A Few More Kinda Little Golden Books!

A few more fond memories from my stash of children's books.  You have to take them out and sun them every 45 or 35 years.

Talk to you soon.

Other Little Golden Type Books!

Last Sunday I posted a sheaf of eye candy in the form of my childhood collection of Little Golden Books, I hope you all dug on them even half as much as I have for the last 49 years.

This week I'll drop some more Western Publishing deliciousness on you from my collection of Whitman Tell-A-Tale books.  Western published under a slew of banners, not just limited to the children's book market, they also published those dell, Gold Key and Whitman comic books so many of us remember from our past, and probably all manner of 4 color printing for all manner of other folks besides themselves.  The older I get the less interested I am and more unapologetic I am for my ignorance of the business side of this stuff.  The more important part of it all is the art and happiness that came out of it all.

These were intended with the youngest of readers to hold in their tiny hands...measuring only 5.5" x 6.5" approx. in size, they were perfect for tiny hands to hold and read for hours with the pictures inviting you in so the words could become your friends. 

"ABC a Tale of a Sale" is the story of a guy selling off his entire zoo full of animals, and using their distinctive tails as a way of keeping inventory...colorful stuff!

I read this one till my eyes turned blue...love the art style and dig the story of a huge family who's grandparents come to visit and the youngest kid does his best to grab their attention.  I didn't just re-read this for this description...I didn't have tom it's ingrained in my brain from childhood.

This one I may need a refresher on...but I remember digging the cartoony style!

This was NOT from my toddler years, but rather bought in my teenage years,  The mid to late '70's in a town with only 2 television stations made for a desert climate of trying to get ahold of classic cartoon characters to look at...so I used to sneak a few of these in to drink up.

This WAS from my kiddie-hood.  Love the painted versions of our favorite ducks.

Check out the color pallette on this bad boy.  All those "hot" colors, yet it never gave me the angst that those colors are supposed to represent...somehow they were warm and inviting and really helped me into the world of the writer!

I don't remember the Hoppity Hooper show, though I am a gigantic fan of Jay Ward!  My only real exposure to this group of characters is this book.  The other day I went ahead and ordered a public domain DVD off of Amazon that has a few of these cartoons on it...I await with bated breath!

I always loved the artwork in this one as well.  Disturbing little story here though, it's a bout a hungry lion and every time he meets another animal (who obviously don't want to be dinner) they try and lead him to somebody else he can eat.  By the end, they all get loaded up on a boat to be taken to a "civilized" county where they live out their days in a zoo.  Probably one which won't be re-printed in 2012.

I don't think I ever heard the legend of Johnny Appleseed from anyone other than this book and the Disney cartoon.  Yet it's as ingrained an American legend/folk tale as any I'd heard every day of my life.  Powerful stuff, these little Tell-A-Tale books.

Again..being born in 1963, my memory of these great TV cartoon character is a little fuzzy, so this is my strongest memory (until later in life when te source material became available to me) of Magilla and Mr. Peebles.  O.G. did not appear :)

This cover makes me calm.  Candy and kittens...how centered in your being with happiness can you get?

Another one that beat the cartoon to my brain.  Those HB character designs made it verrrrrrrry apparent that these guys were nothing but fun, though!

These next guys I knew...I should have known by the similarities in characterizations between these books and Dell comics, that there was a connection.

Trains were cool then.  Trains are cool now.

Argue with any 5 years old boy...I dare you.

Thin Arnold was a pretty regular Jeffy bedtime story read, too.   But I got fat anyway.

Another late addition to my collection.  Like the Bugs Bunny book above, I've only had this one for a little over 35 years.

Great cover...and even as a toddler I knew Wally Cox' voice.  Loved it then, loved it now.

Just argue with any 5 year old.  :)

The colors in some of these are just amazing.  They set mood, they clarify images...and this from a guy who knows diddly about color.  These guys were great!!!

I could read this one to my mom before I was supposedly old enough to read.  Had this down by the age of 4...pre-Kindergarten.  

Laugh if you will, I'm puttin' that on my resume!

Have a great Sunday!

Talk to you soon.

Uncle Jeffy's Sketchbook! - 8-3-12

Last peek at my sketchbook for the week.  I flipped back to the beginning (from before I put it away, not getting how sketchbooks work, probably back in 2008-9)

I think my concept here on page 1, was to make the sketchbook an anthropological notebook written in the 1920's and 30's by the worlds dumbest explorer.  See here the hilarity as he discovers an elephant (not knowing that they'd already been discovered) and miscategorizes it as an insect.  Hilarity ensues?

