Everett Shinn's Santa

My childhood notion of Santa Claus was largely formed by images from the Everett Shinn illustrated edition of The Night Before Christmas.  Here are a few of those images, snagged off the web.  My own copy of the book -- the same that was read to me as a child, is ragged, torn and marred by repairs done with yellowing scotch tape.  Some day I'd like to own a nicer condition copy -- but I think I'll hold on to that ragged copy no matter what.

Gumps Greetings - 1953

Seasons greetings from Gus Edson and The Gumps --scanned from the original 1953 daily strip.

TBG Christmas cover 1982

In the early days of my comics career, I was a regular contributor of cover art to Alan Light's weekly fanzine, The Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom.  I'm not sure how many covers I drew for TBG over the years (though someone did send me a checklist once -- which I'm sure is packed away somewhere in some box in my storage closet) -- but I only kept the original art for a handful, and this Christmas cover below is one of them.  This scan is of the original -- the color added version done in Photoshop, after scanning the original color mask overlay.  I did at least one more Christmas cover.  If I can find it before Christmas, I'll post it, too. 

The comics and toys are items from my own collection that I thought collectors might enjoy finding under a Christmas tree.  I've since sold that Daredevil #1 (darn it!) -- but still have the rest of this stuff.   Shortly after publication, Milt Caniff  sent me a postcard telling me he enjoyed seeing the Terry and the Pirates characters on this cover!

A Wally Wood Christmas

Wally Wood drew this holiday comic strip continuity in 1967.  This complete version of Bucky's Christmas Caper was scanned from an issue of Jim Steranko's Mediascene magazine.  Click on the strips for a larger view. Merry Christmas to my fellow comics fans everywhere!

Simians' Greetings!

For my first Christmas-related post of he season, I'm sharing this fold-out Christmas card featuring the monkey illustrations of the astounding Lawson Wood.  This standard-sized card folds out into the huge illustration shown at the bottom of this post.  Click on the pics for a larger view.

William Overgard out West

Quite a few years ago, I purchased a batch of Australian editions of Dell Western comics.  The bad news about these particular versions is that they are all edited -- the first several pages of the stories cut to fit into a smaller page-count format -- but the good news is -- they are printed in black and white.  This allows for a clean reproduction of the linework, unobscured by the sometimes heavy handed color found in comics of the period.  I'm particularly glad I got this book in that lot -- Zane Gray's The Rustlers as drawn by William Overgard.  

When teaching in the comics program at MCAD, I used panels and pages from this book as examples of simplicity and clarity in composition and storytelling.  I've scanned a few pages to share here.  I'm knocked out by how good this work is.  Click on the images for a larger view.

Chester Gould and Dick Tracy

This wonderful autobiographical comic strip was drawn by Chet Gould for Collier's magazine in 1948.  I love every thin/thick line of this.  As always, click on the image for a larger view.