Pre Mole

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

I have been slowly scanning all of my pretty large collection Sunday Jacky's Diary strips by Jack Mendelsohn. This delightful and funny strip from the late fifties and early sixties is a prime example of what I love about the comedy and newspaper strips of that period. It is intelligent, welldrawn and satirical in the oldfashioned sense of the word - pointing out negatives and discrepensies in the world around us without tearing it down. Today we often sperate the negative and the positive, but these guys knew how to combine it.

Anyway, I shouldn't have bothered, because Craig Yoe prouced a beautiful reprinting of all the Sunday strips with the help of Mr. Mendelsohn, who is still with us and runs a very informative website about his career. As usual, Craig has added an opening article that tells you all you need to know about Jack Mendelsohn and his career and I highly recommend it, as I do all of Craigs books. You can buy it at Amazon for under $30.

Marion Call

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

In the early sixties the simple graphic qualities of the 'modern' style had paved the way for more simple, childlike styles. The first to benefit from that was Jack Mendelsohn with his faux child's comics Jacky's Diary, many of which I have shown here in color. I was surprised to find another similar strip from the same time. This time it was not done as a gag, but pretty serious, by an artist who mainly worked for children. I couldn't find much about Marion Abeson, except her obituary.

"Marion Abeson, a writer of songs for children, died of colon cancer Saturday at her home in Manhattan. She was 75 years old.

Burl Ives, the Weavers and others recorded 180 of Miss Abeson's songs. She wrote ''Playtime With Music,'' a children's songbook, and a series of short children's plays about health for the American Medical and Dental Associations. She also created a syndicated comic strip, ''Willie Woo.'"

These images are from the now defunct Google Newspaper Search and I would love to see some color samples, if anyone has any.

Mendelsohn's First

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

As long as we are doing Jack Mendelsohn, here are some more scans of Jacky's Diary. I still have some more to do, but these will help tide you over. I have added whatever I have of the first year from previous posts. Some of the missing dates I have in black and white, but you will have to follow the tag for those. This post is just the color ones I scanned myself. Some more info about this strip and Jack Mendelsohn can be found there as wel.

Wacky Jacky

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

I bought a whole lot of 1959 Sundays of Jack Mendelsohn's Jacky's Diary, which I will end up puttinf up here as soon as I have scanned them in. This is how far I got and it's too much fun not to share. I urge you all to buy and read Alter Ego #100 and #101 for a career spanning interview with Mr. Mendelsohn by Jim Amash. Riveting stuff by one of comicdom funniest writers. Apart from doing this, he worked for Panic, Cracked, Mad and the Carol Burnett Show and did a load of comic strip adaptations for Dell books, including his own Jacky's Diary.

An Unusual Idiot

Saturday Leftover Day.

Here are some odds and ends I have from Jack Mendelsohn's delightfull Jacky's Diaries.The first few episodes, some color scans from 1960, a contest and what seems to be the last month (although I have to check a bit further). Wouldn't this make a great Craig Yoe book? There are at least 120 Sundays and a whole Dell comic book version. If you follow th tag, you'll find that and more scans from 1959. I also hae some of Mendelsohn surprisingly Mad-like early work from the forties.