Generosity

I see a lot of 'bell-ringers' out this season, and they represent an awful lot of people who deserve to benefit from any generosity that we can afford to give. We're all in this together!

Russell Patterson — 1930s

This Ain't No Season to be Sad!

Cliff Sterrett was a cartoonist's cartoonist, full of wit and whimsy in his art and 'plotting'. This Christmas package is from 1939, a very good year for pop creativity.

Above, detail from below.

Cliff Sterrett — Polly and Her Pals — December 17, 1939

Revealing Other Realms

You can always count on Kinuko Craft to reveal other realms by opening an enchanted connection to the golden age . . .

Kinuko Craft — Song for the Basilisk — 1997

Magic

There's magic in the air . . .

Luis Royo — Heavy Metal magazine

Design Zeitgeist

In my opinion, our society made a HUGE mistake in 'progressing' beyond the design of the times of the '20s and '30s.

Oh I'm so glad we made progress in civil rights, and I'm happy with digital technology, but really, the design zeitgeist did not need a lot of improvement . . . in my opinion.

1929 Studebaker Roadster, 5 wire wheels standard

with roomy rumble seat

Crowded Corner

Empty air is as important as a crowded corner of the universe . . .

Kwason Suzuki — Blue Finches —1911

Here Be Suitors

What a tasty little panel from a bygone era . . .

Mary S. Reeve — decorative panel — 1916

Last Atlantean

Of course you've seen this magnificent print by Barry Smith, and probably have it in your collection, but I'm posting it here, just 'cause I want to. Zoom in on the beautiful rendering detail.

Barry Windsor-Smith — The Last Atlantean — 1981

Luxury and Indolence

Hal Foster really 'illustrated' the Prince Valiant comic strip, rather than 'cartooned' it, composing more detail into one panel than most Sunday strips had in their entirety. It's almost ludicrous to turn over one of the published Valiant full pages to see Yogi Bear, ViP, and Wizard of Id with their simplistic, repetitive graphics.

For the ongoing Paneltopia category, here is another isolated panel that deserves to be examined in closer detail.

Hal Foster — Prince Valiant

Classic Christmas Peanuts

I'm so into images of all sorts that I even scan wrapping paper . . .

Charles Schulz —Classic Christmas Peanuts

—covered a present I received years ago—

Skate Date

What a sweetheart. If I was her age in 1929, I would SO ask her out for a skate date, catch snowflakes on our tongues, drink hot chocolate together.

Honey, I SAID if I was her age, meaning I wouldn't have met you yet.

Rolf Armstrong — College Humor — December 1929

Meanwhile . . .

Maurice Greiffenhagen

Mermaid

ca 1900

Frazetta-esque

I don't know the date of this painting by John Hamberger, but it was used as the cover for a nice book for young readers, Sea Monsters of Long Ago, which I think is available as a modern reprint. This painting certainly has a spooky, if not romantic, atmosphere that makes you glad that you live here and now. It has a bit of Frazetta-esque quality to it.

John Hamberger — Sea Monsters of Long Ago

Color Kid

Did you know that today was Color Kid's birthday? Or is his birthday, or um, will be his birthday...um sometime in the...far future?

This calendar was officially sanctioned by DC, so it's sorta official about these other birthdays and stuff. Oh, and this calendar doesn't match this year's alignment, so don't be setting appointments by it, you'd be a day late... or early...or something.

Incidentally

I'm thinking I might be of the same religion as the Davidsons.

Eldon Dedini — Playboy cartoon — watercolor

Simplest of Materials

The simplest of materials can create a wonderful work of art — with a good hand and mind controlling them, of course!

James McNeill Whistler — The Japanese Dress — ca 1878

pencil, chalk and pastel on brown paper

Process

Oh, and here's a sequence that gives you a visual hint as to the process of illustration rendering for Richard Corben.

Richard Corben

Portals of the Imagination

Let's post up a couple more panels for Paneltopia, these from a colorful graphic novel adaptation of New Tales of the Arabian Nights by Richard Corben.

Telling tales well is a magical art, as Shahrazad (and Corben) demonstrate here. These kinds of panels make you want to step into them, as portals of the imagination they are.

