A daily almanac of events and people I admire and appreciate. All things, and the people who did things, that were WORTH DOING! Songs and Cartoons and near-insane ramblings by me, too.
I feel it's cheating on Saturday when all I'm doing here really is linking to other folks' posted videos. I'm basically just pointing out what you kind blog readers could find yourselves.
Then, I thought, what if they don't go and find them? Then my readers would miss out on taking a 20-30 minute break once a day to watch some cartoons.
A crime, I replied...so here they are!
Since my sketchbook posts have included some very early animation characters, thought I'd focus on those this week. Enjoy the hell out of these seldom watched classics...I do on a regular basis.
Here's a bonus...an old blog post with your old Unca Jeffy, watching a Felix cartoon. One of 3 in a series I did like this way back in the early days of this blog, and maybe one of my oddest ideas...still strangely intrigueing and I'mm wondering if I should do more some day.
Saturday Morning and finally a respite to a 2 week period of obligations! I still have a couple of errands to run, but no all-day or 1/2 da commitments involved, and you know what makes me feel like I'm at the beginning of 2 days of liberation?
Saturday morning cartoons! Mmmmmmmmm.
Dig in, everyone...Monday's just around the corner, but for now...we are free.
Apparently my punishment for enjoying a 4 day holiday last weekend for the Comic-Con, is to work 6 days THIS week. I'm off to L.A. for a company meeting, but that doesn't mean YOU kiddoes can't enjoy some Saturday Morning Cartons.
I've spotlighted 6 of the major 8 cartoons studios of Hollywood's golden age in the last two weeks. Disney never really fell into Saturday morning syndication mode and RKO's Van Beuren cartoons are something only folks who grew up in the 1950's will remember as Saturday morning fare, that ain't gonna stop me though...we're gonna have solid cartoon goodness here.
Throwing in more classic Warners as we continue around the horn and cycle through the 8 and have some good variety here every Saturday.
As I said last week, Saturday Morning Cartoon-time (yes...I think that SHOULD be capitalized!) Was once a special time. That's been lost.
Don't get me wrong, if there were cartoons available to me 24/7 back in my day via cable, home video, internet et al, I would have been in hog heaven. But looking back, it was nice that it was this isolated little thing.
Now by the time I happened along (I was born in 1963, so my formative Saturday morning years were late 60's/early-mid 70's) they (television producers/network executives) had learned (Hi, Filmation!..How's the crapfest going?!?) to do cartoons for TV on the extreme cheap. Not the late 50's/early 60's cheap where they learned to creatively cut corners in a way that added an aesthetic of it's own, but to plain old "F" it up!
But we still had some Looney Tunes sneak through. And some Woody Woodpecker and his pals.
My generation learned of great theatrical cartoons from the golden age through TV, just as so many of us only know films from the golden age of Hollywood.
A weird mix of things that all ended up in Technicolor glory on that little box in my living room. And even before in black and white.
As a medium purist (I believe in a very real difference between comic BOOKS and comic STRIPS, animation produced for THEATRICAL release differs grandly from animation produced for TELEVISION release) there is a weird generational crossover that I can get behind.
You see kiddoes, in the early days of television, it was still believed it was far too expensive to produce cartoons for TV. They hadn't yet learned that all they need do is strip quality and costs and quality (I repeated myself there on purpose all you proofreaders out there) and so whatever cartoons were broadcast on television, were simply theatrical cartoons sold into he market.
Taking these, once thought to be "throw-away" films and giving them new life into perpetuity for whole new generations to enjoy.
You see, they didn't need hundreds of thousands of programming, kiddoes. This was back in the days before entire networks devoted to cartoons and kids/family programming. Cartoons were (for the most part) reserved for airing on Saturday mornings, not 24/7. They were something special and bright and colorful (even in black and white) and a time when the kid of the household was in charge of the living room.
I digress here, because nowadays the kids have control of the entire house no matter the time of day or night...back on track Jeffy.
