Potrzebie
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Russ Cochran announces a new 32-page monthly publication, The Sunday Funnies, devoted to classic comic strips. It features reprints of Gasoline Alley, Krazy Kat, Bronc Peeler, Little Nemo and other Sunday pages dating back to 1895 but mostly from the 1900s to the 1930s. The premiere issue features Gasoline Alley (the first ten Sunday pages from October 24 to December 26, 1920). Also: Alley Oop, Bronc Peeler, Krazy Kat, Wee Willie Winkie's World and Crazy Quilt (April 19, 1914), a strip by Frank King and five other artists with several storylines stitched together.
The source for this material is the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, launched by Lucy Caswell and Milton Caniff at Ohio State in 1977. Cochran comments: "Each issue of The Sunday Funnies will be a full-size 22"x16" comic section, containing full-page Sunday comics in full color. These pages are coming from the archives of Ohio State University, which, thanks to Bill Blackbeard, has the largest and most comprehensive collection of Sunday comics in existence. The retail price will be $10 (plus $5 S/H for US or $7 S/H outside the US) and I will be selling subscriptions, 12 monthly issues for $100. My print runs for these historic sections will be low and I expect to sell out the first few issues, so get your order in now before it's too late. The first three issues of The Sunday Funnies are being printed at once, so send $30 plus $9 shipping ($21 outside US) to get these first three, or, if you believe in me, send $100 plus $25 shipping ($55 outside US) for a year's subscription. I promise you will be delighted... I discovered that there would be considerable economy in printing The Sunday Funnies three at a time, I realized that there would be similar economy in shipping them out three at a time, and that's the way I should be selling them... three at a time. So I am not offering single issues of The Sunday Funnies anymore, I'm selling them in groups of three, all to be mailed in a sturdy Calumet Carton at the same time. This means that now it is essentially a quarterly publication of three Sunday sections, each of 32 pages, for the retail price of $30 plus shipping ($9 US; $20 Outside US). I think this will work much better. As always, you can order through my web site, www.russcochran.com; or you can send your check to PO Box 469, West Plains MO 65775; or you can call 417-256-1311 if you prefer to use MasterCard, Visa or Discover. You can also make a payment by Paypal to russ@russcochran.com. If you want to be invoiced to pay by Paypal, just e-mail Judy atcomicart@russcochran.com."
The source for this material is the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, launched by Lucy Caswell and Milton Caniff at Ohio State in 1977. Cochran comments: "Each issue of The Sunday Funnies will be a full-size 22"x16" comic section, containing full-page Sunday comics in full color. These pages are coming from the archives of Ohio State University, which, thanks to Bill Blackbeard, has the largest and most comprehensive collection of Sunday comics in existence. The retail price will be $10 (plus $5 S/H for US or $7 S/H outside the US) and I will be selling subscriptions, 12 monthly issues for $100. My print runs for these historic sections will be low and I expect to sell out the first few issues, so get your order in now before it's too late. The first three issues of The Sunday Funnies are being printed at once, so send $30 plus $9 shipping ($21 outside US) to get these first three, or, if you believe in me, send $100 plus $25 shipping ($55 outside US) for a year's subscription. I promise you will be delighted... I discovered that there would be considerable economy in printing The Sunday Funnies three at a time, I realized that there would be similar economy in shipping them out three at a time, and that's the way I should be selling them... three at a time. So I am not offering single issues of The Sunday Funnies anymore, I'm selling them in groups of three, all to be mailed in a sturdy Calumet Carton at the same time. This means that now it is essentially a quarterly publication of three Sunday sections, each of 32 pages, for the retail price of $30 plus shipping ($9 US; $20 Outside US). I think this will work much better. As always, you can order through my web site, www.russcochran.com; or you can send your check to PO Box 469, West Plains MO 65775; or you can call 417-256-1311 if you prefer to use MasterCard, Visa or Discover. You can also make a payment by Paypal to russ@russcochran.com. If you want to be invoiced to pay by Paypal, just e-mail Judy atcomicart@russcochran.com."
