Great article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the Charles Schulz Museum. The Schulz Museum has had about 100 unique exhibitions since then, from an early presentation of Japanese quilts with Peanuts themes to the recent self-explanatory ?Heartbreak? in Peanuts gallery. ?Peanuts in Wonderland,? which includes the comic strip?s tributes to Lewis Carroll?s classic, is […]
The King Features Syndicate archivist profiles Phil Davis who was the artist behind Lee Falk’s Mandrake the Magician. When Lee Falk created MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN, he originally thought he might draw the feature as well as write it, but early on he realized his cartooning skills would not be equal to the task. Fortunately, he […]
Ben Zimmer, writing for Slate looks at the history of @#$%! and how it came to represent swear words in comics. In a 1964 article for the National Cartoonist Society, Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker coined the term grawlix, which, after a bit of evolution in its meaning, now refers to the string of typographical […]
King Feature’s The Archivist has a interesting post on the internationalization of Mort Walker’s Beetle Bailey: Ever since the 1950’s, BEETLE BAILEY has been embraced by many nations outside the United States, because like most good strips, the series exhibits universal human foibles that all can identify with. In this case, the world of army […]
Interesting find in France. After the screening (which went over well with the audience, thanks!), Bernard, Reed and I had a moment to chat, and, naturally, we discussed Kirby and the checklist. Bernard told us he remembered an obscure Kirby Western that came out in the late 1960s. As we weren’t familiar with it, two […]
A cool story from The Saginaw News about the city’s historian coming upon cartoons by Vincent Faletti in the city library archives and decided to learn more about the cartoonist who did a strip called “Saga of Saginaw.” Turns out Vincent is still alive, 95 years old. A collection was made his work and presented […]
Zombie Boy creator Mark Stokes found a rejection note sent to Marmaduke creator Brad Anderson around 1958 by an unknown syndicate editor. See Mark’s site for the photo of the note which reads, “This one is a preposterous as the one showing Marmaduke sitting in the barber’s chair, remember? I just can’t buy this one!” […]
Renee French has posted samples of a comic strip submitted for syndication by Jack Davis. The comic was entitled Bo Reargard and was about a soldier in the Civil War. Renee opines that the syndicates weren’t interested because, “it was from a Southern point of view and many Northern papers wouldn’t want to carry it.” […]
An long but interesting read by Daniel Best about the $1 million purchase of a near complete Archie original art collection drawn by Bob Montana by Diamond Distributor’s Steve Geppi. When art deals go wrong they generally go wrong due to the money involved. Virtually anyone who collects art can tell stories of paying too […]
The Glen Rock Patch posted a profile of Hy Eisman the current cartoonist for E.C. Segar’s Popeye. But the 84-year-old Eisman – just 2 years old when Popeye the Sailor Man debuted in the King Features comic strip “Thimble Theater” in 1929 – does more than just continue to turn out the weekly strip featuring […]
The nice people over at the Johnny Hart Studios mention that this week is not only Johnny Hart’s birthday, but also the anniversary of the launch of B.C (February 17th, 1958). Johnny’s birthday was the 18th. To commemorate, they’ve posted early samples of the icon strip.