Mark Kausler’s CatBlog

Of Kats and Painting

Here are the KKs from 9-16 to 9-22-1938. Mostly bank and money jokes this week, maybe Garge had some banking altercations that inspired the gags. Look at all the different ways that Krazy’s head and body are constructed within the same strip, 9-21, yet he remains Krazy. Cathy and I managed to get to Buster’s coffee house in South Pasadena for our Thursday paint-out on July 12th. We painted Buster’s from across the street, and  had fun doing it while the new “Gold Line” trolley cars ran by. We were critted by our mentor Walter McNall, who keeps advising me to always paint the shadows first in a composition, and put people or animals in the picture to keep it interesting. He’s a tough critmaster, but fair. Walter has been painting many years, and almost always sells his stuff, often to casual passers-by.

I have two ideas that could help save the world we live in, someone please invent a miniaturized solar battery! If they can miniaturize computers into the Iphone, why can’t somebody shrink the solar battery to a more manageable size with increased storage capacity? Then we can finally run our cars directly with sun power!  The other idea: read aloud to your kids, and do it often! If we are going to develop oral tradition and a love for storytelling, we should all read aloud our favorite stories to children, both our own and at your local public libraries. Pry ’em away from all the electronic squawk boxes, grab your copy of “The Curious Lobster” and read it aloud! Read it well, make it interesting and you’ve hooked a new generation on story telling and the wonders of books.

Use the link to the right to get to Tom Stathes’s blog and take advantage of his big 50% off DVD sale. This offer is good up to August first. Just tell him I sent you. Three of my favorite Stathes DVDs are # TS-21, Bonzo the Pup, a rare collection of Studdy’s famous British dog character. This DVD includes some titles transferred from 9.5mm prints including Aladdin Bonzo, a Stathes exclusive, and Dog-Gone, in which Bonzo drinks a bottle of Bass Ale at the finish. TS-17, Felix the Cat, Vol. 3, has a rare excerpt from the early 30s Felix: Hootchy Kootchy Parlais Vouz, which uses that wonderful toy-like design. Felix’s body is the shape of a bowling pin in this one, there is a great scene of Felix marching along, leading a big parade of cats. This fragment is all that survives from this rare Felix cartoon. T.S. 04: Rare Silent Cartoons Volume 1 has such rarities as Kat in Chinatown, a live action/animation combo cartoon featuring Tad Dorgan’s Cat. Speaking of Tad Dorgan, there is also on the same DVD, the animated version of Tad’s “Indoor Sports” comic strip, featuring the Joys and Glooms animated by Bill Nolan! This is a very inexpensive way to get viewing copies of under-circulated silent animation, and help Tom out on his crusade to rescue and help preserve early cartoons. C’mon now, git yer onery hides over there and cough up! You’ll be glad you did.

Here’s to ya!

It’s not often that Garge references animated cartoons in his strip, but take a look at 9-9-1938 and 9-10.  In the finish to last week’s sequence, Ignatz tries to convince Offissa Pupp that the brick is actually an animated drawing! Pupp comes up with an animated rejoinder in 9-10 with his rolling jail. I love the gag in 9-14, it feels like Garge might have used in earlier years; it sort of ties in with the animation theme this week. Take a look at the drawing of Ignatz socking Krazy in the 9-15 strip. I think it’s the happiest Krazy that Garge ever penned. Once again, Ignatz tries to fool Offissa Pupp into thinking that the brick is a hallucination, but this time it doesn’t work. By the way, did you know that if you click on the strips, they will display larger in a seperate window? Some people don’t know that.

Cathy and I saw “Ratatouille” at the Sam Goldwyn theater last week. No film involved, an all digital presentation of an all-digital film. The image was very clean, no scratches or cue marks, looked almost flawless, although a shade under-lit. We all were really watching extremely high-class projected television. I must admit that I wasn’t thinking about whether it was film or digital projection until about half-way through the film. There was no hard-edge film “strobe” or chattering in the image, and that’s when it dawned on me that I wasn’t watching film.

