Thursday Animal Lovers Day.
I won't say that Reg Bollen's Animal Crackers was the best funny animal strip I ever saw, but Bollen's cowboy strip Catfish was reprinted in one of the weeklys I read as a kid and I have a certain fondness for his limited cartoon inspired style and it does amuse from time to time. So I went and had a look for the first month, which is represented here.
Wednesday Illustration Day.
A couple of years ago the American publisher Checker produced a couple of interesting books. The first volume of the complete Scandinavian reprint op Beetle Bailey (taking over the design and the notes and comments from that excellent edition, whch was producent with the help and input of Mort Walker and his sons), a book with the best of the less well known Windsor McCay strips, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Steve Canyon, Alan Moores work on Image's Surpreme title and a book reprinting al lot of McCay's political cartoons. I got them all and they were all disappointing in their own way. Some were printed very badly, some were badly sourced and used second rate scans and all were very badly laid out - except maybe the Beetle Bailey book, which suffered from the fact that it stopped after the first volume (where the Scandinavian series went up to 1980 or so).
Not long after, Fantagraphics did their own book of McCays political cartoons. Which was a lot better, but concentrated on the art at the detriment of the meaning to my opinion. Now that is a difficult point. The editorials McCay was asked to illustrate were unreadable, like pilitical sermons that seemed intended to sent it's readers to sleep. McCays illustrations were often so alligorical or vague, that they all belended into on gray mess.
I think that for me, a perfect reprinting of the McCay cartoons would be complete, they would have a short version of the editorial, a historical background and some sort of explaination of the cartoon. Since no one will probably ever do that, here are a couple I clipped earlier.
Sunday Little Bit Extra Day.
In the old days there were many ways for illustrators and cartoonists to earn a little extra. They had their regular clients, but every once in a while a magazine called for a special piece. Someone who never said no to a little bit of extra income, was the revered theatre and movie caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. He did spot illusytrations for Collier's, illustrated stories by S. J. Perelman for various magazines and covers and more for The TV Guide. In the January 1949 Issue of Holiday, he illustrated a section on Hollywood with this three page beauty. The Hirschfeld Foundation menstions some of the work Hirschfeld did for the magazine, but not this piece (and what others?).
Friday Story Strip Day.
I have always hoped that someday someone would put out a LOng Sam collection in the same way that Li'l Abner got collected. I have not shown a lot of this terrific series, because the storylines are so conveluted that you can hardly follow them unless you have every day. And gathering everyday takes a lot of offort. Here is al of October 1957. Not in the best quality, but at least you can try and follow it.
In the meantime the cultural mores have shifted so much that I don't think a sexy heroinne such as Sam will be collected anytime soo. Gorgeous Bob Lubbers art or not.