Richard Corben — New Tales of the Arabian Nights

Richard Corben — New Tales of the Arabian Nights

Paneltopia

I'm starting a new recurring and sporadic feature post that I'm calling Paneltopia, a place where panels and covers from comic books and strips are portals for the imagination to enter and contemplate — panels and covers isolated from the story for pure enjoyment of the art. Roy Lichtenstein took comic panels and bastardized them into 'high' art. I'm just honoring comic panels as they are as 'low' art. See which art form you would rather gaze at.

Hal Foster's Prince Valiant has panel after panel that I love to examine, especially in the large format that he drew and was published in. The panel directly below was HUGE on the printed Sunday broadsheet. I have many Valiant strips from the '60s that will be contributing panels to this feature.

Oh to be in the hunting party of King Arthur on a crisp Autumn day...

Artistic Force

The previous post demonstrated a pure homage.

This post demonstrates a pure rip-off.

The top image is by Jack Greiner from 1939, seven years after the elegant pastel by Rolf Armstrong, shown at the bottom. Greiner's image was actually also used on an earlier cover of Paris Gayety, still two years after Armstrong's.

Armstrong was an original artistic force.

Jack Greiner — Parisienne Nights — 1939

Rolf Armstrong — College Humor — May 1932

White Bear King

An out and out homage of Kittelsen by the ever great William Stout.

Have I ever mentioned what a big fan I am of Stout's artwork?

William Stout — White Bear King Valemon — after Kittelsen

Theodor Kittelsen — Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon — 1912

Something for Everyone

In general, there was a pulp for everyone back in the pulp era, from adventure to romance, from sports to gangsters, from sci-fi to mystery, from war to sex, from history to horror, from you name it to you name it.

THIS title seemed to have something for everyone in just one issue.

Rudolph Belarski — All-American Fiction — December 1937

Fighting Daredevils

Boy, those pulp artists knew how to pack a wallop!

Rudolph Belarski —Air War — Summer 1944

Pretty As a Picture

Roy Best really was . . . one of the best, that is, in pin-ups.

Roy Best — Pretty As A Picture — pin-up

Flying Lessons

So, the question is, WHO is giving the instructions?

William Stout — Flying Lessons — 1993

Flights of Fancy

It amazes me the length that people go to in their flights of fancy!

Kenneth Garrett — Wing Walker

We Got a Lot to Loin

An odd little book illustration from an early Symbolist/Surrealist:

Félicien Rops — Diaboli Virtus In Lumbis — 1888

(The Devil's Strength in the Loins?)

Jerry Robinson

(1922 - 2011)

The OTHER good Batman artist . . .

Batstuff

Speaking of Batstuff, and speaking of trucks barreling our way on a collision course—here is a nifty cover drawn by the 'good Batman artist', Dick Sprang, back in the 1950s, but was never used as an actual cover. It's an exciting premise with a dynamic perspective rendering and I can only think that the editors didn't want to show Batman without showing his face. But if so, how did it get this far—inked and pasted up?

I dunno, but oh I love the Dick Sprang oeuvre of Batstuff.

Dick Sprang — 1950s

You People Are Swell!

I want to thank everyone who has left a supportive comment about our accident. I really appreciate your kindness. You people are swell!

My wife and I are feeling very sore, aching all over (seatbelts save lives but they can also cause injury), but we really are SO grateful that it wasn't worse. I have such empathy for others who have suffered more than us in car accidents. I heard of someone else who had an accident the same day as us, nearby ours, who was a lot worse off than we were.

Best wishes for safe driving for all of you!

Oh! And the other guy's insurance company came through with a rental car for us to use for a few days. Whoosh, it drives like the Batmobile, fastest thing on four wheels!

Monkeys Dressed as Lifeguards

What Dilbert lacks in graphic grace, it makes up for in blunt wit and wisdom. I nominate Scott Adams to be national spokesman for Occupy Wall Street.

For a Charm of Powerful Trouble

A very cool version of the ol' EC Witch by ol' William Stout:

William Stout — The Old EC Witch — 1994

And to refresh our memory of how it went in the original source:

1 WITCH. Round about the caldron go;

In the poison'd entrails throw.—

Toad, that under cold stone,

Days and nights has thirty-one;

Swelter'd venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i' the charmed pot!

ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

3 WITCH. Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;

Witches' mummy; maw and gulf

Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark;

Root of hemlock digg'd i the dark;

Liver of blaspheming Jew;

Gall of goat, and slips of yew

Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse;

Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips;

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,—

Make the gruel thick and slab:

Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,

For the ingrediants of our caldron.

ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

2 WITCH. Cool it with a baboon's blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

Woe Be Gone

Well, last week was rough, as I've already indicated, but this week is even rougher.

Last night my wife and I were in an auto accident, rear-ended by a truck at a high rate of speed. We weren't seriously injured, but bad enough that we're both a bit loopy from pain meds. Our bodies took a full whiplash effect and our car was totaled. Thank God our daughter was not with us in the rear seat.

We had just come from the library and were just going to the post office to mail a letter. We were sitting at a light when in the rear-view mirror I saw the truck coming full speed, 2 seconds before impact. I watched glass fly by me in slow motion speed, just like in the movies.

I love paramedics, firemen and policemen—they are magnificent at what they do.

We own two cars, but the other one died last week, the transmission giving out at 65 miles an hour in the left lane of 5 lanes in evening heavy traffic, 25 miles from home. Who knows if the other guy's insurance will pay for a rental (ours doesn't because we had two cars in the family). Nothing is within walking distance of here, so here we are.

Below is a little scribble I made this morning, in my loopiness.

Mergie left a comment that reminds us:

Keep pushin, keep pushin, keep pushin, keep pushin on
Keep pushin, keep pushin, you know you have got to be so strong
Keep pushin, keep pushin, well even if you think your strength is gone
Keep pushin on

—Reo Speedwagon

Potential Zero

A pair of star-crossed lovers à la Finlay . . .

Virgil Finlay — Science Stories — December 1953

Segue

From cosplay to Cosway, a totally lame segue.

Richard Cosway — Portrait of a Lady as a Muse — ca 1804

Cosplay

What a sweet portrait, in the orientalist manner that was so popular in the 19th century. I would love to see a revival of, not just oriental, but of cosplay portrait themes. Not Manga or comics, but anything from SteamPunk to Renaissance costumes.

Hey, I'd be willing to do some portrait drawings of some of you, if you come up with a really cool cosplay idea. Let me think of how to set something like that up out here in CyberSpace. Ideas?

Natale Schiavoni —Odalisque — 1840

('odalisque' being a woman slave in a harem)

Newsstand

This is a beautiful rendering that is funny with incongruity and informative with a roll call of glamourous mags in 1929.

Personally, I'm not familiar with Anthony Weekly, Oh Baby, Class, Spur, or Mercury magazines, but I'd like to be. Ya really got to wonder what he's got stashed behind the counter, and not just in the way of magazines.

Russell Patterson — Newsstand — 1929

I Am Rose

Another Wallace Tripp, and a sweet one at that.

Wallace Tripp interpreting Gertrude Stein

This and all Wallace Tripp posts dedicated to Pat Ann & Larry.

Torrid

After those last couple of monochromatic posts we need something colorful to post. Hey fellows, roll out that big graphic over there, the one behind those stacked canvases. Yeah, no. No, not that one. Over there next to the bookcase. Okay, we'll just wait here until you can put it in the post machine, and . . . no NO, not that one! It's a hot graphic! NO NO, it's too hot! We'll burn up! The whole internet's gonna combust! Oh somebody save us!!!

Georges Lepape — 1912

title? I dunno. Let's call it The Torrid Affair.

Somebody open the windows, it's too damn hot in here!

To Break a Poet's Dream

A very favorite obscure golden age illustrator—Beatrice Stevens.

Beatrice Stevens — Geoffry of Monmouth's Dream — 1906

Look to the Cartoonists

It's been kind of a rough week here at Lake Woebegon — troubles and tough situations for family and friends.

When you're feeling down and blue, look to the cartoonists for wisdom:

Robert Crumb — Singin' in the Bathtub — 1996