December 6, 1936
July 21, 1940
January 2, 1944
Labels: billy ireland, comic strips, dailyink, lucy caswell, russ cochran, sunday funnies
¶ 8:59 AM 2 comments
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Albert's Candy Comics
I've had this little container of Albert's Candy Comics for 25 years, and I just decided to scan it. I bought it at a convenience store for maybe 15 cents in 1984 because I was curious. This product was like the polar opposite of the Whammo Giant Comics, which was printed in large "bedsheet" dimensions but displayed the strips inside at standard size. So obviously there was no reason for the book to be giant-size. The Albert company decided to print comic strips so tiny one could hardly see them. What's wrong with these people?
The container was designed to look like a miniature book, measuring about 1" x 1 1/2", and one opened the book to find candy and a comic strip. Unrecognizable cartoon characters were embossed on the cheap candy. The comic strips, folded with six panels on one side and six on the other, were apparently adapted from old Sunday strips and recolored on stats.
I enlarged the box and the opening panel to make them easy to see. I attempted to scan the five panels at bottom so if you click, the enlargement will approximate the actual printed size, which was just barely readable. Obviously, whoever devised this product had no interest in comic strips and gave no thought to a proper presentation. One could suck on the candy while looking at a strip format that sucked. Albert's Candy Comics can sometimes be found on eBay. Would you believe $99?
I've had this little container of Albert's Candy Comics for 25 years, and I just decided to scan it. I bought it at a convenience store for maybe 15 cents in 1984 because I was curious. This product was like the polar opposite of the Whammo Giant Comics, which was printed in large "bedsheet" dimensions but displayed the strips inside at standard size. So obviously there was no reason for the book to be giant-size. The Albert company decided to print comic strips so tiny one could hardly see them. What's wrong with these people?
The container was designed to look like a miniature book, measuring about 1" x 1 1/2", and one opened the book to find candy and a comic strip. Unrecognizable cartoon characters were embossed on the cheap candy. The comic strips, folded with six panels on one side and six on the other, were apparently adapted from old Sunday strips and recolored on stats.
I enlarged the box and the opening panel to make them easy to see. I attempted to scan the five panels at bottom so if you click, the enlargement will approximate the actual printed size, which was just barely readable. Obviously, whoever devised this product had no interest in comic strips and gave no thought to a proper presentation. One could suck on the candy while looking at a strip format that sucked. Albert's Candy Comics can sometimes be found on eBay. Would you believe $99?
Labels: albert's candy comics, blondie, comic strips, whammo
¶ 7:19 PM 0 comments
Monday, June 29, 2009
Death of Newspapers #3: DailyINK
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Why have I been postponing my rave review of King Features' superb email service, DailyINK? I don't know. Could it be that I have been waiting for them to add more classic King strips to the line-up?
Not long after Jay Kennedy became the comics editor at King Features Syndicate in 1989, he invited me over and gave me a tour of the place. At some point, he showed me press kits for the new comic strips. As Jay explained it, King Features' staff designers had the job of creating these press kits for salesmen to leave at newspapers when they went in to pitch new strips to the newspaper editors. These glossy press kits were a surprise because they looked identical to movie press kits. Well, okay, not as elaborate as the press kit for Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979), but you get the idea. The King Features salesmen needed all the help they could get when confronting newspaper editors who did not want to change any strips on their comics pages.
Around 1995, I suggested to Jay that he put a batch of the classic King strips from the 1930s and 1940s on the Internet. This seemed like an obvious idea, but his response was to question how such could turn a profit. However, a decade later, he did manage to push through this idea, introducing King Features' online DailyINK service in 2006. It's an amazing bargain. For only a $15 annual fee, subscribers can see their choice of strips either on a web page or via email or both. They can choose from more than 90 vintage and current comic strips, puzzles and editorial cartoons. They can read, save or print. Here's the King Features press release from February 23, 2006 when they introduced DailyINK.
