, I believe. These books deserve a space in any art school library, and deal with drawing, gesture, tangents and acting among a lot of other things. Get them, or just read them, you’ll be glad you did.
Here is the first part of a draft for the Tom and Jerry cartoon: “The Night Before Christmas”, see if you agree with it:
1. Fade in Exterior, Tom and Jerry’s Home–No Anim.
2. Dissolve to shot of fireplace—-Jack Zander
3. Cut to C.U. of Trap at Hole——Zander
4. Cut to Packages Under the Tree—–Zander
5. Cut to Candy Cane hanging on Tree— George Gordon
6. Cut to Doll’s Rocking Chair—————-Gordon
7. Cut to Stuffed Toy Lion———–Gordon
8. Cut to Jerry in Lion’s mane, he jumps—-Gordon
9. Jerry lands on Tom——-Gordon
10. Jerry runs from Tom—Cecil Surry
11. Pan of Jerry in Light Socket—-Surry
12. Dissolve to Jerry running———Bill Littlejohn
13. Jerry in line with toy soldiers——–Littlejohn
14. Tom at end of soldiers line———Littlejohn
15. Perspective shot of Jerry in Line—-Littlejohn
17. Jerry in line, Tom enters——Littlejohn
19. Tom at Railroad Crossing——–Surry
20. Perspective shot Jerry on Train———Surry
21. Pan of Tom———–Gordon
22. Tom puts on boxing glove———Gordon
23. Tom runs around tree to Jack in the Box——–Gordon
24. Boxing glove on spring—-Gordon
25. Pan shot with mistletoe———Zander
26.  closer shot of mistletoe and Jerry———-Zander
27. close up of Tom acting defiant——–Zander
28. Repeat of Sc. 26——–Zander
29.  Tom in coy poses (modelled on Mickey Rooney’s gestures)——Zander
We’ll continue on from here next week, let me know what you think.
This week in comics we have the next two pages of “Twinkle, the Star who Came Down From Heaven” from CALLING ALL KIDS #7, any clues on who might have done the art? I love the relative sizes of Twinkle and the Earth’s Moon in the second page, I’m a sucker for fireflies in Japanese lanterns too. In MARVELOUS MIKE this week from 3/18 to 3/23/1957, Peggy Kimball is a big part of the action. It is revealed to her Dad, Mr. Kimball that she is the leader of the car “thieves”. Mike overhears her confession as he eavesdrops on her telephone conversation while she “babysits” him. Krazy Kat this week is from 8/7 to 8/12/1939. Edgar Bergen must have been on the radio in Garge’s house as he concocted this story of Ignatz making his brick talk through ventriloquism. A whole week’s worth of strips follows “starring” the brick. As always, I would love to hear your comments, see you next time.
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Salt Water Tabby Part Two, Twinkle
Hello readers! This week I’m featuring Part Two of my draft to “Salt Water Tabby“:
Jerry running, Tom in with bucket, plops it over Jerry, takes it off revealing bucket-shaped sand pile, Tom up with shovel, slices off chunks of sand pile rapidly, no Jerry, Tom digs in sand fast, sand comes in on top of him from screen right–Lah
Jerry digging sand with shovel fast, covers Tom in hole, Jerry jumps on sand to compact it, jabs shovel handle in sand, Tom’s head out of sand, Jerry lets the shovel slam into Tom’s face, exits–Lah
Jerry runs in, jumps in basket, Tom in, looks around, gets banana out of basket–Muse
Tom peels banana, revealing Jerry hiding inside peel, Tom looks at him, Jerry snaps catch on beach umbrella, snaps on Tom, Jerry opens little patch on umbrella, jumps out left–Muse
Jerry jumps into soda bottle, stuck, Tom runs in, grabs bottle(?)
CU Tom shakes bottle, truck in to Jerry-(?)
CU Jerry shoots out of bottle (?)
Jerry tumbles through air, hits clam shell in water, opens shell, mad, grabs sea weed and burnt stick–(?)
Jerry throws seaweed over pylon, draws eyes on pylon with burnt stick–(?)
