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Cartoonists Celebrate Caniff!
Cartoonists Celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Milton Caniff's "Terry and the Pirates".
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Noel Sickles’ “Bud’s Meaco Comics”!
A look at Noel Sickles' first professional comic strip work, done years before Scorchy Smith.
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F.B. Opper’s ‘Erbie and ‘Is Playmates
Fredrick Burr Opper's 1932 anti-Herbert Hoover cartoons.
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Billy DeBeck: Meetcha at the Continental Hotel
In the DBTI (Days Before the Internet), original comic and cartoon art collectors would receive paper catalogs via snail-mail, in the DBTI known simply as mail. These catalogs might be set sales from folks like Bruce Bergstrom, Jerry Muller, or Stu Reisbord, in which you could purchase artwork directly at a set price. Of course, the availability of items often depended upon where you lived and how early you received your catalog. Jerry lived in California and if you were an east coast customer, the chances were better than average that you would miss out on the good stuff. Bruce and Stu were on the east coast, so I guess…
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Cartoonists Come to Vaudeville!
The National Vaudeville Artists (NVA) was a union organized by Edward Albee, the most powerful man in theatre and vaudeville during the first quarter of the 20th century. He was also the adoptive grandfather of the playwright Edward Albee. Benjamin Franklin Keith and Albee formed the Vaudeville Managers Association (VMA) in 1900 as a way of ending bidding for popular vaudeville acts, as well as eliminating competition between managers for the same audiences. The VMA had a stranglehold on the industry, which resulted in the formation of the White Rats, an organization of performers who went on strike to abolish some of the VMA’s dictates. The group was granted a…
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Mal Eaton’s Scratchy Big Feet
Mal (short for Malcolm) Eaton (1902-1974) was a New York-based cartoonist who was the artistic second cousin (three times removed) from the great T.S. Sullivant. While Eaton did not have the anthropomorphic chops of Sullivant, he did share a sense of wonderful stop animation-like figure movement, as well as that lively, scratchy pen line that both artists employed. Eaton was not a cartoonist of great renown. His most well-known newspaper feature was Peter Piltdown, which took place during the civilization of the Ice Age people, more commonly referred to as cavemen. The strip featured the main character Peter, Inna-Minnie, and my personal favorite Pookie, who dressed in a plaid one-piece…
Odd thoughts, observations, meditations and meanderings about comic, cartoon and illustration artwork