“Ratatouille” is a pretty good looking (digital) “film”, we were both entertained by it. We are both fans of cooking and the Food Network, so the subject matter was appealing. Brad could have spent even more time in the kitchen cooking and less time with the romantic subplot, which didn’t seem believable. Preparing the actual ratatouille dish for the food critic, and his reaction to it, was the highspot of the picture for me. I’m glad Brad didn’t succumb to temptation and made one of the chefs a caricature of Emeril Lagasse, or something, though Emeril (Food Network chef) is quite a cartoony guy.

I used to animate for Brad, I worked on “The Family Dog” episode of Amazing Stories that he directed. I worked free-lance, one of the scenes I did was the Family Dog dropping his dog dish on the floor at the feet of the housewife. Brad was a good director and very intensely involved in telling the story. Sometimes he was so dedicated to, and emotional about the picture that I feared for his health. All of us who worked on the episode received T-shirts from Brad that said “Birdworks Animation Guerillas” on one side, and “Die, Mediocrity, Die!” on the reverse. Brad, was then and still is determined to purge his films of all “mediocrity”. You can never say that Brad doesn’t care about his work. Now that digital puppeteering has replaced the animated drawing as his performance medium, he can no doubt do corrections and changes and additions to scenes more easily than ever before. For the most part, this works in favor of the acting and against “mediocrity”. The only thing that bothered me even a little bit, was the sameness (not mediocrity)  in the expression of anger by most of the characters, be they rats, big chefs or little chefs. When one character gets angry at another one, they usually get nose to nose, teeth clenched in anger, usually with big gestures and Milt Kahl headshakes. The lady chef certainly acted that way in her early scenes with Linguini, and the head chef (the little guy) expressed anger in a similar way. Even the restaurant critic, voiced by Peter O’Toole let his anger boil over at least once that I recall. All of this isn’t really that much of a flaw, as it is a reflection of Brad’s personality through his characters. Brad can be a very intense (even angry) guy at times. Anger is a very “felt” emotion, and is fun to animate. Happiness, love, tenderness can be fun to express as well, but don’t involve the whole body as intensely as anger can. Maybe these scenes needed just a little more thought about how that SPECIFIC character would feel and express anger.

I thought the art direction and lighting in the movie were outstanding. I think Michel Gagne (it certainly looked like his stuff) animated the Oskar Fischinger-esque spirals and grawlixes to show visually how food tastes to a gourmand. They accompanied Remy talking about mixing flavors. When Remy’s pal, the fat rat, becomes aware of flavors, the grawlixes are there, but less intense in value and color to illustrate his amateur standing as a food fancier. The mobile camera is a very flexible tool in the hands of digital puppeteers, with the dimensional character, the camera can move all around, in front, behind and inside the character quite fluidly. Sometimes, this works well, as in the scene where Remy is throwing ingredients into a pot and the camera slowly circles him as he does it. Animating a scene like that with drawings would be a very difficult acting and technical challenge. I felt a bit less comfortable with several sequences in a row of Remy scrambling up and down buildings closely followed by the digital camera. One sequence like that would have been impressive, two or three in a row become disorienting on the big screen, and after awhile the audience takes them for granted. Does camera movement like that really advance the story? Sometimes simple camera pans over well-designed sets work just as well. Of course with such a Pandora’s box of tricks and tools as digital puppeteering provides for the filmmaker, the question is often: “I know I CAN, but SHOULD I?” “Ratatouille” is really enjoyable, though, although some folks, like Mike Sporn, were repulsed by a lot of rats in the kitchen. Well, at least they sterilized themselves in the dishwasher before working with the food, Mike. (I liked how fluffed up they were when coming out of the steamer.) I found myself more bothered by a cartoon cliche like a single-shot rifle (fired by the old lady), being able to fire many times in succession without being reloaded! I’m going to shut up, now. Expressing any kind of opinion on the internet can be troublesome and doing reviews of friends’ work can be dangerous. Fortunately, relatively few people read this blog. ‘Bye til next time.

Howdy, folk!

