I didn't buy much at the Civitan flea market in Arlington this past weekend. Just 4 items for $6 in all. I got two record albums - I used to collect more cartoonist-covered albums, but most of them got destroyed a few years back in my basement flood. Still I could't resist The Watergate Comedy Hour because the cover is by noted poster and postage stamp artist Drew Struzan. Wikipedia says he actually did a lot of album covers,* but this one was particularly of interest due to his caricatures being so obviously influenced by Jack Davis and also probably Mort Drucker of MAD.
My actual first purchase was this less-visually-interesting Archies album. Notice that while Everything's Archie, the actual musicians and singers are never mentioned in the liner notes. And don't those cover models look exactly the way you picture rock fans to look in 1969?
Here's a transcript of the liner notes shown on the back cover below:
The Archie phenomenon seems to get more phenomenal every year. Having begun life
as comic-strip characters, the perennially teen-aged brain children of John L. Goldwater
have been translated into more than ten languages, known radio and TV stardom and are
now in the process of creating a sensation in the record world. Who could ask for a more
diversified career than that?
Maybe the secret of the Archie characters' popularity has something to do with the fact
that they have always been so tuned into the times. When they made their debut back in
1942, they were, like all American teen-agers, wearing bobby-socks and sloppy sweaters
and dancing the jitterbug to music known as "jive." Today Betty and Veronica are teenyboppers
in miniskirts, Jughead wears love beads and Archie plays rock 'n' roll music on
his souped-up electric guitar.
Proof that though Archie and his cohorts have been around for more than two decades
and, yet, fit perfectly into the world of the "now generation" lies in the current success
of the weekly animated Archie cartoon series which made its CBS-TV bow during the
1968-69 season. The show, with its zany skits, hip dance lessons and groovy musical
numbers, made such a hit it will soon be expanded to a full hour and renamed "The
Archie Comedy Hour."
It was Don Kirshner, the series' music supervisor, who decided to make recording stars
out of Archie and his friends. Following his spectacularly successful association with
The Mo11kees, it was perhaps only natural that he should want to give another new group
the benefit of the Kirshner touch-and it was a lucky move for everyone concerned! The
Archies' first album, THE ARCHIES, took a big step toward establishing them as an important
new vocal-instrumental team, and their first single release, Bang-Shang-A-Lang,
soared on the charts. That song, and the groups' second single, Feelin' So Good
(S.K.O.O.B.Y.-D.O.O.), was written by the young, talented composer Jeff Barry who has
produced and written most of the songs that have appeared on the two Archies albums.
Barry has captured the cool, contemporary Archies style, and the selections run the
gamut from youth-oriented songs like Circle of Blue and Melody Hill {both written
by the young writing team of Mark Barkan and Ritchie Adams) to rock-based dance numbers
like Don't Touch My Guitar and Rock & Roll Music. You have only to hear them to
realize that the world-famous Archies have gained an exciting new dimension.
DEBBIE SHERWOOD
Contributor,
Who's Who in TV
Watch for "THE ARCHIES" in color every Saturday morning on the CBS-TV network.
The same person who sold me the album had this comic book. One of my favorite Archie comics artists is Al Hartley due to the sheer insanity of his work. By the 1970s, he was doing art on regular Archie comics, but also on a licensed religion line.** This issue of Archie's Parables has 6 stories squeezed into it with settings varying from the Middle Ages, science fiction, and a Western (described by the GCD as "In the old West, the
Sheriff [Archie] comes to the school marm's aid. She [Betty] complains about the Bible
being taken out of schools, being forced to teach evolution, and the
filthy books being sold at the trading post." The World War I story features Archie and Jughead being bombed by Germans (including Principal Weatherbee and Reggie) raining down entertainment, including tv sets and golf clubs, that kept people out of church on Sunday. Archie & Jughead take to flying to shoot down the distracting barrage balloons.
The last item was this Far Side mug with a "Midvale School for the Gifted" cartoon by Gary Larson. I passed on it, and then went back when I realized that I didn't see these everywhere the way one used to.
And no wonder. It's been 38 years since this was made. I'm not sure this cartoon would make it onto a mug anymore either. Note that Larson owns his creation in 1986.
Here's an older one from my kitchen cabinet, "The real reason dinosaurs became extinct."
Note here in 1982 that Larson did not own the copyright to his strip, but his syndicate, Chronicle Features (now defunct) did.
So that's my cartoon gleanings. There were plenty of comics for sale, but nothing else caught my eye.
Endnotes!
*After graduating from college, Struzan remained in Los Angeles, and a trip to an employment agency found him a job as a staff artist for Pacific Eye & Ear, a design studio. There he began designing album covers under the direction of Ernie Cefalu, relishing the creative aspects the 12x12" size the record packaging afforded him. Over the next 5 years, he would create album cover artwork for a long line of musical artists, including Tony Orlando and Dawn, The Beach Boys, Bee Gees, Roy Orbison, Black Sabbath, Glenn Miller, Iron Butterfly, Bach, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Liberace. He also illustrated the t-shirt that George Carlin wears on the front and back cover of his album Toledo Window Box.[8]
Among these, Struzan illustrated the album cover artwork for Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare, which Rolling Stone would go on to vote one of the Top 100 Album Covers Of All Time.[9] Despite the burgeoning demand for his talents, however, Struzan was still only earning $150 to $250 per album cover.[10]
**He began writing and drawing for Archie Comics, infusing some of the stories with his Christian beliefs. At one point he was directed to cut back. "I knew God was in control, so I respected my publisher's position and naturally complied".[4] He later received a call from publisher Fleming H. Revell, for whom he then freelanced a comic-book adaptation of David Wilkerson's The Cross and the Switchblade in 1972, quickly followed by adaptations of God's Smuggler by the pseudonymous Brother Andrew and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. Inspired, Hartley helped launch the Spire Christian Comics line, and pitched Archie president John L. Goldwater to let him license the Archie characters. The Jewish Goldwater, himself religious, agreed, and Spire went on to release 59 comics – at least 19 of them Archie titles, along with six Bible stories, 12 biography adaptations, four other book or film adaptations (including Hansi: The Girl Who Loved the Swastika), and nine children's comics.
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