My point is, Saturday morning should be for watching cartoons.
Good cartoons.
Cartoons that were once theatrically released, then housed on television and now we find right here on the Internet.
Give yourself over for a lousy 20 minutes. Forget about that mortgage. Forget about that fight with your wife/husband. Forget about the home-pregnancy test you found in your daughter/wife/mothers bathroom trash. Watch a few good cartoons. THEN take on the week refreshed and replenished like when we were younguns.
"Mad" THE COMIC BOOK from 1954 continues onward with Harvey Kurtzman and the underrated John Severin's take on slang of the day with "Bop Jokes!".
As with all humor that's this linked with it's time, a lot of the jokes are dated, but that shouldn't keep you from enjoying Severin's great characters, layouts and timing.
Enjoy!
This little gem from 1954 couldn't help but remind me of a similar take on modern language from animation legend Tex Avery and a little theatrical short he did for MGM in 1951. I'm not saying Kurtzman lifted the idea, I think it's just the post-war folks becoming more self aware and humor taking a more self-effacing turn.
Today I begin the "Every Sunday" upload of a COMPLETE issue of "Nemo: the Classic Comics Library". Call it "Sunday Funnies" if you like, I probably will.
Feedback is welcome about the view ability of the scans, I'm playing with my Photo Shop options to reduce the file size but IN NO WAY want to reduce the resolution. Please let me know how it looks on your computer. I'll make adjustments accordingly.
You can see by the table of contents that, once again Nemo is chock-full of articles and features on everything you'd want, but in 1984 you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else...
And Richard Marschall rightfully puffs his chest and feels pride in this magazine. Truly a labor of love that must have hit all his creative expectations...
First up, an unpublished interview with the great master Hal Foster on all things, but mostly a great look at Prince Valiant.
Foster was a master story-teller and his drawings were amazing...his figures seem real and nto imagined, they're so solid...and in the days when he had an entire tabloid page to play on, his landscapes were breath-taking. It's great to hear him speak of it all first person.
"Fantasy in the Comics" this issue covered a pre-"Bringing Up Father" George McManus strip that shows Winsor McCay's influence on his style. Ironically enough, McCay's influence on his page layouts would come about more evidently when telling the tale of Maggie and Jiggs later.
These seem a little muddy, but Nemo even had the good foresight to re-print these as double page spreads, which I've "Photomerged" into single images. Another example of what would be wonderful to see in full 4-color.
Meh! Another article in the vein of the Mort Walker one in a previous issue. Interesting enough, if not slightly off-topic for the "Classic Comics Library".
I have very mixed feelings on Hanna-Barbera. Their earliest MGM "Tom & Jerry" cartoons were gorgeous to look at if not very funny. Their earliest TV work (Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, etc.) had great character designs and used the economy of television animation to great effect, thought he humor is extremely dated. Their late 1960's adventure cartoons were great fun "Jonny Quest" and "The Herculoids" standing head and shoulders above the rest, mostly in deference to the contributions of Doug Wildey and Alex Toth respectively. But for the most part their work is hack-y at best and their sub-par work only shines in comparison to studios like Ruby-Spears and Filmation.
On the plus side, they are a very important part of animation history. And someone like me should never criticize "off-topic" as I believe "all things cool" should be discussed anywhere and everywhere.
Enough of my jabbering. Here's Joe Barbera in his own words.
Part 5 of the Allen Saunders autobiography "Playwright for Paper Actors". The more I read this the more grateful I am to the folks at Nemo for giving this work an outlet. In the years before the Internet, it was not that easy to find a place to foster such things.
A brief but glorious look into life in the "King Features" bullpen of the 1930's. The opening page is worth a thousand words!
The best look into political cartoons I've seen in a longggggg time. Great to see a specific topic covered by so many great cartoonists and the space of 100 years (now 125) really gives perspective on it all.
Invaluable!
And finally a little teaser for what's to come in issue #10, next Sunday come see it all!
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