Sunday Funnies - Nemo #11 - Beautiful Pen Work from Our Past!

"Nemo: the Classic Comics Library" issue #11 from 1985 is a real eye-opener to some real geniuses of pen and ink. Forgotten masters, that shall not remain forgotten!

The kind of inspiring stuff you'd usually find at "The Pictorial Arts" , "Golden Age Comic Book Stories" or "Today's Inspiration", I'm proud to compare!




As usual, Richard Marschall offers us encouragement about preserving the past to make for a brighter future.



Nemo begins a new feature with this issue, reprinting selections of Jerry Dumas and Mort Walker's fun "insiders" comic "Sam's Strip". Lots of inside cartoonists jokes here with appearances by comic characters from other strips. Dumas has a welcoming pen that is easy on the eyes and his depictions of other artists styles is enviable.

The panel art of Clare Victor Dwiggins. Easily missed, but well worth finding treasure of a by-gone newspaper age.

James Montgomery Flagg: The begrudging cartoonist? Proof in the pudding that comic art is indeed art, and it cannot be denied when it is the right medium to express oneself.

His "Nervy Nat" has the feel of the German comics of the 1800's like Max and Moritz or the style of Hal Foster later, with the text co-existing along side the illustrations instead of being fully incorporated as in traditional comics. This just shows to me, that there are many different ways of presenting an idea in comics form. I have been enjoying doing my comics in blog form, because it allows for so much freedom of expression. Word balloons fit where they're needed and text can take over from a cartoon or step back and let the cartoon have it's impact alone. With the multi-media capabilities of sound and video, it opens up even more.

Ah, the evolving comic strip.

"Penmen from the Past" brings us the great hash-mark styled work of Charles Dana Gibson.

Just dig how expresive this line drawings are. This characters all have substance, and just from their body language and expressions you know the whole story. You know what they're thinking, saying...hell...I can even hear the timber of their voices!

His one line captions serve and a great punch to each one that brings it all home.

A complete history and samples of a long-running strip "Slim Jim". Great examples of a strip evolving over a few decades.

A few of these have difficult to read small type. Be sure to download these and enlarge in your image viewer.

No "comic attractions" blurb this time around, but I can assure you, there are loads more Nemo's coming and they're some REAL doozies. See y'all back here next week for another "Sunday Funnies"!

Talk to you soon.