All is illusory with Garge this week. In 9-2 and 9-3, he finishes off the eyeglasses idea he started with Offissa Pupp using phony specs to make himself look wide awake. This reminds me of the Tom and Jerry cartoon “Sleepy Time Tom”. Remember Tom painting pupils on his eyelids to fool Mammy into thinking he was alert? I’ll bet this gag has it’s roots in vaudeville. In 9-5 through 9-8-1938, Garge is anticipating Crockett Johnson (“Harold and the Purple Crayon”). What is the difference between a real brick and a brick drawn with a pencil in a pen and ink world? I love the gag in 9-8: Ignatz draws lines to indicate rain and then Krazy (offstage) draws an umbrella to shield himself from the ink-line raindrops. The fact that Krazy draws the umbrella for himself off-stage heightens the mystery, Garge is asking his readers to participate in the gag.

I shot the first take of Sc. 24 last Sunday, and it’s going to take at least two more passes to get it right. I have a few too many poses and ideas that don’t support the main idea of the shot. So  I have to take them out, re-time and revise. I still haven’t done the effects of Pearly (the cat’s object d’amour) crying. Cathy and I did get out to Monrovia, Ca. this week to paint a charming old neighborhood. Cathy drew with pencil this time, and I did two watercolors of Tudor style homes, with the San Gabriel mountains behind them. One of the paintings almost worked! I would love to get scans up of some of my paintings, maybe one day I can afford a good art quality scanner. Any experienced bloggers out there have any recommendations? Have a great Independence day week!

Yeah, Baby

Here are the KKs from 8-26 to 9-1-1938. The finish of the wall sequence from last post and a new character: “Mr. Beaver”.  Mr. Beaver’s tail makes a good comic prop in 8-31 and 9-1, serving as both defense of Krazy’s bean and offense on Offisa Pupp’s noggin. There’s the “cobble rock” again in 9-1, note the beautiful shading in the last panel. I like Krazy’s “stend-in” in 8-30, is he a dog or a cat? I have been working on Sc. 24 most of this week, am almost ready for the first test of the scene. I will have another pass to add the effects once the characters are moving well. When I spend a long time animating a scene, this time months, I sometimes don’t want to see a test. I’m afraid that the scene in “real time” won’t live up to my expectations. If it doesn’t, there’s a lot more work to do until it does. At least full animation is relatively easy to shoot, it’s limited stuff that’s hard, with it’s muti-levels of seperate mouths, heads, arms, cycles, etc. It used to be quite a job of book-keeping doing limited TV stuff.  Flash animation looks about as complicated, level-wise, except now they call it “layers”.  Once again, no painting this week, maybe next if the Lord allows. Don’t miss Allen Holtz’s “Strippers Blog” for the 1906 Herriman political cartoons. In those days, all the guys dressed in black and looked like the villain in “The Drunkard”, at least that’s the way Garge drew ’em. The link to Allen’s page is on this blog.

Some More for you Ailurophiles out there

Okay folks, here’s the strips from 8-19 to 8-25-1938. In 8-23, Herriman uses a gag and concept that he went back to several times: Krazy feels naked without the neck ribbon! Also the ringing brick storyline from last weeks concludes and a new one starts with K and I standing behind a wall. 8-22 is kind of obscure, looks like Joe Stork scared himself away! Looks like he can dish (the kids) out, but he can’t take ’em! It’s been a quiet week, animated about another two feet of Sc. 24, didn’t do any plein air painting, sob! Thanks to Milton Knight, I got to see a Gene Deitch “Samson Scrap” cartoon. It’s called “Old Tin-Sides” from 1962. (See stills at top.) It is a sequel to the first in the series called “Samson Scrap”, released as a Paramount Modern Madcap in 1962. “Old Tin-Sides” makes fun of the U.S. military, in a “Munro-esque” fashion. Samson sounds and acts a lot like Clint Clobber, Dayton Allen did Samson’s voice. In 1962, I saw the original Samson Scrap cartoon in a movie theater in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Our family car broke down there after a trip to California! My mother, my brother and I were stuck there for more than a week, while Dad went in search of parts for the car (there were none to be had in Steamboat Springs). Samson made a big impression on me, as I loved Tom Terrific, and recognized Gene Deitch’s credit. Were there any “Sampson Scrap” comic books? Make sure you see the “Stripper’s Guide” blog for the Herriman editorial cartoons from 1906!

