92 years yesterday ... the SHOC of McCay!

Another Secret History of Comics entry by Warren Bernard:

92 years ago this past Sunday, March 23, 1916, the members of The Albany Legislative Correspondents Association got together for their annual dinner. Not unlike the Gridiron Club, it was a boys night out to rib and celebrate the then occupants of the New York State Legislature and the sitting Governor, Charles Whitman.

The program for this event features a Winsor McCay drawing that to my knowledge, has not been reprinted before. This dinner and its associated program was done for over 60 years, and each year political cartoonists did both the covers and in some years, up to a half dozen specialty pieces for the inside text.

How many more did Mccay do? For what other obscure organization did he do such material? The former I do not know the answer to, the latter, one day soon this question will be at least partially answered.

So stay tuned to the SHOC...

Warren

I had to reduce the image dpi from 300 to 150 to get a reasonable size to post - if anyone wants the supersize original, click here.

A comic strip?

Brian, a friend at work saw this in an antique store in New Orleans and took this picture for me.

After mulling it over for a week and talking to two other historians of medicine who write on comics, I called up and ordered it. I haven't printed it yet, but flopping and inverting the picture lets you see it:


So it's a printing block for a fundraising ad campaign for the March of Dimes to conquer polio. Pretty neat especially the iron lung in the center. I'm going to try to ink it and print it, and we'll see what results I get. Perhaps we can make prints as write-in prizes!

Another Batchelor VD poster

This one wasn't in the National Museum of Health and Medicine's collection, so when I spotted it on ebay I bought it. I scanned it yesterday and added the e-version to the Museum's collection; since we don't have an acquisitions budget to buy things, there's no conflict of interest. I'll probably donate it someday, but at the moment I'm enjoying ownership.

C.D. Batchelor's anti-VD campaign

C.D. Batchelor was a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist whose career lasted for almost 50 years in New York. One can see similarities in the 1937 Pulitzer winning cartoon and the anti-venereal disease cartoons reproduced below from the collections of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.


"Warning: these enemies are still lurking around. Syphilis.
Gonorrhea." Cartoon by C..D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-67)


"Two girls I know want to meet you in the worst way." C.D. Batchelor, American Social Hygiene Association. (Reeve79101-62)


"The glory of manhood is strength. Keep clean for the heritage of the cleanly is strength." Cartoon by C..D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-52)


"Boys your sweetheart, your wife or your parents may never know it if you contract a venereal disease - but I'll know it and I'll suffer from it." Cartoon by C.D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-11)


"Enemy agent. U.S. War Effort. Venereal Disease." Cartoon by C.D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-16)


"'My boy was wounded in the African landing.' 'Mine was wounded in this country by a street walker.'" Cartoon by C..D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-31)

Note the difference in quality between Batchelor's original above, and the Army's copy below:


"My boy was wounded in the African landing. Mine was wounded in this country by a street walker." World War 2. "Cartoon by C.C. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygene Asociation, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. Reproduced by Div. S.S.C. for distribution by Surgeon 3rd Armored Div." (Reeve74964-6.jpg)

Collections of his papers are in Witchita State University's Library in THE CARTOON COLLECTION OF C. D. BATCHELOR, MS 90-16 and C. D. Batchelor Papers - An inventory of his papers at Syracuse University.

SHOC: Ads from Liberty Magazine

A few scans of Liberty Magazine wandered my way lately, so I pulled some comics material out of them. First we have 3 comic strip ads of Ol' Judge Robbins for Prince Albert tobacco. The artist changes, but I can't tell who any of them are.

Liberty Magazine November 11, 1936

Liberty Magazine October 2, 1937

Liberty Magazine June 10, 1939. This issue has an unfortunate editorial about how there will be no war in Europe in 1939. Whoops.

This ad agency obviously thought Ripley had a good idea, so why not borrow it?
Liberty Magazine November 14, 1936

And this ad is the one that made me decide to put these up for the Secret History of Comics - Fontaine Fox's long-running Toonerville Folks / Trolley (1911-1955) advertising laxatives.
Liberty Magazine, Jun 10, 1939

Secret History of Comics courtesy of Warren Bernard

Here's another article by Warren Bernard on comic art in unlikely places:

SHOC Part 1,235,641



For this next installment of The Secret History Of Comics, here is a nice piece by Percy Crosby. This is from a football program for the October, 1935 game held between Navy and Notre Dame. Being close to Annapolis, Crosby did a few covers for their football games.

Now, he was not the only famous cartoonist to do college football program covers - Willard Mullin, The Dean of Sports Cartoonists did a lot, but did you know know that such luminaries of the cartoon field such as Ellison Hoover, John Held Jr., James Thurber and Milton Caniff all did football programs?

