Showing posts with label Beetle Bailey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beetle Bailey. Show all posts

Thursday, January 25, 2024

Secret History of Comics - Ephemera Finds in TN

 One of the things I like to do is wander around antique stores and junk shops. Here's some stuff I found in Tennessee last month.

This is a Herblock cover caricaturing Art Buchwald for Newsweek that I didn't know existed, so I was quite surprised by it.



This appears to be an advertising card for Union Pacific Tea from the latter half of the nineteenth century. It's being donated to the Library of Congress soon.



This matchbook looked like a New Yorker cartoonist to me so I reached out to historian/cartoonist Michael Maslin:



Maslin wrote back, "Not all of the faces, but a few (figs a&b), look like Steig's early work. The fellow extreme lower right most especially (fig. a) . But I'm not confident enough to say it is Steig's work."

fig. a

fig. b


Beetle Bailey original comic strip 9/13/1993. 
Note that the dealer thought it was a print, and not the original, and priced it accordingly.


A Buck Rogers post-production mini-poster by Dave Perillo that's being donated to Library of Congress.



Three British digest-sized comic books that will be donated to the Library of Congress comic book collection. The cover photos have been added to the Grand Comics Database already.

WorldCat doesn't list any copies in the United States, and almost none worldwide. When Randy Scott was at Michigan State's comic book collection, I would feed material such as this to them.

Love Story Picture Library #1259

Star Love Stories #591

Love Story Picture Library #1254

World War II cartoon postcards are easy to find, but the antique mall was waiting 
on me to close so I felt compelled to buy something.



Note the dental drill, for graphic medicine fans.


Friday, February 15, 2013

Give me some old school PSAs

PSA's (aka Public Service Announcements) still exist, but are probably not as noticable to most in our media saturated environment.  As you might expect, cartoonists and cartoon characters are often a part of them. Of course, they also serve as an advertisement for the cartoon itself. Here's a current one that I walked past for a couple of months (excuse the cell phone quality):

Bambi Disney prevent forest fires poster

This Blondie panel from 1970 was in a newspaper in the National Museum of Health and Medicine:

Blondie

These comics of the Pink Panther, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, and Mutt & Jeff all come from Navy medical newspapers or newsletters.

13-0032-004 Pink Panther NRMC Orlando 197907

13-0032-005 Pink Panther NRMC Orlando 197908

13-0032-003 Blondie NNMC News 197112

13-0032-001 Beetle Bailey NNMC News 197102

13-0032-002 Mutt and Jeff by Al Smith NNMC News 197111

Speaking of Mutt and Jeff, cartoonist Al Smith drew it for about 50 years. Here he is entertaining patients at a 1971 visit to Bethesda's National Naval Medical Center.

13-0031 Al Smith

Caricaturist Jack Rosen visited Naval Hospital Orlando in 1979.

13-0032-006 Caricaturist Jack Rosen NRMC Orlando 197911

Of course, sometimes an ad is just an ad. This US Postal Service Mover's Guide Official Change of Address Kit, January 2013, has a Disney advertisement, and is available right now from your local post office.

Disney USPS moving envelope

These are minor footnotes in a larger history of comics, but hopefully enterained you briefly.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Beetle Bailey found by DC bloggers on the road

A couple of my friends, well one friend and his girlfriend whom I haven't actually met, drove across country and discovered Beetle Bailey on the road. One senses the possibility of an epic poem here.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

That darn Beetle Bailey!

No Salute for Beetle Bailey
Washington Post June 20 2009

Mort Walker and The Post owe an apology to the men and women of the U.S. military for the June 18 "Beetle Bailey" cartoon insinuating that our armed services have a mission only to "blow things up" around the world. As a veteran and the parent of two servicemen, I believe an apology is also owed to the families whose loved ones died protecting our freedoms, including the right to publish offensive cartoons.

-- Jack Koehler

Annapolis