Then I think I got the concept of doing a strip featuring EVERY comic and cartoon character EVER created.  Not thinking about the logistical nightmare of telling an understandable story with 8 million characters, I just thought it would be cool to see.  I kind of did that any way (and will again) with my "A 'Slight' History of Golden Age Comic Book Super Heroes" thingy I do here from time to time.

Here's me attempting (and liking) my take on the Duck's (Donald and Daffy) and then being thwarted by that dang hard-to-draw-for-me-anyway, Mickey Mouse.

My horrible Mickey meeting Daffy Duck, Superman and Ko-Ko the Clown at what ever event I imagined them all meeting at.  Batman and The Yellow Kid look on.

You see, I'd never really drawn other peoples characters before.  I have always (from a very young age) known that it's the cartoonists style that makes the feature cool, the character comes second.  Jack Cole's Plastic Man is awesome.  Joe Staton (who is extremely talented in his own rigth) doing Plastic Man was a bad take on a character and missed the point.  So at 45-6 years old, I was trying to see if I could even draw them, and have them be recognized.

Here's a sketch of me looking bad-ass with my posse:  Goofy, Donald, Mickey, A horrible Bugs Bunny, the Golden Age Green Lantern and being evesdropped on by a very Bob Clampett-y Tweety Pie and a sloppy Sylvester.  Over all a decent Mickey there.

Which brings us back to the present as I doodle myself some more.

Sketching trying to find a new avatar for facebook and Twitter and the like.

Not the way Van Gogh spent his time...but I am a cartoonist...and that's a wonderful thing.

Thanks for sifting through this with me this week.

Talk to you soon.

"I'll Git You, Yuh Long Eared Galloot"

Born in 1906, Isadore "Friz" Freleng would have been 103 years old today.


Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Friz grew up with a penchant for drawing. One day in the mid-1920's he answered an ad for an errand boy/guy Friday in a beginning cartoon studio downtown. Errand boy meant they wanted cheap artists, and Friz knew it. That studio was "Laugh-O-Grams", Walt Disney's new company.


Friz got there not long before the studio picked up and moved itself to Hollywood. Fellow animators Ub Iwerks, Rudoph Ising and Hugh Harman coaxed Friz to go along, but he thought he'd wait it out close to home until he saw how it panned out. It panned out pretty good, the studio was producing it's "Alice in Cartoonland" shorts and Friz eventually moved west and joined up.

Pictured above are (left to right) Friz Freleng, Walker Harman, Walt Disney, Lois Hardwick (the last of 4 girls to play "Alice"), Rudolph Ising, Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman and Roy Disney.


At one point a lot of Walt's artists defected. There were lots of different reasons, we won't go into them all here. Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising borrowed some money to make a pilot film for their own series of cartoons, Friz came along to help. That pilot was "Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid", and when it was completed Harman and Ising shopped it around to producers and a film contract. It was eventually sold to Warner Brothers and proposed as the character to launch it's animated short subject department. A new film was made, once again Friz on board, and "Looney Tunes" was born.

Above is a still from the very first "Looney Tune", "Sinking in the Bathtub".


Friz stayed on as an animator at Warner's for a couple years, then accepted a raise in pay at a position at MGM as Fred Quimby started up their animation division. His time at MGM was an unhappy one though, and he was coaxed back to Warner's as Harman & Ising were let go over financial differences and Leon Schlesinger took over production of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. He was asked to finish and fix an unfinished cartoon left behind and proved so good, he was promoted to director. And there he stayed for 30 more years.


He (along with Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Bob Clampett) was one of the directors to develop the character of Bugs Bunny, as well as Daffy Duck and Porky Pig.

Friz had a musical background and even timed his cartoons on music sheets using the bars to time out the gags in his cartoons, instead of the standard filmmakers exposure sheets. Watch a Friz cartoon and every action, reaction, pause, expression, etc., works in rhythmic sync with Carl Stallings orchestrations.


He also was the one to team up Tweety Pie and Sylvester for the first time. Both were existing characters who had appeared solo, and Friz saw the magic of pairing the two.


Friz didn't much care for the character of Elmer Fudd. He saw this dim bulb as no match against the quick wit of Bugs, so he created Yosemite Sam. In my opinion, one of the great cartoon characters of all time. He also bears a slight resemblance to Friz himself, with his short stature and red hair...and from folks who knew him, the temper was about the same as Friz's too.

Friz in later years, paired Sylvester with Speedy Gonzales, and even created Speedy's cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez.


After Warners closed their cartoon studio in 1963, producer David Depatie partnered up with Friz to form Depatie-Freleng. One of their first commissions was to create an opening animation sequence for a Peter Sellers movie coming out.



Friz won an academy award for the opening. One of four won throughout his career.

Thanks Friz. We wish that wasn't all folks.