Harvey Comics was founded in 1941 by Alfred Harvey (1913-1994), with a digest-sized comic book called Pocket Comics that put the company on the map with their line-up of superheroes that included The Black Cat. Various artists and writers who eventually achieved greater success elsewhere got their start at Harvey, including Jack Kirby, Joe Simon and Jim Steranko. By the end of the 1940s, Harvey transitioned to publishing comic books featuring popular comic strips of the day that included Joe Palooka, Dick Tracy, Blondie, Mutt & Jeff and Sad Sack. By the 1950s, romance and horror titles came into the mix.

An inspired bit of licensing in 1952 led to the 1957 purchase of Casper and several other animated cartoon characters created by Paramount Pictures’ Famous Studios, with Baby Huey, Buzzy the Crow, Herman & Katnip and Little Audrey among them. The enormous popularity of these characters spelled the end of the other genres at Harvey, and the company became solely a producer of children’s comics during that era.

Various newly created characters, such as Richie Rich, Little Dot and Little Lotta, followed the same house style to become a group affectionately known as the “Harvey World,” Though various ownership changes have occurred since the original Harvey shut its doors in 1982, the characters have never ceased to be influential, with hit movies like Richie Rich (1994), starring Macaulay Culkin, or Casper (1995), starring Christina Ricci, or the current five-volume series of Harvey Comics Classics published by Dark Horse Comics.

This exhibition runs through November 30, 2008, and features artwork by Warren Kremer, Ernie Col’on, Sid Couchey, Howard Post, Fred Rhoads, Ham Fisher, Dom Sileo, Marty Taras, and many more.

» Alison Bechdel is taking her comic feature Dykes to Watch Out For on Sabbatical for an unspecified length.

» The Knight Life creator Keith Knight was profiled in The Daily News Transcript.

» Charlos Gary, creator of Cafe Con Leche and Working it Out is heading to New York after being laid off from the St. Petersburg Times.

» Last week, I posted news that Scott Stantis was celebrating 30 years of editorial cartooning. Also celebrating his 30th year in editorial cartooning: Steve Greenburg of The Ventura County Star.

» If you live in the Vermont area, take some time to see the “Campaign Fever ‘24″ exhibit at the Calvin Coolidge Visitor Center Museum in Plymouth, Vt. The exhibit highlights the 1924 election season wherein the Democratic party’s convention lasted 17 days before it could produce their nominee. Exhibit showcases political cartoons and campaign memorabilia.

» Tom Batuik, creator of Funky Winkerbean, has written an article that will appear in this month’s issue of Guidepost magazine. The magazine features articles of inspiring stories and people. Read the article here.

» And lastly, Bob Andelman (AKA Mr. Media) has interviewed Jules Feiffer about his feature Explainers. Fantagraphics has announced that it will publish the whole Explainers feature.

Listen to the interview. Open in your default player, or detach flash player into a separate browser window

It was 19th Century political cartoonists who began the use of symbols to give instant recognition in their cartoons. The images of Uncle Sam or Miss Liberty as surrogates for America signaled the reader that a cartoon was about the United States. Similarly, the elephant and donkey were used as symbols for the Republican and Democratic parties. Symbols could lend dignity or ignominy to a subject. A politician prefered to be associated with Abraham Lincoln or George Washington than the devil, or the grim reaper. Cartoonist Thomas Nast is credited with popularizing several enduring symbols, including the donkey, elephant, Boss Tweed, Uncle Sam, Santa Claus, and Miss Columbia.

You can see many of the exhibit pieces online.

» Garfield will by highlighted in Total Licensing Magazine.

» Andrews McMeel Universal selects Handmark Co-Founder Eric Decetis as Chief Executive Officer of uclick Division”

» Eric Decetis is reportedly making $5 million/year doing cartoons for t-shirts, boxers and greeting cards, etc.

» Mr. Media (AKA Bob Andelman) will interview Jules Feiffer today at 1 p.m.

» Keith Knight will have an exhibit at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum.

» Kieran Meehan has confirmed to me that his feature A Lawyer, A Doctor & A Cop will be renamed to Pros and Cons sometime in the month of June.

Correction: Douglas Edwards was named chief executive officer of AMU’s uclick division, effective June 2, 2008, not Eric Decetis.

This exhibition, which opens on May 17 and runs through August 30, is made possible in part by an anonymous donor and Mort Walker.

When you walk into the exhibit, you’re first struck by two giant charcoal caricatures, one of the late President Ronald Reagan as a cowboy and the other of former President George H.W. Bush as Lawrence of Arabia.

The two drawings illustrate the acidic reverse alchemy mastered by Oliphant. He takes the gilded icons the two presidents would prefer as their historical representations and turns them on their heads. He’s drawn Bush 41 with a smile that captures the shadow of foppish wimpiness that he couldn’t shake, no matter how grand a coalition he led into battle. And he mixes Reagan’s winning affability with a certain lost-on-the-range quality that’s more Bonzo than John Wayne.