Tom grabs sandwich and chicken leg from picnic basket, hears yell for help, looks right–Lah
Jerry yelling by disguised pylon–Lah
Tom does heroic antic., runs out, right–Barge
Tom runs, dives to pylon–Lah
Tom smashes head first on pylon, wave in, pan over, wave recedes revealing Tom with a big lump on his head–Lah
Tom runs on pan–Lah
Jerry jumps on bucket, reaches up to toy sea horse, unfastens catch on air intake, sea horse flies off right fast–Lah
Tom stops run, open mouthed take, swallows horse, air propels Tom off right fast, suit comes off-Lah
Tom sails to and from camera in the air as sea horse deflates inside of him–Lah
Jerry hides in Tom’s bathing suit–Lah
Long shot, Tom flies up in air–(?)
Tom runs out of air, starts to fall, long vertical pan–(?)
Tom hits the water, Tom up our of hole in the sand on re-inflated sea horse’s back, does take screen left–Lah
Jerry sails away in basket, using Tom’s suit for a sail–Lah(?)
As you can see, there are 7, possibly 8 scenes that I can’t positively identify. Especially the “soda bottle” sequence, students?
This week in comics, I present “Twinkle, the Star That Came Down From Heaven” from CALLING ALL KIDS #7, February 1947. I first encountered the character in the old HUMPTY DUMPTY’S MAGAZINE in the 1950s, it was only later that I found out the character goes back to 1945. He was always published by Parent’s Magazine, since they did both CALLING ALL KIDS and HUMPTY DUMPTY’S. I have a crude photo of a couple of pages from a Twinkle story of 1959 in HUMPTY’S, so that the styles can be compared. The Twinkle I used to read, was much more like a children’s book, very stylized, black and white drawings with captions. The original Twinkle was very much a 1940s Funny book, looking to be a production of an East Coast comics “shop”. This Twinkle story looks very much like a Famous Studios animator drew it. In coming weeks, I will re-print a story that Marty Taras drew for this issue of CALLING ALL KIDS, as well. Twinkle was a little God, who came down from Heaven to solve the little problems of the insect and animal cast. I think the design for Winky Dink was stolen from Twinkle, both star-headed characters. If any of you cartoon scholars can guess who drew this Twinkle story, let me hear from you.
This just in, I noticed that Elliott A. Caplin was the Publisher of CALLING ALL KIDS comics! Elliott Caplin was Al Capp’s brother, and later published Toby Comics, and wrote several long-lived daily comic strips such as Abbie N’ Slats, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Big Ben Bolt, Dr. Kildare and even wrote Little Orphan Annie for a time after Harold Gray passed away. It’s interesting that the caterpillar’s name in “Twinkle” is Eliot, maybe Elliott Caplin wrote this story and slipped himself in disguise into the action! Perhaps Elliott worked on CALLING ALL BOYS, CALLING ALL GIRLS and POLLY PIGTAILS, which were all magazines that Parent’s published featuring comics. They were all out in about the same span of years, 1946-1949, except CALLING ALL GIRLS dates back to 1941. If anyone can check their copies for his credits, let me know, I don’t have any issues of the other Parent’s Magazine comic books.
      As you know from the comments on last week’s post, MyToons.com is no more. I received two one-line emails from them the night before they closed, one saying that they were closing down, the other saying that my check was in the mail. To their credit, I did receive a check, for four dollars. We had about 7 paid hits, thanks to all of you who tried it. I actually am very sorry to lose MyToons, not so much for the money it generated, but because of the advertising and web presence it had. They really did a LOT of advertising and promotion. Greg Ford and I are considering other options for “It’s ‘The Cat'” on the Internet. If any other streaming cartoon sites are around, paid or not, and if you are interested in “It’s ‘The Cat'”, please let us know.
    In comic strips this week, Marvelous Mike (3/11 to 3/16/1957)’s dad Cliff finds out that Mr. Kimball’s daughter Peggy is a juvenile delinquent who swipes Kimball’s car and drives recklessly all over town. Of course poor Cliff is fired by Mr. Kimball for telling him about his daughter’s split personality. Mike seems to have the solution, see the next post! Krazy Kat (7/31 to 8/5/1939) is mostly about the “Bird on Mrs. Kwakk-Wakk’s Hat”. The bird scandalizes both Ignatz and Offissa Pupp, in a sequence that seems to hark back to old time melodrama. Walter Lantz based one of his Nellie “Mello-Drama” cartoons on the Bird on the Hat theme, titled “The Bird on Nellie’s Hat”. As always, thanks for your comments and support, folks. I really appreciate hearing from you.
Hitchin’ Post
August 25, 2009
Uncategorized
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Mark
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…”
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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.