This week’s Kats

In the strips from 8-12-38 to 8-18, we have the finish of Krazy’s canoe, and the beginning of “Pupp’s Glue” storyline. What is a “kobble rock” anyway? That’s what I call those little porous rocks in the bottom of our bar-b-q pit, but that may not be correct. I am still working on Sc. 24 of the new cat cartoon, did about three feet this week. Cathy and I went to the Rubel farms on Thursday out in Glendora, for our painting group’s weekly outing. Mike Rubel, whose dad was Heinz Rubel, is the owner of the “farm”. It’s a great place, with a castle built of big stones and rocks, many odd-sized apartments for rent, with a big clock tower that chimes on the hour and half-hour;  works imported from England. Mike is a train buff, and has a full-sized Santa Fe caboose on the property which we painted “en plein air”. There are many rooms throughout the estate, one is called the “tin palace”. It contains some nice H.O. scale miniature trains, and many books and display cases about Mike’s family history. His dad Heinz, under the name “Hal Raynor” wrote for Joe Penner’s “Baker’s Broadcast” radio show in the early thirties, writing the songs that Joe sang every week. The articles on display in the tin palace even give Heinz Rubel credit for the line: “You wanna buy a duck?” My personal theory is that the popularity of Joe and his duck, Goo-Goo, laid the comedy tracks for the funny ducks of the cartoons: Donald and Daffy. Mel Blanc even claimed that he did Goo-Goo’s voice on Joe’s radio show. However, none of the existing Penner shows has Mel doing the duck’s voice. It’s sad that there are only eight Penner Baker’s Broadcast shows that survive today, the earliest being from 5/13/1934. A study of the “Baker’s Broadcast” show is essential for a student of 1930s comedy, which is certainly a big part of the humor of the animated cartoon. Heinz Rubel was one of the writers of this seminal program, with it’s blend of crazy puns, non-sequiters and slapstick. At one point, Heinz Rubel was an ordained minister, with his own church. It could have been the church of Goo-Goo! In the tin palace there are also artifacts from Heinz’s ministarial days in a display case. Mike Rubel, who built this incredible castle mostly by himself, can no longer walk and doesn’t live on the property anymore. Cathy and I used to come to the Rubel farms to paint years ago, and at that time Mike was walking around and greeting people in his farm outfit, denim overalls and an engineer’s hat. Mike used to hold court on one of the balconies of the castle and a bunch of Glendora good ol’ boys would get together for iced tea and “train talk”. Mike’s collection of roosters, hens and horses still roam about the estate; the crowing and whinniing keeps you awake! The Rubel farms are a great eccentric treasure of Glendora, and are available for tours, if any of you are interested. It’s worth seeing and there are a lot of subjects to paint and draw! Mike also collected lots of old cars and farm machinery, some of the walls of the castle are made up of old bottles set into the concrete. I’m looking forward to our next visit.

Kat-Tales

In this series of strips from 8-5 to 8-11-1938, the boll weevil and moth story concludes with both of Krazy’s hats devoured. Then Krazy has some trouble distinguishing a canoe from a boat. I like the poignancy of Offissa Pupp in 8-11, standing on the bank saying “Goodbye, Sailor, Sail far, Sail Wide, Sail On…”. Then Garge reveals the inevitable gag in the last panel, deflating Pupp’s poetic send-off.  Today, I actually got to record a tandem commentary with Leonard Maltin for another Oswald cartoon. I think we had a good time doing it. Then I did an interview on camera for the third volume of THE CHRONOLOGICAL DONALD. We talked about Donald’s treatment by the studio as a “star”. I won’t go into any more detail then that, but buy or rent the DVDs and find out. It was great working with Leonard, I’ve been corresponding with him since I was a kid. I wrote the first version of my Film Comment Tom and Jerry article for Leonard’s Film Fan Monthly when I was 12 or 13. Do any of you get his “Movie Crazy” newsletter? I always enjoy reading it. He has a thoughtful article in the current one about how he discovered silent comedy through his exposure to early television and talks about how silent comics such as Snub Pollard and Andy Clyde were given extended leases on their careers by television. The photo gallery on Andy Clyde is worth seeing, Andy was certainly a master of makeup! See you all next week.

