Downsizing

Saturday Leftover Day.

Dutch former underground arstist turned Duck writer (among his many acomplishments) Evert Geradts once told he he was a huge fan of Blondie, mainly because when he was younger it was reprinted in his parents' tv guide, De VARA Gids. I understand, but as far as I am concerned they reprinted it in the wrong format. Like all strips that started before the war, Blondie used to have a full page of it's own, one third of which was filled with a second strip, Colonel Potterby and the Dutchess. It was a pantomime strip in a totally different style, somwhere between Chic Young's own Blondie and Otto Soglow's The Little King. I would have thought that this strip was the work of one of Young's assistants, but most online soures credit it to Young himself. Maybe he only used assistants on Blondie (such as Paul Fung Jr., who drew all those dogs in the fifties strips). Samples of Colonel Potterby can be seen if you follow the link.

Although Potterby started as a half page strip, sharing the page equally with Blondie and Dagwood, it shrank to one third of a page in the forties. That is also, when some papers started cutting the two apart, sometimes running either or if both were used, never together. The remaining four tier Blondie was the original format in which the strip was drawn, but it had a problem: it ran two thirds of a page and that was deemed too much by most papers. So a new three tier version was made that only filled half a page. That was achieved by lengthening all the panels. And although it seemed almost natural, if you see the two thirds version it somehow fits better. Here are a couple of samples from the fifties, including one rare two thirds page one. Unfortunately, the paper I found it in was badly folded and I couldn't repair it without damaging the art, but I hope you'll catch the drift.

Update: I uploaded another two thirds one.
Update: and two more from the same period.

Cereal Surprise

Wednesday Comic Strip Day.

From the start of this blog I've been showing samples of Foreball Twigg, one of the most fascinating comic strip ads from the late forties. There were other strips that wer better executed of funnier, or at least longer running, but this strip is interesting because it is such a mystery who drew it. It seems like a straightforward copy of Blondie, so much so even that some people have suggested that Chich Young himself was involved. Or maybe his assistant Paul Fung Jr. who drew the strip from the fifties and officially took over in 1961. But if you look closely, the style is much more lively than that of Young and his companions. If anything, it looks like the parody Waace Wood drew for the Mad newspaper parody insert I showed some time ago.

Still, I kept looking and I kept thinking I should know this. The strip looked so familiar and so well done. I collected as many samples of this 1948 weekly ad as I could and a couple of years ago I showed all I have on some sort of order. Then, recently, I bought a set of tearsheets with even more samples, which I am showing here. Around the same time, I discovered that the strip had a second life in 1949. After a short heatus, it reappeared in 1949 as a two weekly strip, in a slightly smaller format (as far as I can see). I was not the only one that had assumed this strip only ran I 1948. The set of tearsheets I bough has no 1949 samples, so they are a re seperate lot.

When I looked at them, I did see it was the same artist. The one that looked so familiar to me. The one that looked as if I had seen this artist before. But not as one of Young's assistants.

And then it hit me. I knew why this looked so fsmiliar. Could these ads be by an artist who did draw Blondie and who did do advertisement art in the late forties and who did in fact in an interview say that at the start of his career he had to wor hard to learn how to draw realisticly because he usually worked in a funny style?

Could these ads be the early work of Stan Drake?

I leave you to ponder this on your own. In the future I will add these samples to the other ones I have, to create a dfinitive timeline. I think I even have a couple more color ones I have to clean up, which I will add as well. And I will try and fins samples of the work of Young, Fung Jr. and rake on Blondie to compare.

THe Colonel and Mrs. Simpson

Saturday Leftover Day.

Officially the 'modern' more graphic style of cartooning started just at the end of the war when the future UPC artists found a way to make animated cartoons more graphic, cheaper and better suited to delivering messages rather than characters. But in magazine cartooning, it had ben around much longer of course. In the simple styling of Gardner Rea, for example. Or in the graphic genius of Otto Soglow. But by the sixties it would cmpletely take over all sorts of cartooning. Anyone attempting a more lush and and elaborte style was branded oldfashioned for many years.

One of the first to make the switch was Chic Young. Young had started out as a pretty conservative cartoonist. And althought that would become a quite graphicly influential strip in the forties (inspiring many of the new generation), it eems to me that the greates leap forward was mad in 1934, when he introduced a new 'topper' strip called Colonel Potterby and the Dutchess. In it, we see the adventures of a rich 'Colonel' and his Society Friend, the Duchess. It must have been inspired by the susses of Solgow's Little King, but I see obvious traces of a satire of the scandalous romance of King Edward and Mrs. Simpson - which would be very topical, because according to Wikipedia they only started their affair in 1934. I'd have to have a further look into the precise dates to say that with more confidence.

Although Young used many assistants on Blondie in later years (I still don't know when exactly Paul Fung Jr, who later took over the strip, started - Wikipeduia says 1949, but I see his or a similar style long before that) it seems he created this little gem on his own. And with Fung starting in 1949, maybe I should give him more credit for the amazing style of his strips in the forties. But I just an't seem to match the artist of the erly thirties with that later work. If he did that all by himself, what a stylistic growth he went through!

Anyway, I have shown some of the Pottersby strips here. Most (or possibly even all) of them in black and white. It is one of thse strips that survive the microfiche rocess pretty well, with it's bold lines and light colors. And many times, when a paper decided to run it's Sunday strips in black and white (and not in a seperate section), they ofteh used Blondie and Pottersby. So I have had a lot of good samples to choose from.

But here is one in color, I came across and just couldn't resist scanning.

Oh, by the way - although the strip graphicly is 'a little gem', the jokes itself were never very funny, sometimes even obscure. That is probably why it never went on to become such a succes as Blondie - or even The Little King. Still, it ran from 1934 to 1963. That should count for something.






































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