Wow Factor

Bob Lubbers was one of the great cartooning penman of his generation, yet I haven't seen much of his strip work reprinted. In this Tarzan strip he displays a 'wow factor', like unto Foster and Hogarth.

Bob Lubbers — Tarzan Sunday — 1951

Les Graces Enseignant

Okay children, now pay attention to your teachers . . . 

Frorent — The Graces Teaching — 1883

Rest My Eyes

The little image below may not be exciting, but to me it is very pleasurable to rest my eyes upon. The subject matter, the ink work, the composition—it's mesmerizing to me in its own little way.

This is from a book that Roy Krenkel sold to me, demonstrating one of Krenkel's lovely inspirations for his own work.

F. Brest — decorative panel — 1885

Really Ticked

See, there's this shepherd guy and he's been losing his cows (?) to a vagrant lion, and the guy is really ticked and he's really buff, and well, enough is enough.

P.A. Leroux — A Shepherd Strangling a Lion — 1883

I try to imagine how this artist worked out the pose. If it's from his imagination, well and good. But if this guy is posing for the artist, is he, like, grappling a pillow, or what? Gosh I hope I don't stay awake tonight worrying about this.

Struggle for Life

I'm guessing this is an allegorical image and it looks pretty disastrous for what could've just been a boatload of naked people, all minding their own business. That poor baby is being swept right out of the picture, and the blindfolded guy at the rudder seems pretty darn calm considering what a ruckus is going on around him ("What's going on, people? C'mon, somebody tell me. Why's the baby crying?"). Whoosh. All this makes a lot of our struggles seem pret-ty tame, I must say.

Henry Delacroix — Struggle for Life — 1893

A Rarity

HERE's  a rarity — the guy is nude and the gal fully clothed!

H. Granville Fell — Zephyrus and Flora — 1900

Breath of Fresh Air

These three characters were ALways mistreating each other over many years, so it was a breath of fresh air to have the charm of music bring them together harmoniously. 

George Herriman — Krazy Kat — March 31, 1941

K-Reek

These two images tumbled out together from a partial spill of my image morgue — a splendid example of my little world laughing at itself.

 Curt Swan —Superman — 1970s

Robert Crumb — self-portrait — 1989

The Arrival of Saint Nicholas

St. Nicholas is, of course, a grand saint. And Santa Claus really seems to be a separate entity working in association with the saint. Nicholas, I think, is the pope of the holiday and Santa maybe the head cardinal? And then all the millions of Santas spread around the world that are scaring all the little kids in the malls and on street corners are the faithful bishops and knights and pawns?

I dunno. 

Anyway, here is a lovely depiction, by Hergé, of a grand arrival of Saint Nicholas, certainly emulating His Holiness, the Pope. And it looks like Homer Simpson's granddad must have been one of triplets back in the day.

Hergé —The Arrival of Saint Nicholas — 1936

Inside Front Covers

The late Joe Kubert had probably the record for the longest career in comic books, from the early days in the '40s to just recently. His art style was highly distinctive all that time, though it did evolve consistently. The quality of his style took a leap upward in the early '50s, seemingly quite suddenly. But the first item below seems to be a 'missing link' in his evolution. It has hints of years to come, while still showing youthful experimentation. Even his signature is experimental, rarely used elsewhere like that.

This was an inside front cover for Avon Periodicals, a publisher with a propensity for assigning the best artists to create pen and ink illustrations to 'draw' readers inside the comic, assuming the cover also did its job. As the samples further below showcase, many of those inside covers were by Everett Raymond Kinstler, an illustrator in the making, and Wally Wood with Joe Orlando—two of the most compelling comic book artists of the 1950s.

All of these gentlemen were helping to keep the Golden Age of comic books alive as long as possible, until smothered by the oppressive Comics Code Authority.

 Joe Kubert — Attack on Planet Mars — 1951

 Everett Raymond Kinstler — The Phantom Witch Doctor — 1952

Wally Wood/Joe Orlando — Space Detective — 1951

With Trembling Pseudopods

Among many talented cartoonists over the years, Will Elder was one of the top, even though he specialized in satire, and much of it with his compatriot Harvey Kurtzman.

Originally published in Trump magazine in 1957, this illustration satirizes good girl pulp illustration from a decade before. Elder brings his usual 'chicken fat' (extra little sight gags) to the drawing and shows that he could have given Virgil Finlay a run for his money if he had seriously worked for the pulps.

