1922 - Washington Herald Makes Good Use of Candidacy of Comic Character [The Gumps]

From Tony Rose -

Unknown. 1922. Washington Herald Makes Good Use of Candidacy of Comic Character [The Gumps]. Fourth Estate (November 11): 20. Online at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858034161772&seq=666

Flea Market Finds - Steranko, iron-ons, military music gag cartoons, and more (UPDATED with Hawkinson info)

 It's been a few months since we've had one of these posts, but the ephemera collecting never ends.

front and back of 1984 envelope for Asterix trading cards

Jim Steranko drew this box for holding comic books in 1975.

It's being donated to the Library of Congress.

2 comic strip iron-ons from NY Daily News - Doonesbury (8/10/1975) and Broom Hilda (9/7/975)

I remember these from when I was a kid. My mom actually did one for me, altho I can't recall what it was 50 years later. I just paid a dollar each for these in a vain attempt to recapture my youth.

Comics and cartoonists and sheet music have a long history. Here's some US Government publications from World War II. I bought the lot just to get the Frank Robbins one.

Regards from "Brandy" + "Johnny" Hazard" P.S. and "Side-Pocket Sam"

The rest all of artwork by Hawkinson. I cannot find ANY information on him.

UPDATE: However D.D. Degg of the Daily Cartoonist could, and sent this clipping on Frank Hawkinson: Unknown. 1944. Town Talk: Private Hawkinson Cartoonist For His Camp Siebert Paper. Yonkers Herald Statesman (August 17). 

 

VT Hamlin's letter to David Mantour, June 23, 1964

 Recently Dave Mantour decided to pass along to me a letter he received from VT Hamlin, creator of Alley Oop, in 1964 when he was a high school senior. With his permission, I've transcribed the letter as seen below. Hamlin provides some basic information about his background and how he works on the strip. Hamin appears to have written the letter with red crayon.

 

Vincent T. Hamlin

1670 Bay View Drive

Sarasota, Florida

 

6-23-'64

David Mantor

Phillipsburg, Kansas

 

Dear David: your letter of some time ago bears no date so I don't know how overdue this answer is - but it's plenty I'm sure. Actually I have a mind that is scientifically oriented, but my training is journalistic. However, my imagination is supplemented by exhaustive reading - and when ever I need technical advice, which is often and in many fields, I go ask an expert - and don't you think I don't get them up a tree ever so often. My son is a graduate of Colorado Mines and that covers a lot of territory in Science and he also has a degree from Florida U. and Electronics - he helps plenty. I hold no degrees, I am a practical geologist, paleontologist and I stomp around in anthropology with some assurance. I am 64. I created AlleyOop in 1930. I have no complete record of my caveman's many adventures. How this knowledge can be of a to you, I don't know... But you're welcome.

 

Regards

-V. T. Hamlin

 

Non Probare Offendit

 

 The highly-contrasted scan below shows the text a little more clearly. Full-size scans and a downloadable pdf are on the Internet Archive.

 Other letters of Hamlin's can presumably be found in the University of Missouri Special Collections which has a Comic Art Collection which includes V.T. Hamlin Collections and an online exhibit about him.

Some more Navy Medicine cartoon finds including a summary article

Selected Cartoons [of Navy medicine, in World War II]

Hospital Corps Quarterly April-May-June 1948, p. 85-88

online at https://archive.org/details/selected-cartoons-hospital-corps-quarterly-april-may-june-1948

 

 Hospital Corps Quarterly January 1946 cover probably by Steve Tabone. Caption inside reads, "Our Cover: Every lug in the class knows the answer except T-Bone, HA3c yet if they were up at the board or working in the lab, they'd be just as speechless. That's the way with medical mathematics. You just got to learn it." Illustrating the interior article Medical Department Mathematics by W. Kenneth Patton, Ensign (HC) USN.scanned from the issue. https://www.flickr.com/photos/navymedicine/55180412328/in/photostream/

 

 

 

 John McCalley cartoon for "The Hospital Corps Was there!" Hospital Corps Quarterly April-May-June 1948.scanned from the issue. https://www.flickr.com/photos/navymedicine/55180412328/in/photostream/

  

 

 "This grotesque, composite Chief-of-the-day at any naval hospital was drawn by M.A. Anderson, HMC, at USNH, Chlsea, Mass. It purports to show that a chief's 'work is never done.'" Hospital Corps Quarterly August 1949, p. 63.scanned from the issue. https://www.flickr.com/photos/navymedicine/55180244461/in/dateposted/

 

 

Dutch Treat Party, 1933 art selection

 The Dutch Treat club put out an annual book every year, with some risque cartoons done by famous cartoonists. The 1933 edition was focused on Washington, DC, politicians, and the federal government as the Depression continued. Here are some images from the book Dutch Treat Party, 1933, from the collection of Warren Bernard.

 

 

Can you identify these NCS cartoonists for the Library of Congress?

 The National Cartoonist Society event was at the Library of Congress October 31, 1951.

If you can, please post in the comments or email Sara Duke at sduk at loc.gov (you'll need to reassemble that email address).

First ID from Inkspill's Michael Maslin: I see Otto Soglow in there, dead center with two hats.

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.