"Masters of Zowie!"

At long last, here's a blog entry that has nothing to do with The Phantom!  Sorting through stuff in my studio, I came across this article from a 1941 issue of the digest-sized magazine Coronet.  I thought its profiles of cartoonists Chic Young, Ham Fisher, Al Capp, Milt Caniff -- and Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were well worth sharing. Enjoy!

Sample art and a letter from Dick Giordano

In 1980 I prepared several sample superhero pages in an attempt at getting work from DC Comics. The Batman page below is one of them. I also drew a Superman and a Wonder Woman page, but haven't seen them lately. The inking is better than the drawing here, and the storytelling is a little clumsy. Details in the background of the second panel came from my parents' living room! I still kind of like the Robbins-influenced Batman in the first panel and the extreme Joker close-up in the middle of the page (gun is too small, though).

I'm not surprised this didn't get me work -- but I did get a nice hand-written letter from the late Dick Giordano in response. The positive tone of it was encouraging, and while I didn't send more samples to DC right away, I plugged away at my own projects -- notably my collaboration with Max Allan Collins, Ms. Tree.

A few years later, thanks to Batman editor Denny O'Neil taking notice of Ms. Tree (and me taking the time to introduce myself to him at a DC sponsored party at the San Diego Con), I was invited to pencil something for an anniversary issue of Detective. Dick Giordano inked my pencils. I was thrilled with the results.
Ms. Tree eventually ended up at DC as well, for a ten-issue quarterly run. When that ended, I drew some more superhero samples, since I'd been drawing crime comics for over a decade, and wanted editors to know I could do more. The Superman sample below was part of a promo package I put together -- I did an inked version as well. Like my first samples, it didn't get me any more work from DC, and I spent a few years working for Warp Graphics, Tekno-Comix and others. DC would later invite me back, but that's another story.
The Spider-Man page below is one of two I did for the promo package (pencils and inks -- this is scanned from a photocopy of the pencils prior to inks) -- there was an Avengers/Iron Man page, too. It also, got me nowhere with Marvel (my total output for them, in my three decades in comics, is one spot illustration and five pages of inks) -- but resulted in a very nice phone call from John Romita, Sr. -- who told me he wished they could publish comics that looked like this. At the time, the "Image look" was all the rage, and I was bucking the trend by being too traditional, I suppose.
I'm still sorting through my original art and photocopies -- I'll be posting more items "from the vault." Keep watching this space!

'Toons on wax!

Comics and cartoon characters have made plenty of appearances on record -- here are a few from my collection.  This Batman/Superman 45 was released at the height of  1960s "Batmania."

Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace on disc. 

Crockett Johnson of the Barnaby comic strip illustrated this sleeve for The Carrot Seed.

This two disc 78 RPM set of Dick Tracy records comes in a fold-out sleeve, with three pages (one shown) of comic strip panels in B&W and without lettering in the balloons.  As you can see on the front cover, children were encouraged to write in the balloons and color the art.  Hurray for the kid who owned this one, who did neither!

Animated cartoons often had story or soundtrack versions released on 78 RPM discs.  This Disney Pinocchio has a particularly lovely read-along booklet inside.  One page of that is shown below the cover.

Fleischer Studio's Gulliver's Travels had this great multi-disc 78 soundtrack set issued.  No storybook pages inside -- but B&W images from the film on the inside covers -- plus a small fold-out booklet with info on the creators of the film's music (cover shown).  I suspect few copies of this exist with the booklet intact, as it could be very easily lost.

I have very fond childhood memories of listening to these Bugs Bunny records, and reading along with the storybooks included.  These copies are in rather rough shape, so I did a little Photoshop clean up on the covers -- just enough to make them presentable enough to show here.

Storybook art on these is by Richard Thomas and Bob McKimson -- wonderful drawings -- a few shown here.  Bugs Bunny in Storyland was my favorite -- largely for the appearance of Daffy Duck as "Duck Twacy," otherwise only seen in the fantastic animated Dick Tracy spoof,  The Great Piggy Bank Robbery.

Th-th-th-that's all folks!  Please leave a comment if you like what you see here.

Sgt. Snorkel in Slumberland? Part Two!

Mort Walker dreams up some more comic-related adventures for Sgt. Snorkel -- Superman and Snoopy get spoofed.

Hold on for Big Funny!

More commissions!

Another round of commissions!  The Spidey and Supes drawings are a matched set for a client who wanted to see iconic images of the characters changing from their secret identities.  Solomon Grundy is for a long-time fan who's been getting animated-style drawings of many DC characters.  A Golden Age inter-company crossover has Green Lantern fighting the Red Skull -- and Galactus must be daydreaming abut all those planets he's going to eat.... (note: I made some minor adjustments to the Galactus and Clark Kent pieces -- new scans are now replacing the originals here)