New Kats

Here are the K.K.s from 7-29 to 8-4-38. I love Garge’s bug characters, note how similar the “boll weevil” in 8-1 to 8-4 is in appearance to archy in the illustrations Garge did for Don Marquis books. One of the happiest assignments I had in my early years in the animation game was animating a few scenes in the ‘Archy declares war’ sequence in John Wilson’s “Archy and Mehitabel”. I did these under the great Frank Andrina’s tutelage, as I was his assistant on the picture. Sam Cornell did the layouts in a combination Garge/Sam cartoon style. I haven’t posted much lately, Cathy and I just got back from Santa Catalina island, where we participated in a plein air “paint out” last week. Avalon was not damaged from the recent brush fires. Catalina is an ENORMOUS island, so a 4000 acre blaze would only burn a small part of the brush there. I was lucky enough to sell a small watercolor of the Casino and harbor there to a kid from Oceanside. Paid for a meal there anyway. I will do a photo post of the trip later on this week. Have a GREAT Memorial Day and remember our poor, overextended military at this sad time in history!

End of the Line

I was reading the Pennysaver (a local adzine) on Weds. and noticed an ad: “Estate Sale: Residence of Ollie J., Disney animator…” It was almost as if the organizers of the sale were trying to keep it a secret! Poor Ollie, I thought, he must have decided to sell everything and go to assisted living. As it turned out, Ollie has gone to Oregon to live with his family, as Don Hahn, Disney producer, (pictured above gesturing toward a chair) told me. (Don is working on a documentary about his friend, Joe Grant.)  I went to the estate sale both Friday and Saturday (May 18th and 19th). I didn’t see too many people I knew besides Don. All the household effects, dishes (see above), clothing, tools, garden equipment, books were all for sale. I took my wife to see the house on Saturday, and she suggested I buy one of Ollie’s hats and a plaid shirt to remember him by. I’m glad I did (see above of me relaxing in Ollie’s back yard wearing one of his hats). There was a bit of Disney memorabilia of course, mostly research material that Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston assembled for their books. Piles of photocopies of Disney animation drawings and story sketches, some loose, some mounted on illustration board. There was a whole box full of large photostats of Disney drawings, mostly storyboards. The stats must have been done recently, as they would combine Jungle Book Bill Peet story sketches with drawings from Donald Duck shorts like “Donald’s Gold Mine”, for instance. Probably material assembled for the book “Too Funny for Words”. At any rate, they were priced at $100.00 apiece (see above)! Ollie’s signed copy of Mike Barrier’s “Hollywood Cartoons” book was available for $60.00, as were things like some drawings that Nancy Beiman sent to him (there were a lot of things like that in the sale). Some of Ollie’s engineer caps were available from his live steamer train days at $75.00 a throw, including a photo of Ollie on board his engine. They all sold. Ollie collected Bing Crosby 78s, I bought one for $3.00 that had Bing on one side and Russ Columbo (his rival), on the other side! There was a whole box of scripts and story conference notes from the Disney films (photocopies). They wanted $10.00 a page for them, but that turned out to be negotiable. I found some notes from the Soup sequence from Snow White, as well as “Night on Bear (sic) Mountain” from Fantasia, mostly Walt, Dave Hand and Perce Pearce trading ideas, fun stuff to read. Ollie had a lot of books, some of which are pictured above. The prices for most of the hard backs were between $60.00 and $150.00. In a room covered with train wallpaper was an antique engineer’s lamp made over into a ceiling fixture, price: $2000.00! On Saturday, a very nice lady was getting quite emotional over that lamp. All of Ollie’s miniature trains were either sold or donated to the live steamers exhibit in Griffith Park. If there was any original art, most of it was not at the sale. I found one watercolor that was very nice, but not by Ollie.

