King Jake by Frederick Opper – January 5, 1908 King Jake is a comic strip about the nature of humor. Specifically how what can be a real knee-slapper to one person is infuriating to another. And we, as the reader, get to observe both the jokester and his victims entwined in a series of causes […]
16
Jul
Jul
Comic-Con 2020 maybe be canceled in the physical sense, but they have prepared an incredible line up of over 350 panels for people all over the world to stream and enjoy from their homes for free! Dean Mullaney will be representing the Library of American Comics on Saturday, July 25. Here are the details: Fantagraphics […]
Bringing Up Father, General News, Polly and Her Pals
The Iron of the “Iron Gate” Order (Fifth in a Series)
16
Jul
Jul
Another half-dozen “Iron Gate” pieces, devoted to frolics at Manhattan’s “21” Club hot-spot
12
Jul
Jul
Above: The Squirrel Cage by Gene Ahern – December 13, 1936 You can’t outrace yourself but you can sure try hard. This is shown in today’s Screwball Sunday, an eructation-producing episode of The Squirrel Cage by that irrepressible devotee of ridiculous folly: Gene Ahern. Running as a topper to Ahern’s Room and Board from 1936 […]
09
Jul
Jul
Flash Gordon throughout the 1930s, as part of pop culture and as a foundational aspect of SF’s eventual breakthrough acceptance.
Screwball
Screwball Sunday: It’s Summertime and the Combs are Exploding—W.R. Bradford’s Jingling Johnson and Dr. Domehead (1916)
05
Jul
Jul
Below: Bradford’s Funny Folks, Philadelphia North American (August 20, 1916) Here’s a rare screwball treat: a never-before-reprinted Sunday page from the intrepidly idiosyncratic cartoonist, Walter R. Bradford. The topic of this page is sweltering summer heat, which is something many of us can relate to these daze. When this strip appeared in August 1916, temperatures […]
01
Jul
Jul
I’ve been trying to catch up on some of my to-read pile, and I came to Corto Maltese: The Golden House of Samarkand by the amazing Hugo Pratt. Like every Corto Maltese adventure, the story is thick with historical references and exotic locations. In this particular story, Corto is on the hunt for the lost […]
28
Jun
Jun
Below: “A Sardonic Soliloquy” Judge, January 17, 1903 From roughly 1890 to 1910 Eugene “Zim” Zimmerman enjoyed national prominence as the star cartoonist for Judge magazine. Emulating its predecessor, Puck, each issue of the humor weekly was stuffed with cartoons and funny prose. Much of the content was topical, reflecting both political and social issues […]
25
Jun
Jun
When Mort Walker began Beetle Bailey way back in 1950, he mostly likely never knew that it would become a world wide phenomenon seventy years later and a legacy that includes his three sons. Mort Walker passed away in 2018, but before he passed, his grandson, David, shot a documentary about the legendary cartoonist and […]
21
Jun
Jun
Ving Fuller created the first newspaper comic strip adaptation of the wildly popular animated character, Betty Boop—sort of. The strip was called The Original Boop-Boop-A-Doop Girl and the byline read “by Helen Kane.” The first five strips are drawn by Ving Fuller, who even signed his name on most of them. The below cartoon was […]