Sunday Funnies - a Retrospective, 2 of 5

Week two of Richard Marshall and Bill Blackbeard's "The Sunday Funnies" from 1978, this week celebrating the newspaper comics giants of the 1910's!  

As I tried to express last week, a good part of the fun of this publication was that it was printed FULL size as you would have read it in 1915 as a supplement in your Sunday paper.  Never-the-less, I trust the fun and enjoyment comes through, even in this humble blog.

This week our eyes are treated to the grand works of Winsor McCay ("Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend"), Rube Goldberg ("Boob McNutt"), Carl E. Schultze ("Foxy Grandpa"), Bud Fisher ("Mutt & Jeff"), George McManus ("Their Only Child"), Harold Knerr ("The Katzenjammer Kids"), James Swinnerton ("Little Jimmy") and some lesser-known, under appreciated but no less deserving, Raymond Crawford Ewer "Slim Jim") and Johnny Gruelle ("Mr. Twee Deedle").

Dig in kids.  Sunday is the most nutritious meal of the week.

Newt Sunday:  Those Roaring Twenties you're all heard about.

Talk to you soon!

Rube Goldberg - Nemo Annual #1 - part 2

My sharing of the 1985, "Nemo: the Classic Comics Library" Annual #1 (and only) continues, here at "Sunday Funnies".

The Annual focused on the great screw-ball comics of the past, a genre that's often passed over, and you'll wonder why more and more as, this chapter they focus on the work of the legendary Rube Goldberg.

Most folks who know of Goldberg know him for the wacky, needlessly complicated inventions he devised in comic form, but Rube was a cartoonist who produced for a long time, many different strips in many different formats.

Read on and enjoy and remember what I've said before...The National Cartoonists Society didn't name their highest award "The Rueben" after him for nothin'!

Talk to you soon.

Boob McNutt, Puck and Frank King - Nemo #24 - 2 of 2

Boob McNutt.

If I owned a candy bar company, I know what my best seller would be called.

Here's part 2 of "Nemo the Classic Comics Library" #24, chock full of Rube Goldberg's "Boob McNutt and lots more for your post-holdiday enjoyment.

Also included is a brief overview of 12 cartoonists who made "Puck" famous. Satirical social and political cartooning at it's best and a periodical that helped shape a nations sensibilities. Ryan Walker, Art Young, Robert Minor, Maurice Becker, Boardman Robinson, Clive Weed, John Sloan, George Bellows, Kenneth Russell Chamberlain, William Gropper, Jacob Burck and Fred Ellis...I salute you!

I love this "How to Be a Comic Artist" 2 pager by "Gasoline Alley" creator Frank King. Funny stuff!

Don't worry, Kiddoes...there's still more to come...

I'm feeling a bit peckish...I think I'll go grab a couple Boob McNutts.

Talk to you soon.

The Inventiveness of Rube Goldberg - Nemo #24 - 1 of 2

Sunday Funnies time and more from "Nemo the Classic Comics Library". I hope you have your Christmas errands done, this one's a good sit down and languish in issue!


Rube Goldberg has always fallen just outside "newspaper comic stripper" for me, mainly because I always knew him more by reputation than by a specific body of strip work. A wonderfully diverse and prolific cartoonist, it seems he worked in every single aspect of newspaper cartooning, and not only strip work.

Nemo #24 takes an in-depth look at all phases of his work. This IS the man after all, for whom the highest honor in cartooning "The Rueben Award" was named for. He's much more than just crazy inventions.

Next Sunday I'll share the second half of this issue and more of Goldberg, including a nice sampling of his under-exposed strip, "Boob McNutt". Great title. Funny strip.

Talk to you soon.