The vintage strips currently sent to subscribers are Beetle Bailey, Brick Bradford, Bringing Up Father, Buz Sawyer, Flash Gordon, Krazy Kat, The Little King, Office Hours, The Phantom and Rip Kirby. Only Flash Gordon and The Phantom feature Sunday strips as well as the daily strips. DailyINK is a near perfect service. There's very little to complain about, apart from the disappointment over so few Sunday pages and the fact that many other vintage strips still have not been added. Further, there is scant historical background about the strips and no display of dates to indicate when the original classic strips were first published. Perhaps the vintage section was not developed or expanded because of Jay's tragic death at age 50 when he vacationed in Costa Rica and drowned in a rip current. It happened only a year after he introduced DailyINK and only a few months after he added more vintage strips to the package.
On the plus side, subscribers can go to the DailyINK site, and use the "magnifying glass" to enlarge the strips for easier readability. And of course, it's great to sit down with a cup of Chock full o' Nuts Heavenly Hazelnut Coffee as the email scrolls and the morning strips magically appear.
I say "magically" because seeing the vintage strips each morning has a time-travel effect, bringing back the memory of those years when the continuity strips reigned. The reader was forced to wait 24 hours for the next installment in the continuity, and now DailyINK's digital delay also generates a 24-hour anticipation. In a like manner, Stephen King wrote The Green Mile as a paperback mini-series in order to recreate the experience of those long-ago readers who waited at the dock for the arrival of each new Charles Dickens chapter.
I mainly subscribed to read Buz Sawyer, and by now, DailyINK subscribers have followed Buz through WWII as a Navy fighter pilot and later as he headed home in 1945, landing a job with an oil company. The storyline is reminiscent of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and it is fascinating to realize that Roy Crane's readers daily followed the similar themes of this story arc well over a year prior to the release of The Best Years of Our Lives.
To illustrate this review, I've selected key strips to show the transition from WWII: a panorama of ships, Buz learning of the end of the war and the death of Tot Winters. The date on the WWII finale strip reveals that Crane managed to keep almost in synch with actual events. The Japanese surrender came on August 15, 1945, and this strip ran on August 28, the same date the occupation of Japan began. Note that the entire horizon line is filled with ships.
In the stunning sideways strip of February 5, 1946, Tot Winters is frightened by Taboo the tiger and falls to her death. No sooner does Buz enter civilian life than he is falsely accused of murdering Tot because he unknowingly walked into her apartment only moments after she fell. (A set-up worthy of Cornell Woolrich!) Notice Taboo the tiger in the lower left corner and Crane's cityscape with the incandescent street lighting effects he achieved by his skillful use of CraftTint double-tone paper.
This was not the first time Crane turned the drawing sideways; he did an earlier sideways strip of a plane making a descent just before the crash. These must have been eye-catching on the printed page. Many might have turned their newspapers sideways to look at these strips, but it's doubtful people today will tilt their computer monitors.
When you click to enlarge these sample Buz Sawyer strips, the images will expand to the same size as the strips enlarged with DailyINK's magnifying magical mystery tool. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic."
In King News: An Autobiography (1941), Moses Koenigsberg wrote about the origins and early history of King Features Syndicate. Below is the entire book. Use the little triangles, the contents page and the clickable page numbers in the index to navigate to other pages.
Roy Crane's Buz Sawyer (February 5, 1946)
Why have I been postponing my rave review of King Features' superb email service, DailyINK? I don't know. Could it be that I have been waiting for them to add more classic King strips to the line-up?
Not long after Jay Kennedy became the comics editor at King Features Syndicate in 1989, he invited me over and gave me a tour of the place. At some point, he showed me press kits for the new comic strips. As Jay explained it, King Features' staff designers had the job of creating these press kits for salesmen to leave at newspapers when they went in to pitch new strips to the newspaper editors. These glossy press kits were a surprise because they looked identical to movie press kits. Well, okay, not as elaborate as the press kit for Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979), but you get the idea. The King Features salesmen needed all the help they could get when confronting newspaper editors who did not want to change any strips on their comics pages.
