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Jay Irving’s Willie Doodle, 1946 Promotional Book
A look at a 1946 "Willie Doodle" comic strip promotional book.
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Milton Caniff’s Master Class II – The First Steve Canyon Sunday Page – January 19, 1947
A brief analysis of Milton Caniff's brilliant introductory Steve Canyon Sunday page from January 19, 1947.
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Ralph Bakshi: Construction of an Ink Slinger
A look at Ralph Bakshi's recent studio work from 2023.
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Sundays In The Funnies With Bud
A look at Bud Blake's wonderful Tiger Sunday pages.
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Gaar Williams: The Indiana Ink-Slinger
The life and comic strip artwork of Gaar Williams.
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Bill Mauldin’s Ink-Slinging Transformation During WWII
A look at Bill Mauldin's transformational work during WWII.
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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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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…
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George Clark’s WWII Neighbors
I’ve written about George Clark’s wonderful artwork previously, in my long-defunct Inkmunk blog. Clark remains one of the great cartoonists of the mid-20th century. He also remains a woefully underrated great cartoonist. There are a host of reasons why an artist falls into the underrated category. In short, Clark’s two main daily features, Side Glances (1928-1939) and The Neighbors (1939-1974), did not have reoccurring characters, which can result in less of a connection with the audience who never has a chance to develop an ongoing relationship with any specific characters. We’ve seen a similar situation with TAD Dorgan’s Indoor Sports and Outdoor Sports panels, as well as many of Clare…
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The Laughing Brush of Stuart Hay
One of the most wonderful cartoonist-illustrators that you have never heard of is Stuart Hay, referred to by Ernest Watson in his 1946 book, Forty Illustrators and How They Work, as the “Artist of the laughing brush”. By the 1930s and 40s, Hay did indeed employ a brush line filled with a great deal of joie de vivre, but it took him years, and some interesting changes of direction, to get to that brush filled with laughter. Stuart Hay was born in Sewickly, Pennsylvania in 1889 and studied art at the Cleveland School of Art, the Art Students League of New York, and the National Academy of Design. Additionally, Hay…
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The Action-Packed Stop-Motion of T.S. Sullivant
Much has been written about T.S. Sullivant’s wonderful work over the years, so I’ll try not to rehash what’s been written previously, but for those new to Sullivant’s work, 1) I envy your first-time exposure to his incredible drawings, and 2) I’ll present the briefest of biographical blurbs. Thomas Starling Sullivant (1854–1926) was born in Columbus, Ohio and raised partially in Germany. When Sullivant was 18, he moved from Columbus to Europe for a few years, eventually moving back to the States, where he studied with the famous painter and teacher Thomas Eakins, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. At 32, Sullivant was a late entrant…
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The Visual Verve and Vibrancy of Bud Blake and Tiger
The Home News was the newspaper in central New Jersey that my family subscribed to when I was a kid. It’s where I was introduced to the weirdness of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, the trials and tribulations of Harry Hanan’s Louie, and the beautifully drawn, sweetly humored Tiger by Bud Blake. Growing up, Tiger was comfortably familiar to me. Blake’s gags revolved around everyday kid stuff. The strip didn’t have the psychological weight of Peanuts. There wasn’t a ton of depth to the cast of characters. We knew that Punkinhead could be a nudge, Hugo liked to eat, and Julius was a bookish type. Tiger himself was sort of his strip’s…
Odd thoughts, observations, meditations and meanderings about comic, cartoon and illustration artwork
