Hacked Out

 Sunday Surprise Day.

Yesterday I shared a photo of the promotional poster of David Gantz' newspaper stripproposal Moxie I took on my visit to the Billy Ireland Museum in Columbia, Ohio. While there, I also took pictures of this rare cartoon series by Arnold Roth, one of the great satirits of the sixties and seventies (and still with us, as far as I know). If anyone knows where it ran, please tell me.

In the same folder, there was also a small note from Arnold Roth to his agent, with a rare self portrait.

For Richer and Poorer

Saturday Leftover Day

In 1998 Fantagraphics published a book with all of Arnold Roth's Poor Arnold's Almanac cartoon Sundays. The series, which ran for a short period in 1959/1960 was lovingly and completely represented in black and white. Arnold Roth was still a beginning artist at that time, who worked for many of the largest magazines, including the British Punch, Playboy (but that may habe come later) and Harvey Kurtzman's Humbug. I believe he was even one of the co-financiers of that magazine. That Poor's Arnold's Almanac, a compendium of gags, drawn around a new theme each week in a destincly modern cartoon style, got sold at all tells you something about the period (and illustrates very nicely why I represent so many cartoons from those four years around 1960 in a blog called The Fabulous Fifties). The book itself is still available from Amazon and I highly recommend it as one of the best Fantagraphics ever put out (along with their Humbug collection). It seems to have been shot from the originals or at least some very good proofs... which means it is in black and white. And how even much Mr. Roth's style can be enjoyed in that form, it is always noce to see them in color. So here you go.

What Sort Of Man Draws For Playboy?

Monday Cartoon Day.

Two pages from an early sixties issue of Playboy. I had thought he would have done more for them in that decade, but I can't seem to find it.

Your Homework For Today

Wednesday Apllied Comics Day.

When I started this blog I got quite a name by showing every kind of comic and cartoon strip journalism I could find. Most of them related to Harvey Kurtzman, who used the idea of having a comc strip artist do an illustrated report for himself and others in the late fifties and early sixties. One of those was by Paul Coker for Help. Not soon after that Paul Coker di one by himself for Car & Driver magazine. I don't know if he was some sort of regular contributor for them (I think he was a car enthousiast) s there may be more out there...

In the same issue there also is an illustration by Arnold Roth, another Kurtzman alumnea. Roth worked for al sorts of magazine in the sixties and seventies. Here we see him ding his best Ronald Searle impression for a British auto show.

Seven Gags A WeekMonday Cartoon Day

When I showed some of John Stees' Sunday gag collections, I mentioned the fact that he wasn't the first or the last to produce such a Sunday feature. I have already shown some of Gaham Wilson's pages last year. There were the long running pages by George Lichty and Ed Reed's Off The Record. There even was a Laugh In daily and Sunday, which I am showing here with another favorite of mine: Arnold Roth's Poor Arnold's Almanac.

I actually have quite few of these, but I haven't scanned them in for two reasons; first of all, my samples are from the Winnipeg newspaper that did their own color and bad as it is on other strips, it leaves nothing of Arnold Roth's beauty and secondly, there was a comlete reprinting of all strips (in black and white, but from the best of line art possible) by Fantagraphics in 1998. I had a look at their website, but they are offering it now for slightly over $8 and I urge you to go there and buy it, before they run out and you end up payning $30 or more for it in a couple of years. When I came across these two vibrantly colored samples last week, I just had to show them to you. I have added a color sample of Stees Sees and the aforementioned Laugh In.

April 24 1959:



June 14 1959:



May 8 1960:



A random selection from late 1968:












Aug 30 1970:



Sept 6 1970:

Help trumps Playboy.

Monday Cartoon Day

Last week I showed Paul Coker's cartoon diary of his visit to Cuba from Help #6. For Help #8 Harvey Kurtzman persuded Arnolf Roth to go to Berlin. Arnold Roth was a New York cartoonist, who had worked with Kurtzman on Humbug. In fact, he was one of the financiers of that magazine. Like Al Jaffee (who also worked on Humbug, but not on Help, because by then he had joined the enemy in the form of Al Feldstein's Mad) he had a strip for the Herald Tribne Syndicate. Poor Arnold's Almanac was a Sunday only collection os cartoons on a different subject every week. It showed Roth's sharp eye for observation, as well as his talent for mixing together different jokes into a pleasing tableau. Isn't every cartoonist a journalist, reporting in his own way on the things he sees around him? Viewed like that, doing cartoon diaries doesn't seem like a stretch. It certainly wasn't for Roth, who kept on doing carttoon docuumentaries for the rest of his career, as well as illustration for magazines such as Playboy, Holiday and The National Lampoon.







Dutch readers of this blog should go and get last week's Nieuwe Revu, which has a wonderful bit of cartoon jounalism. A six page behind the scenes look at my new television series S1ngle, by Hanco Kolk, the artist of the strip this series was based on.