Around 1995, I suggested to Jay that he put a batch of the classic King strips from the 1930s and 1940s on the Internet. This seemed like an obvious idea, but his response was to question how such could turn a profit. However, a decade later, he did manage to push through this idea, introducing King Features' online DailyINK service in 2006. It's an amazing bargain. For only a $15 annual fee, subscribers can see their choice of strips either on a web page or via email or both. They can choose from more than 90 vintage and current comic strips, puzzles and editorial cartoons. They can read, save or print. Here's the King Features press release from February 23, 2006 when they introduced DailyINK.
The vintage strips currently sent to subscribers are Beetle Bailey, Brick Bradford, Bringing Up Father, Buz Sawyer, Flash Gordon, Krazy Kat, The Little King, Office Hours, The Phantom and Rip Kirby. Only Flash Gordon and The Phantom feature Sunday strips as well as the daily strips. DailyINK is a near perfect service. There's very little to complain about, apart from the disappointment over so few Sunday pages and the fact that many other vintage strips still have not been added. Further, there is scant historical background about the strips and no display of dates to indicate when the original classic strips were first published. Perhaps the vintage section was not developed or expanded because of Jay's tragic death at age 50 when he vacationed in Costa Rica and drowned in a rip current. It happened only a year after he introduced DailyINK and only a few months after he added more vintage strips to the package.
On the plus side, subscribers can go to the DailyINK site, and use the "magnifying glass" to enlarge the strips for easier readability. And of course, it's great to sit down with a cup of Chock full o' Nuts Heavenly Hazelnut Coffee as the email scrolls and the morning strips magically appear.
I say "magically" because seeing the vintage strips each morning has a time-travel effect, bringing back the memory of those years when the continuity strips reigned. The reader was forced to wait 24 hours for the next installment in the continuity, and now DailyINK's digital delay also generates a 24-hour anticipation. In a like manner, Stephen King wrote The Green Mile as a paperback mini-series in order to recreate the experience of those long-ago readers who waited at the dock for the arrival of each new Charles Dickens chapter.
I mainly subscribed to read Buz Sawyer, and by now, DailyINK subscribers have followed Buz through WWII as a Navy fighter pilot and later as he headed home in 1945, landing a job with an oil company. The storyline is reminiscent of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and it is fascinating to realize that Roy Crane's readers daily followed the similar themes of this story arc well over a year prior to the release of The Best Years of Our Lives.
To illustrate this review, I've selected key strips to show the transition from WWII: a panorama of ships, Buz learning of the end of the war and the death of Tot Winters. The date on the WWII finale strip reveals that Crane managed to keep almost in synch with actual events. The Japanese surrender came on August 15, 1945, and this strip ran on August 28, the same date the occupation of Japan began. Note that the entire horizon line is filled with ships.
In the stunning sideways strip of February 5, 1946, Tot Winters is frightened by Taboo the tiger and falls to her death. No sooner does Buz enter civilian life than he is falsely accused of murdering Tot because he unknowingly walked into her apartment only moments after she fell. (A set-up worthy of Cornell Woolrich!) Notice Taboo the tiger in the lower left corner and Crane's cityscape with the incandescent street lighting effects he achieved by his skillful use of CraftTint double-tone paper.
This was not the first time Crane turned the drawing sideways; he did an earlier sideways strip of a plane making a descent just before the crash. These must have been eye-catching on the printed page. Many might have turned their newspapers sideways to look at these strips, but it's doubtful people today will tilt their computer monitors.
When you click to enlarge these sample Buz Sawyer strips, the images will expand to the same size as the strips enlarged with DailyINK's magnifying magical mystery tool. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic."
