Mark Kausler’s CatBlog

Scout Baby-Sits

 Everyone in Ericka’s family is taking turns babysitting newborn Charlotte, including Scout! This photo is a little dark, but if you look carefully, you’ll see Charlotte’s face in the shadow of her carrier. As we saw in our last episode, there isn’t much difference between a baby carrier and a cat carrier, so we’ll forgive Scout if she gets confused.

Felix’s misadventures (4-23 to 4-29-1934) with the crazy bulldog continue as he gets chased through a circus tent and takes refuge in Mr. Dooit’s refrigerator. Felix remains offstage in cold storage as the bulldog chases Hilda the maid and Mr. Dooit in the last two daily strips (4-27 and 4-28). he’ll probably be a block of ice next time. In the Sunday, Felix continues his fall from the moon begun last post, and becomes the mascot of a couple of airplane pilots. You see, Felix’s fall was broken by their rudder and the cat’s weight on the back end of the plane enabled it to clear a dangerous mountain range. So Otto segues from fantasy to “reality” in Felix’s world. By the way, the hand shadow episode of “Funny Films” above, reminds me of the hand shadows created by the baby in the cartoon “Sure-Locked Homes”, from 1928.

 Myrtle (1-26 to 1-31-1948) spends a week doing barber shop gags. It seems Freddie (Myrtle’s Dad) needs a haircut. I love the bucket gag in the 1-26 and the 1-31 has a nice little inside reference as the Barber tells Freddie, “I wouldn’t do this for you, only I want my picture in the comics!” Charming drawings and imaginative gags, that’s Dudley Fisher.

 In Krazy, (5-4 to 5-9-1942) it’s revealed in the 5-4 that Offissa Pupp is a Soprano, after Krazy’s “Berra-tone”, and Ignatz’s tenor. The balance of the strips are about brick-throwing, Ignatz foils Pupp’s Katzenjammer style use of glue on the brick with a pair of old, no-account gloves on his spindly hands. If you look at the foregrounds of the 5-5 and 5-9, you will notice floorboards and rugs in the Coconino desert. My theory is that’s what George Herriman thought his comic strip panels to be; little stage sets where the characters could hurl heavy objects at each other and trade bon mots in Kat Langwitch.

The Yogi Bear Sunday pages are from June, 1964 this time. I got access to another newspaper which carried the half-page version of the comic. I had to do a little computer paste-up work to make a facsimile half-page out of the 6-7. It was a tall, narrow strip in the newspaper I clipped it from. 3 out of the 4 pages are gags about the newly released Yogi Feature Cartoon, “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear!” The 6-21 is the only third page strip, (click on thumbnail to enlarge) and equates the music of The Beatles with skunks. All the artwork, including the logo designs, are by Harvey Eisenberg. I often wondered why the art in the TV shows and cartoons was never as pleasing as the Sunday comic page. It was a case of too many cartoonists spoiling the Bear, Mr. Eisenberg had the Sunday page mostly to himself in 1964, and few artists drew the Hanna-Barbera characters as well as Harvey.

Two of my seven readers, Thad and Charles, wrote in to ask about cels for sale from our cartoon: “Some Other Cat”. They are all for sale, except for the original backgrounds which Greg Ford is keeping. Each cel comes with a reproduction background, original pencil drawing where available, and a DVDr of the cartoon. The package sells for $80.00 to $100.00, depending on the whim of we who sell the artwork. I’ll try to get some thumbnail images of the cels available now on the blog page very soon.