Showing posts with label Charles Vess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Vess. Show all posts

Sunday, July 06, 2025

Flea Market Finds, with some modern bootlegs

As regular readers of the blog know, I look for comics and cartoon oddities, especially at antique shops and flea markets. Here's this weekend's haul, with hi-res scans of some to come on Flickr later, and donation of the postcards to the Library of Congress later this summer.

  A flyer from the Dunes casino is Las Vegas - is this by Frank Frazetta?

 

 

A 1938 tearsheet by Jimmy Swinnerton of Canyon Kiddies. I don't usually buy tearsheets, but it was a dollar. I'm no purist though; I tearsheet the newspaper and New Yorker regularly.



A Disney World postcard, probably circa the 1970s

 
...and a few I didn't care about but bought to get a deal... 

but this one is interesting...


 
It's a stupid pun, and not a great drawing, but the reverse of the card says, "This is an original etching by W.M. Standing Noted Indian Artist." More research is needed, but not on a Sunday night.
 

 
 
This was the card that caught my interest.  It's signed H. Empie and credited to Empie Kartoon Kards in Arizona. Again, more research is needed.
 

Another dumb scatological cartoon, only of interest for the the reverse noting "Not for mailing. Suitable for framing." By who? I guess you could put this under doctor cartoons (aka graphic medicine) though.



 
A weird 19th-century trade card "Playing Bank President Dining with a Wall St Bull." selling crackers and cakes in Reading, PA
 
 


 
Another trade card, and I think this is a gag cartoon, "A Long Tramp." It's advertising H.F. Brammer  Manufacturing Co. of Davenport, IA which would sell you a washing machine, refrigerator, and step ladder.
 
 
 

 
Percosi, a book, in Italian, which I don't read, about Giorgio Cavazzano. 

 
A truly lovely #37 issue of Marvel Fanfare by Charles Vess, which I bought new, but couldn't say no to a second time. Marvel should really reprint his work for them.

 
A reading copy of Sidekicks, a graphic novel by Dan Santat, of more interest after I saw him speak this year. 

 
I originally bought some of these Bob & Bobette British reprints of Willy Vandersteen's Suske and Wiske in the 1980s. They're lovely, stupidly fun comics. I couldn't remember which ones I had so picked three that seemed unfamiliar.
 
 
 
Another Herblock cover for Time magazine. this time of Khrushchev and Castro visiting New York in 1960.
 
 
A couple of little books of military gag cartoons that need more research. Prost by Niles (above), and You've Had It (below)

 
 Some American comic books...
 
 
The anti-Nixon cover of this has fascinated me for years. I think that's Murphy Anderson art. 

Abbie an' Slats by Raeburn ... a successful comic strip, now completely forgotten. 
 
 

 
Two issues of Titan's Undersea Agent, which I think was in the THUNDER Agents universe, back when starting a new comics universe was really rare. The art in one of them is by Frank Robbins, and definitely not Wally Wood.  



 
I almost certainly have this Weird Wonder Tales 19 already, but I'm a sucker for character introductions (or at least I was when they were rarer), and it's a Kirby cover.
 

Speaking of Kirby, Our Fighting Forces 161-162 featuring the Losers had Kirby interiors but Ernie Chan and Joe Kubert covers. 162 sees Kirby returning to his perennial comics interest in kid gangs. As you'd expect in the Silver Age, the covers misrepresented the stories. The story in 161 is a particularly demented story of a dream-haunted British soldier 


 
This is a seriously beat-up copy of second issue of the Marvel Treasury-sized reprint of the first Star Wars movie adaptation. Actually, it's a reprint of a reprint because it's Whitman's version which were usually sold in discount stores, aka Five and Dimes. Oddly enough, I think these really did become collector's items.



I bought these children's stamps when they came out years ago because an argument could be made that Seuss and Falconer were cartoonists. Again, it was a dollar. I'll find a stamp collector friend who needs it.

And I got some 3-D stuff too.


 
This Best Dad in the Universe mug shows how much Superman's iconography has penetrated the world. 

 
An Avengers Endgame metal popcorn bucket for when they could be re-used as trashcans and weren't the head of Deadpool or Galactus. 

 
A couple of the 1970s Sunday Funnies drinking glasses featuring Brenda Starr and  Terry and the Pirates. I think these were promos for the NY Daily News. 

Something not bought (it happens) - 2 posters signed by Joe Quesada. I really enjoyed The Ray, but who has the room. 


 

And finally the modern bootlegs. Green Kush marijuana is probably not a licensed Green Lantern product, and I'm also thinking that Kevin, while an excellent firework, isn't really part of the official Minion merchandise. I love a good counterfeit though.


Monday, April 29, 2013

May 2: Charles Vess at Politics & Prose at 10:30 AM

On May 2, Charles Vess at Politics & Prose at 10:30 AM. His current book is The Cats of Tanglewood Forest, written by Charles de Lint. Later that day, Vess will be at the Takoma Park Library at 7 pm.
Vess is one of my favorite fantasy artists.

Sunday, April 07, 2013

May 2: Charles Vess in Takoma Park Library

Colin Solan's Convention Scene caught that one of my favorite cartoonists will be in town -
Artist Charles Vess signs at the Takoma Park Library on Thursday May 2nd at 7:00 pm! Books provided by Politics & Prose.
Takoma Park Library
101 Philadelphia Avenue, Takoma Park, MD 20912

Friday, February 15, 2013

Cartoons to see in the L.o.C.

The Library of Congress has several cartoon and comics exhibits up now.  Here's a quick overview.

101_5203 District Comics at LOC

You can buy District Comics in their gift shop in the Jefferson Building. My story on the Army Medical Museum is around page 90, wink, wink.

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Also in the Jefferson Building for another month is  "Down to Earth: Herblock and Photographers Observe the Environment" curated by Carol Johnson and Sara Duke. Carol's the photograph curator, Sara the Herblock one. I thought this was an excellent exhibit. The photographs and the cartoons really complemented each other, and the unlikely pairing made for a stronger exhibit than either alone would have.

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There's a small brochure for the exhibit, although you have to get it at the Madison Building's Prints & Photographs department.


At the same location is "Herblock Looks at 1962: Fifty Years Ago in Editorial Cartoons," an exhibit curated by Sara Duke. This smaller exhibit focuses on President Kennedy.

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Obviously Sara made curatorial choices to influence this in both exhibits, but it's still depressing how relevant 50-year-old cartoons are:

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The third exhibit is a small one on comic books featuring Presidents that Megan Halsband did in the Serials Department (in the Madison Building) for President's Day. The majority of these comics are from Bluewater's current biographical series, but she did find an issue of Action Comics that I don't remember seeing.

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The Prints & Photographs division showed off its new acquisitions this week. Sara Duke showed some original comic book and strip artwork:

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A piece by Keith Knight, and two pages from Jim Rugg's anthology. They collected the entire book except for the centerfold. Not shown is...

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Above are voting rights prints by Lalo Alcaraz, possibly selected by Helena Zinkham.

Martha Kennedy had some great acquistions this year, including works by James Flora, editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, Garry "Doonesbury" Trudeau, and Charles Vess' entire book of Ballads and Sagas:

101_5171 Flora
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101_5166 Vess
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This artwork isn't on exhibit, but you can make an appointment to view it.