The length and breadth of the cartoonist contribution to the football program field would not have occurred if not for the efforts of Andy Moursund. His methodical and exhaustive research into the field of college football programs has turned this information up. I recommend going to his site to see the length and breath of the cartoon and illustration world that exists in the college football program arena. His site is now in browse/test mode, but soon you will be able to order poster reproductions of any of the program covers he has online.

Needless to say, some great unknown cartoonists and illustrators did work on these covers, and its a shame that no one, save Andy, has bothered to gather them up. No question, Andy has a great resource that hopefully will be a springboard for a more thorough treatment of the subject.


Now, to make things even more interesting, inside a lot of the programs were specialty cartoons and ads by cartoonists that appear nowhere else. The Crosby program has cartoons by Johann Bull and E. Simms Campbell as well as the ad you see here by James Thurber.

How many ads/cartoons are there buried in these programs? How much of comic history lies undiscovered in these programs? What does this type of work tell us about the length and breath of the work these cartoonists did and their impact on popular culture?

The SHOC series will never end.

Film & TV Adaptations book available

I got the proof copy and reviewed it today, so now Film & TV Adaptations of Comics - 2007 edition by Rhode and Vogel is available for order.

149 pages long, it's a listing of the thousands of adaptations to film and television of hundreds of comic strips and books. Worldwide, it includes the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, the Netherlands, Senegal, India, Turkey, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia among others. Cross-referenced by cartoonist and translated titles, it includes a bibliography and index.

You can buy it via Lulu.com for $12.99 (plus shipping) or $3.00 for a pdf download at http://www.lulu.com/content/1677433.

This is not a book that you can sit and read - it's a reference book, and one that might spark a bit of curiosity. Lulu will let you see a preview, and here's a sample section of late additions from the Errata page:

Titles of strips samples:

Suramu Danku [Slam Dunk] (Takehiko Inoue)
Suramu Danku (Japan: Toei Animation, 1993-1996; 101-episode anime tv series)
4 DTV anime movies (Japan: Toei Animation, 1994-1995)

Oldboy (Nobuaki Minegishi)
Oldboy (South Korea 2003)

Scary Godmother (Jill Thompson)
The Scary Godmother, Vol. 2: The Revenge of Jimmy (USA 2005; animated DTV movie)

Wulffmorgenthaler (Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler)
Wulffmorgenthaler? (Denmark 200?; tv series)

Cartoonists cross-reference sample:

Eliot, Jan (Stone Soup cartoonist)
Oregon Art Beat Episode# 915 - Illustrator Jan Eliot (Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2008; segment on January 10, 2008 tv show)


Bibliography samples:

• Ehrenreich, Ben. 2007. “Comic Genius? Before there was even a comic book to adapt, 'Cowboys and Aliens' had a movie deal [Platinum Comics],” New York Times Magazine (November 11).
• Kohanik, Eric / CanWest News Service. 2008. “Painkiller Jane comic-book heroine,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix (January 5).
• Takahashi, Rumiko and Stephen Ayres (trans.). 2005. The Art of InuYasha (2nd Edition), San Francisco: Viz Media.
• Unknown. 2008. “New cartoon series in ‘Wiener Zeitung’: Danish duo ‘Wulffmorgenthaler’ to feature daily on the new English page,” Wiener Zeitung (January 4).

OT: Allan Holtz's Strippers Guide

On his Daily Cartoonist site, Alan Gardner put a link to Allan Holtz's Strippers Guide project. For years, Allan's been doing research on comic strips and in the 1990s he had a subscription cd service where you could buy a cd of his research. It was a great resource and I'm glad to see an update is going to be coming along. Click on the video and let him know what you think. Nobody has more information on obscure strips than Allan and I still use the earlier version regularly.

SHOC: Hoiman & Douglas Aircraft

Warren Bernard contributes a Secret History of Comics bit to start off the new year right:

The first scan shows the cover of the book called "Hoiman", below it is the paper wrap around that was fortunately intact. This is because nowhere in the book itself is there any reference to where this stuff was published, which the wraparound says was for the Douglas Aircraft Plant in Chicago, IL.

Douglas Aircraft at this time had its main plants out in California, some others in Oklahoma, there were 7 total Douglas plants in operation during World War II. Now the question is, were these cartoons just done for only the in house mag for the Chicago plant? Did the other plants also use "Hoiman"? If not, what cartoons did they use? And who is Phil Brown? What else did he do? Where there other "Hoiman" books? How long did "Hoiman" run? Was "Hoiman just for Douglas Aircraft, or did other manufacturers also use the cartoons?

The Secret History of Comics does not give its secrets up easily...

OT: Metropolitan Museum of Art commissions Sorel

Edward Sorel's done an ad for them, "Home is Where the Art Is." The New York Times had a black and white print of it on the 14th and online there's a teeny-tiny version.