It was a sad occasion, yet happy too (for me). The neighborhood Ollie lived in (La Canada) was and is absolutely beautiful. Both Ollie and Frank Thomas bought a lot of land to build their respective rambling ranch style homes on, probably in the late 1930s. The oak, eucalyptus and sycamore trees on the properties are stately and in prime condition. It was fun to see the remains of Ollie’s famous backyard railroad (see above). The little yellow train barn was charming and Ollie’s trestle in front of the house was a miniature masterpiece of construction. As you can see by my expression sitting in Ollie’s back yard, I finally came to the party! It felt so good just to BE there! I always wanted to visit the famous pair of animators at their homes, but never was invited. This was the last chance for me (heck, the last chance for ANYBODY). It’s interesting that Peter Schneider, who used to be the president of the animation division at Disney, owns the Tudor style mansion right next to Ollie’s house! Ollie was very nice to me on at least one occasion, when I put together a film tribute to Fred Moore at ASIFA Hollywood a few years ago. As feeble as he was, Ollie took time to answer letters about Fred Moore’s family, and talked by telephone with me about Fred’s auto accident and other things. Evidently, Mrs. Thomas is still living in the house next door to Ollie’s. Cathy and I walked around the neighborhood on Saturday and looked at the Thomas home from the outside, it too is beautiful, very big ranch style home with teal green trim and on a big lot surrounded by California oaks. The documentary, FRANK AND OLLIE, doesn’t begin to convey just how impressive these homes were. The neighborhood is now filling up with mansions, one was under construction. Cathy and I noticed that one of the homes across the street had a miniature train trestle in it’s front yard, but the tracks had been removed. Evidently, Ollie’s train inspired the sincerest form of flattery from some of the neighbors as well. Imagine what that area was like when Frank and Ollie bought the land. Probably an oak grove that had to be cleared for ground breaking. La Canada is the essence of old California ambiance. What a great couple of days at Ollie’s house!

A week’s work of mentally challenged felines!

Welp, here’s 7-15 and 7-16-1938, followed by 7-18 through 7-21. 7-17 was a Sunday page. Herriman seems to be doing two-strip continuities here, 7-14 and 7-15 use a barrel, 7-18 and 7-19 show Krazy waiting for Ignatz to “come”, 7-20 and 7-21 ring changes on a “benjo”.  7-16 trots out Offissa Pupp’s thought detector once more.  I think that Krazy feeling “fit as a banjo”, goes right to the heart of his jazz age origins; Krazy was a musical cat!

Get these DVDs NOW!

Alright, cartoon lovers! Go to www.thunderbeananimation.comand order copies of “The Little King” and “Cultoons Volume 2: Animated Education” right NOW! Got em? Good! My friend Steve Stanchfield put these together, and they are a true labor of love. Who thinks much about Otto Soglow’s merry monarch these days? You can see 1940s Sunday Little King pages on line at dailyink.com, but the animated cartoons? Now Steve makes it easy for you to see all 10 Van  Beuren “Kings” uncut and restored with the original titles (wherever possible), plus the two “Sentinel Louey” Cartoons and the Max Fleischer “Betty Boop and The Little King” thrown in as a bonus! Wait until you see and hear all the text extras that Milton Knight and Chris Buchman put together for this DVD, including a recording of the tune “Zombie”, which is heard in “On the Pan” and in my favorite Van Beuren Aesop Sound Fable: “Rough On Rats”. Milton wrote a wonderful essay on Jim Tyer that explains just why the design in his animation transcends the thirties and was contemporary all the way into the late 1950s! Milton, you should write Jim’s biography. The Little King was one of my childhood favorites, not because his cartoons were funny, but because they were scary! Jim’s animation of the catacombs that scare the fat lady tourist in “Art for Art’s Sake”, are an indelible scary delight, as is the “mad bomber” in “The Fatal Note”. Jim animated a lot of the bomber’s acting scenes, as well as the crazy chase where the bomber’s arms rotate like pinwheels as he shoots at the King.  Wait until you see “Marching Along”, essentially a commercial for the NRA, a true time capsule which shows how volatile commodity investing was (and still is). This one was not on TV that I remember, well worth buying the DVD to get!