This is the power of Oliphant’s graphic gift. Millions of advertising and marketing dollars are spent selling the public larger-than-life images of political figures. Talented cartoonists such as Oliphant can puncture these overinflated media creations with the artistic equivalent of perfectly aimed spitballs.

He spent a few years trying to sell the strip to the syndicates, and got far enough that he was being flown into New York for interviews and asked repeatedly for six-week batches of examples, “but something was missing.”

It was a frustrating time for him, but makes for amusing anecdotes now, as he was being given such suggestions as, “Just lose all the human characters and the dragons, and focus on the Bones in Boneville,” or “Have the Bones talk in thought balloons,” because that’s what Garfield did, and, at the time, Garfield was at the height of its popularity.

Then came the next book to influence his move to comics: Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, which was, at the time, gaining mainstream newspaper attention, an extremely unusual occurrence back then.

“I’d never seen anyone deal with a comic in such a cinematic way. He didn’t have any of that, ‘Meanwhile, in Commissioner Gordon’s office,’ he just cut to a different scene, and suddenly it was daylight and you were in a different place,” Smith said. “We’re a very visual society, we all go to the movies and watch TV, we understand cutting to a different scene. I was used to comics treating you like you were retarded.”

“And that lead to the brief period where you portrayed the Bone cousins as these dark, aging vigilantes,” McCloud deadpanned. “The Dark Bones.”

Then came the final book that set his course, given to him by his mother

She was New England for some reason, and was in a comic shop for some reason-”I’m not even sure what she was doing there,” Smith said. “What were you doing there?” he asked, looking to the audience.

Again his father shouted to the stage, “Because we have a son that likes comics!”

There she bought a copy of The Tick #1, a comic that “changed it for me,” Smith said. Here was a comic that one guy was doing all by himself, and it was hilarious. So he thought to heck with the gatekeepers of the comics pages telling him to have the Bones talk in thought balloons because Garfield does, he was going to make comics.

Boneville blog has a mass of photos of the event.

David, you may have just answered my next question, but I was wondering for each of you, what was the element of piece of the show that really had you going “Wow”? The thing that made you feel everything was coming together.

FILIPI: Well, I think for me once Lucy and i said “Let’s do this” I had to come over and convince a contemporary arts center that’s never done anything like this before to do this. And so all I could show them were the comic books or the Bone One Volume, and if you’ve seen the One Volume, it’s not the same as looking at an original page. The people I had to – well, convince is maybe too strong of a word.

CASWELL: But they were just not familiar with Jeff’s work.

FILIPI: Yeah. Exactly. But seeing Jeff’s original pages for the first time and seeing how beautiful they were as art objects and the level of craft that goes into each page just convinced me that there’d be no issues hanging these on a wall and that people would completely be able to appreciate how this art – yes, they’re pages from a continuing story, but each page stands on its own as a work of art. That was a moment for me where not only was I trying to convince the people I had to at the Wexner Center, but it was a very reassuring moment for me when Lucy started getting original pages for us to look at, and we could be absolutely convinced that they’d work in a gallery setting. That’s not to say that seeing an original George Herriman was not incredible. And the color Thimble Theater Lucy got for the show is amazing.

CASWELL: I think for me – the Library is doing an exhibit of The Lantern, Jeff’s student cartoons called “Before Bone,” and obviously I hadn’t read through that stuff since it was published in the paper in the ’80s. He donated the originals to the Library when he left Ohio State, and when I went back through all of the ones he had given us, I was astonished at how well the work held up. He was so sophisticated as a student cartoonist, and we see all of the Bone cast of characters in the Thorn comic strip that he did as a student and all the proto-Bone story is there. The interesting thing is that there’s also a Ronny Doody satire of Ronald Regan. There’s a Jerry Falwell satire. There’s all this other stuff going on too, so it’s not just a linear story. By the time we get to Bone it’s a very linear story, so it’s so much fun for me to look back at the early work. Our show will be up all summer too, and we’re hoping that people will visit both places. It really is fun to see how Jeff matured.

FILIPI: They’re a great compliment for each other.

Pardon / Franchise, wood engravings, August, 1865, Harper’s Weekly post-Civil War America as seen through the eyes of political cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902). Creator of such popular images as Uncle Sam and Santa Claus, Nast was one of the primary spokesmen for Abraham Lincoln, emancipation, and the end of the oppression of blacks. After the Civil War and passage of the 13th Amendment, Nast was quick to observe that new forms of official and unofficial oppression replaced slavery. The Ku Klux Klan, which had both southern and northern supporters, viciously suppressed black freedoms. Lynchings and other atrocities occurred throughout the South. In the North discrimination was more subtle.

While many newsmen overlooked racial oppression if it did not affect them, Nast trumpeted what he saw as evil. His large and highly visible cartoons for Harper’s Weekly, which otherwise took a neutral position, attacked racial discrimination and violence. Today, his cartoons are a reminder that for African Americans, the reality of life in America was counter the ideals embodied in the founding of the nation—that all men [sic] are created equal.

The exhibit runs through June 14. More details can be found on the Hamilton College website.

Visit the exhibit online.

Hat tip: Dirk Deppey