Smithsonian curator wrote comics

See "A Local Life: Silvio A. Bedini: Collector and Scholar Pried Loose History's Secret Gems," By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, December 9, 2007; Page C07. Anyone know any more about these?

Feiffer covers Blume

I noticed in Aladdin's Lamp bookstore, the children's bookstore in Arlington, that Jules Feiffer has done a cover for a Judy Blume book. So I got a shot of the standup and also one of the graphic novel shelf in the bookstore. There was some atypical stuff there including Boyd's Chester the Crab's Comix with Content and a couple of manga Shakespeare books which I bought.

I'm going to call this one a Secret History of Comics as I doubt that most Feiffer collectors know about it.

Comics, comics everywhere

click on the image for a larger, readable view.

I was with my daughter's 4th grade trip to Jamestown today and saw the accompanying editorial cartoon on display in the museum. It's the original for "How Jamestown Was Saved For Posterity" by Fred O. Seibel, Richmond Times-Dispatch May 13, 1938. I don't know Seibel's work, but it's certainly competent enough and it was nice to see the art prominently displayed.

We'll flag this one with a SHoC label as I imagine Seibel's mostly forgotten.

Secret History of Comics with Richard Thompson's mother

Seriously. Richard's mother Anne Hall Whitt wrote an autobiographical book The Suitcases, a moving story about being orphaned with her two sisters during the Depression. I read it over Thanksgiving weekend, and found it very touching. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say it all appears to have worked out well in the end, but it was pretty harrowing getting there. It was a good book to read around Thanksgiving since she gave you something to think and be thankful about. Copies of the book can be found on Amazon and other book sites. Oh, and it's illustrated by Richard, but in a non-cartoony art style that you wouldn't recognize.

Actually, this might make a good graphic novel, Richard...

Secret History of Comics courtesy of Warren Bernard UPDATED

Here's two pieces in three images from Warren's collection that deal with forgotten works by famous cartoonists.


Percy Crosby for the January 1924 Telephone News from the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania

A Bill Mauldin booklet.

The Mauldin booklet should be reproduced in one of the new Fantagraphics books, courtesy of Warren.

Gobbledygook by Coulter

As part of the Secret History of Comics (SHoC), I present the book, Gobbledygook Has Got To Go, published by those wild humorists in the Bureau of Land Management, circa 1970. They credited the writer, John O'Hayre, but not the cartoonist who signed some of the following drawings as 'Coulter.' Anyone know who that is? There's a William Coulter (b. 1946) listed in one National Cartoonists Society album.

I didn't have access to a scanner today, so these are shot with a camera - the quality of the originals is much better.















I'm not quite sure why the Bureau of Land Management ends their booklet with a picture of an astronaut.

Color Cul de Sac two-fer

The Post had two magazines this week, one a special for Thanksgiving, and they both had Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac in them. The Thanksgiving one, which can be seen on Richard's blog, probably wasn't syndicated so it's a Washington special. Except that it's on the web so everyone can enjoy it. Kind of takes the fun out, doesn't it?

This barely qualifies as Secret History of Comics except when Fantagraphics tries to put together the complete CdS in 2072...

...tune in tomorrow for a REAL SHoC (hmmm, not a half-bad acronym).

Vip, Bok, Ware and Fish N Chips

A few new acquisitions can also make points about the Secret History of Comics.

The first is a set of three in-house books by CACI, a defense contractor. While these types of companies aren't usually known for their sense of humor, CACI's had the good sense to have their books initially illustrated by 'Vip' aka Virgil Partch. He was followed by gag and Playboy cartoonist John Dempsey and then most recently by editorial cartoonist Chip Bok.

Front cover to one of the three books with art by Vip.

Vip interior art.

John Dempsey cartoon.

Chip Bok cartoon.

Back cover of boxed set with art by Bok.

All three of these are major cartoonists, but I don't think their work here would be easily found.

The next item is the interior cover page of Chris Ware's Quimby the Mouse.

This is actually what a book signed by Chris Ware looks like - it's so subtle it's not something you'd really notice if you were in a hurry. Chris signed this for me at PENFaulkner, so I guarantee this is what you should be looking for.

Finally, at the Small Press Expo, I picked up Fish N Chips by Steve Hamaker. This book's apparently available now since I bought it two months ago, so one could ask 'what's it doing in a secret history post?' Steve's book, nominally from Vigil Press, is apparently self-published and there's no info in the book on how to order it. These days, Google tosses up his website with more information on the book, but parts of it appear to be last updated in 2005 and there's no guarantee that he'll keep the site up and a library or collector of the future might be confused by the lack of information in the book. Buy a copy from him to help comic scholars of the future and because he's a nice guy who did a fun fish sketch for me. BTW, he's coloring Bone for Jeff Smith.