Cultoons Volume 2 features a lot of obscure and rare educational cartoons from the 1930s to the 1950s. It includes “A Desert Dilemma” bu Cy Young the great Disney special effects animator (audio commentary by Milton Knight, Steve Worth and Jerry Beck), “See How They Won”, an Ub Iwerks cartoon featuring The Microbe Army for Boots Chemists in London, “Finding His Voice” by Max Fleischer and “The Family Album” by Paul Terry, both made for Western Electric. “The Family Album” is actually a sequel to “Finding His Voice”, so the grouping is appropriate and long overdue. Steve Worth does audio commentary for “Voice”. Also on the DVD you will find a very early John Hubley Navy UPA production: “Swab Your Choppers”, and a beautiful color print of Hugh Harman’s “Winky the Watchman”. “Winky” is the little guy with the lantern on the box cover drawn by the late Brenda Bailey, to whom the DVD is dedicated. She did a great job in drawing Winky, he looks very appealing. Pinto Colvig does his voice. I did the audio commentary on this short, with info culled from Hugh Harman’s papers. I made a really embarrassing mistake, not in the cartoon notes, but in the info I supplied on live action films. See if you can spot it. Steve even threw in an extra audio reminiscence of Hugh that I recorded for the DVD.

Steve is a tireless collector of the rare and the obscure in vintage animation, so we who love this material have an obligation to support him! Buy several copies and give them away to friends, relatives, or the next person you meet on the street! Donate a copy to your local public library! Let’s make these cartoons FAMOUS! Then, with the profits (?), Steve can do more DVDs of  the unusual and forgotten in cartoon history. I has spoken!

Also in today’s blog is the next installment of “Lane Allen’s Diary”, which I saved as a kid from some religious weekly or other. The strip is not really religious, but I think it’s almost as good in it’s own way as Walt Kelly’s “Our Gang” comics. Just look at the attitudes in the last panel. The mom and dad’s poses tell us so clearly what their attitudes are toward Lane and his fishing trip with “good ol’ worms”. I love the drawing in this strip, a combination of illustration and cartooning. The facial expressions are refreshing to look at. To repeat from previous posts, if any of ya’ll know anything about this strip, please let me know!

7-11, etc.

7-11-1938 through 7-14-1938.  Offissa Pupp’s mind reading device resembles a divining rod! I like the barrel joke in 7-14, especially the scandalized Mrs. Kwakk-Kwakk in the last panel.

the next batch

I did an interview and two commentaries today on Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 5, coming soon. You know, it’s interesting how much I still love the black and white Looney Tunes fifty-two years after I was first exposed to ‘THE DAFFY DOC’, the earliest one I can remember seeing. In St. Louis, Mo. where I was an infant, we had a TV program called “The Wranglers’ Club”, featuring a man named Harry Gibbs, otherwise known as “Texas Bruce”. He must have run that cartoon a hundred times. I was honored to do the commentary on THE DAFFY DOC today, as well as  LITTLE RED WALKING HOOD , and to talk about Mel Blanc, Bob McKimson, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Art Davis, Irv Spence and many other hero cartoonists. Thanks to David Gerstein for helping me to decipher Daffy’s sign with the Hebrew/Yiddish lettering that he holds up in the operating room sequence of THE DAFFY DOC. In means “shah”, which is the word for “quiet”. Time for that mystery to be cleared up!

Here are the next four episodes of KK. 7-6 through 7-9-1938. I love that “Weezie”  cat in the 7-9. Looks like Krazy after an elephant stepped on his head. The schoolteacher is an interesting new character as well.  In 7-6, once again Garge reveals that Coconino is a stage with stage hands providing the audio just behind the backdrop (in this case, the fence). Again a hole in the wood plays a part, this time to let the words to “O, Solo Mio” seep through.

A Bunch More Kats

Here’s 7-2, 7-4 and 7-5-1938. In 7-2, I would swear that Garge used this joke before, in the 1920s. In 7-4, a double reconsideration results in inaction, sounds like the federal government, doesn’t it? In 7-5, I love the personification of “conscience” in the third panel, and the staging on floor planks. I love the hole in the floor, maybe that’s where “conscience” exits and enters. This seems to convey that Garge thought of this idea as a parenthetical aside, so it takes place in “the wings” of the strip, or off-stage.