•
In King News: An Autobiography (1941), Moses Koenigsberg wrote about the origins and early history of King Features Syndicate. Below is the entire book. Use the little triangles, the contents page and the clickable page numbers in the index to navigate to other pages.
Labels: arthur c. clarke, buz sawyer, comic strips, cornell woolrich, dailyink, death of newspapers, google books, jay kennedy, king features, moses koenigsberg, roy crane
¶ 7:33 AM 0 comments
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Wood Chips 11
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In 1961, Wood drew this cover for the National Cartoonists Society's Annual Report. Identifying these characters can be challenging. Clockwise from top left: Swee'Pea, Henry, Herby, Denny Dimwit, Dagwood, Pogo, Nancy, Charlie Brown, Eugene the Jeep, Dick Tracy, Miss Peach, Smokey Stover, Mutt and Jeff, the Little King, Dennis the Menace, Little Iodine, Jiggs, Daddy Warbucks, Mary Worth, Little Orphan Annie, Betty Cooper, Pete the Tramp, Prince Valiant, Mammy Yokum. Can anyone identify the faces I skipped over?
In 1961, Wood drew this cover for the National Cartoonists Society's Annual Report. Identifying these characters can be challenging. Clockwise from top left: Swee'Pea, Henry, Herby, Denny Dimwit, Dagwood, Pogo, Nancy, Charlie Brown, Eugene the Jeep, Dick Tracy, Miss Peach, Smokey Stover, Mutt and Jeff, the Little King, Dennis the Menace, Little Iodine, Jiggs, Daddy Warbucks, Mary Worth, Little Orphan Annie, Betty Cooper, Pete the Tramp, Prince Valiant, Mammy Yokum. Can anyone identify the faces I skipped over?
Below is Wood's capsule autobiography for the National Cartoonists Society. He grouped goopy characters together for goofiness galore and then combined them with one of his pages from Mad. Notice that he lettered his name as "Wallace Wood,'' not "Wally Wood". As he stated on several occasions, he did not like the name "Wally".
Labels: comic strips, mad, national cartoonists society, ncs, wood, wood chips
¶ 5:43 AM 0 comments
Sunday, January 18, 2009
George Herriman self-portrait
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George Herriman's Krazy Kat is one of the ten vintage comic strips available from King Features' inexpensive daily email service, DailyINK. Not long after Jay Kennedy took over as the King Features comic strip editor in 1997, I suggested to him that he make classic King strips available online, and eventually, he managed to launch DailyINK in the months prior to his death by drowning during a 2007 vacation in Costa Rica.
DailyINK vintage strips include Krazy Kat, Bringing Up Father, Buz Sawyer and Brick Bradford. Now if only King would double the number of classic strips. It's great to wake up and read King Features strips in email, almost like opening a morning newspaper in the 1940s. Amazingly, the annual fee for this excellent email service is only $15.
Click to enlarge this self-portrait by George Herriman. It comes from Craig Yoe's new Krazy Kat site, launched on Thursday (1/15). Go here:
George Herriman's Krazy Kat is one of the ten vintage comic strips available from King Features' inexpensive daily email service, DailyINK. Not long after Jay Kennedy took over as the King Features comic strip editor in 1997, I suggested to him that he make classic King strips available online, and eventually, he managed to launch DailyINK in the months prior to his death by drowning during a 2007 vacation in Costa Rica.
DailyINK vintage strips include Krazy Kat, Bringing Up Father, Buz Sawyer and Brick Bradford. Now if only King would double the number of classic strips. It's great to wake up and read King Features strips in email, almost like opening a morning newspaper in the 1940s. Amazingly, the annual fee for this excellent email service is only $15.
Click to enlarge this self-portrait by George Herriman. It comes from Craig Yoe's new Krazy Kat site, launched on Thursday (1/15). Go here:
Labels: comic strips, herriman, ignatz, krazy kat, yoe
¶ 10:00 AM 0 comments
