Cartoons

The Wexner Center for The Arts at Ohio State University in Columbus is opening a show devoted to animator-turned-comic book great, Jeff Smith, in May. The exhibit will include about 70 original BONE pages and covers, work from his recent SHAZAM! series and current RASL project, and work by artists who have influenced him including Walt Kelly, Charles Schulz, Garry Trudeau, Carl Barks, George Herriman, E.C. Segar, and Will Eisner. Ohio State’s Cartoon Research Library will be hosting a sidebar show at the same time that features Jeff’s work when he was a cartoonist for the Ohio State student newspaper back in the 80s.

In addition, The Wexner Center will host a number of related panels and events, including a conversation between Jeff Smith and Scott McCloud on May 10th at 2pm; and A Looney Tunes Evening with Jeff Smith, where Jeff will introduce a selection of WB cartoons that most-influenced BONE (especially the Chuck Jones ‘hunting trilogy’), on June 5th at 7pm.

See the Wexner website for more information.

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Cartoonist Sherm Cohen (Spongebob Squarepants, The Mighty B) has a great blog where, for the last several weeks, he’s been posting complete comic book stories from the golden age. His latest post is a Milt Gross classic starring Count Screwloose and previous posts include Jim Tyer Heckle & Jeckle (panel above), Sam Spade Wildroot Creme Oil ads, and some of the wildest Jack Kirby, Wally Wood and Dan Gordon comics I’ve ever seen. Check out Cartoon Snap.

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The latest compilation book of vintage Harvey Comics, Hot Stuff - Harvey Comics Classics Vol. 3 is now on sale (though the official publication date is technically next Wednesday, March 26). Leslie Cabarga and I present the best stories and art from this classic Harvey series, which features (in my humble opinion) the finest comic art that Warren Kremer and Howard Post ever did for the company. Leslie laid out the book, and touched up the color art and original black & white proofs for outstanding reproduction, I provide a historical overview of the strip in my Introduction, and Harvey expert Mark Arnold contributes an informative Foreword. Check out the amazon link to see a preview of several pages. For 480 pages of devilish fun (only $13.57 on amazon), you can’t go wrong.

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Wink-wink, nudge-nudge… An in-joke in today’s Family Circus. The strip’s creator, Bil Keane, is Glen Keane’s father. Jeffy (aka Jeff Keane) is Glen’s brother.

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Comic book writer Fred Van Lente and cartoonist Ryan Dunlavey have teamed up to create Comic Book Comics, a concise illustrated history of comic strips, comic books and yes, animated cartoons. I just picked up a copy at my local comics shop this week and all things considered, it’s pretty good. Jack Kirby and Max Fleischer seems to get extra attention in the first issue. Among the names who will be profiled in forthcoming editions are Stan Lee, Walt Disney, Roy Lichtenstein, R. Crumb, Winsor McCay, Will Eisner, Osamu Tezuka, Harvey Kurtzman, Art Spiegelman, Steve Ditko and Bob Kane.

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Courtesy of Marc Schirmeister, The Asifa Hollywood Animation Archive has posted the complete 18-page Crimebuster story from a 1942 issue of Boy Comics. The story, written by Charles Biro and drawn by future stooge-in-law Norman Maurer, uses the fictional Acme Animation Studio as a backdrop. There are references to animators with some familiar sounding names (Gordon, Tyre (sic), Lovey (sic), Foster). Read it here.

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A very strange comic strip I’m really starting to enjoy. Today’s Lio by Mark Tatulli.

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We already have enough problems identifying the sex of Tweety… Now this:

Today’s Family Circus by Bill Keane (father of Disney animator Glen Keane).

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Recently sold off on ebay was a series of six sample comic strips for a purported Oswald The Lucky Rabbit daily comic strip from the late 1930s. David Gerstein grabbed images of them, and Andrea Ippoliti posted them on his Classic Cartoons website.

Any further information on this attempt to make Oswald a regular in the “funny pages” is appreciated. Any ideas on who might have drawn this, or what year this was created?

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Yesterday’s Bizarro by Dan Piraro.

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