Will Elder — Trump magazine — 1957

Make the Jump

I love comparing original illustrative art to the printed page—to see how well it reproduces, to see how color adds to the impact of line drawing, and also to see any changes along the way. Such is the case here where the title logo-type jumped from an older blocky style into a more modern (for the time) organic style. Unfortunately the artist's name, Al Gabrielle, didn't make the jump with it.

Al Gabrielle — The Black Cat — printed page 1940s

Al Gabrielle — The Black Cat — original art

A Hint

Somewhere along the way new-world architecture went totally left-brained and became 'stream-lined', and thus boring for the most part. 

This beautiful rendering in ink and watercolor gives us a hint of what a metropolis might look like if the old-world right-brain still had a hand in it as well.

© 1993 Albert Lorenz —Architectural Fantasia

A Life of Quiet Study

Yes, this—with all my heart —THIS—is what I yearn for . . .

© 1989 Robert Crumb

Zoom to School Over the Cloudlets

When I was a kid, inventors were all the rage. That's probably the case for all kids in all generations, but really, the 'space age' was the age of the future. Things had to be invented for the future to unfold the way it was being predicted. I would sit in church and daydream all the inventions that would make life more interesting.

One of the inspirations for wild daydreams was an inventor by the name of Gyro Gearloose, who usually invented just what was needed to solve a problem for his clientele. Sometimes he had to whack himself in the head and see stars and then invent something while in a delirium. I think that probably kicked his right brain into gear, while his left brain worked on automatic pilot.

Carl Barks — Gyro Gearloose — 1960

There are inventors and there are tweakers. The tweakers are forever noodling with a great invention, to try to improve it and change it gradually into something else. Sometimes it's changed into a complicated  gadget that basically does what the original invention did, but takes the fun out of the early concept. 

Airplanes have gone from barn-storming jennies that any adventurous soul could master to ultra-complex ultra-sonic jet fuel guzzling monster birds that can only be piloted by specialists with years of dedicated training.

Cars used to be sweet little contraptions with great diverse looks, that the owner could tinker with and fix problems and even replace a carburetor if needed. Now cars all look like one another and need specialized mechanics to hook the car's computer up to a diagnostic computer and then adjust components to just the right micro-tolerence.

Computers and the internet were once the domain of geeks bearing slide-rules (remember those?) and then finally reached a level where ol' grandma and you and I could figure out how to operate them and accomplish things with 'em. But there's always a new software, a new OS, a new plug-in gadget, all of them needing learning curves, special chargers, special training. Platforms that won't talk to each other without buying a special translator program, or things that you'd like to program or download, but nope, it's only for Microsoft, or nope, only for Mac. Oh, that great cutting edge computer that you bought last year? It's phased out, nearly obsolete, time to buy a new one, oh a new and improved one that does all the things the other one did, but it's been tweaked so that you have to learn new protocols and procedures.

Blogging was a great invention, a way for every person to communicate and publish, but now there's all kinds of options and decisions, hidden costs (ah, yes, extra storage), and just when you're comfortable with the program you're using, they imPROVE it, so that it does the same basic thing as always, but give you new learning curves, changing the look just for the sake of change.

It used to be that I could just whack myself in the head and see stars and kick my right brain into gear while my left brain worked on automatic pilot and blog, blog, blog for the fun of it for you and I. Now my left brain is in charge, trying to figure out which icon to click, which size to make each image, what unfamiliar color will work for the text, yada yada.

Change for change's sake, that's what inventing is about anymore.

Ink Work

And of course I jes' love Jeffrey Jones' ink work!

© 1973 Jeffrey Catherine Jones

Asleep in the Deep

I jes' love seeing texture in an ink drawing, and very few are better at texture in ink drawings than Virgil Finlay was, in pulps and other venues, such as The American Weekly.

Virgil Finlay —Asleep in the Deep — 1940s

Love, Youth and Death

O bitter death, leave the young ones alone — will ya?

Garth Jones — Love, Youth & Death — 1899

Come Hither and Frolic and Play

Known mostly for his faerie-world color work, Warwick Goble was also pretty adroit with pen and ink rendering.

Warwick Goble — The Sea-Fairies

Slow sail'd the weary mariners and saw,

Betwixt the green brink and the running foam,

Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest

To little harps of gold; and while they mused,

Whispering to each other half in fear,

Shrill music reach'd them on the middle sea.

. . .

O hither, come hither and furl your sails,

Come hither to me and to me:

Hither, come hither and frolic and play . . .

Battle Cry

One of the finest comic strip panels in the history of the medium:

Hal Foster — Prince Valiant — panel detail from June 19, 1938