From the Dick Buchanan Files: William Steig Gag Cartoons 1946 - 1965

The terrific thing about seeing a collection of gag cartoons like this is that they are usually unseen since their initial publication. These aren't just the top cartoons that have been reprinted and reprinted over the years. And it's a reminder as well that most of the major magazines had gag cartoons.

Here are fifteen gag cartoons by the great William Steig. All have been lovingly clipped, scanned and cleaned up by Dick Buchanan. My thanks to you and -- take it away, Dick:


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WILLIAM STEIG GAG CARTOONS
1946 – 1965


William Steig was a cartoonist and sculptor as well as a renowned children’s books author and illustrator. He sold his first carton to Judge in 1930, soon followed by his first sale to The New Yorker. Over the next 73 years The New Yorker would publish 1600 of his drawings and 121 covers—that’s more than two years of covers.


Today Steig is perhaps best known as the author and illustrator of series of books for children. His Sylvester and the Magic Pebble was awarded the Caldecott Medal. It was followed by Abel’s Island, Doctor De Soto and many more, including Shrek! They are all marvelous books for children and adults alike.


These are William Steig gag cartoons from the era when he was hailed as “The King of Cartoons.” It’s a sampling of his drawings from Collier’s and Look Magazine from 1946 to 1965 . . .




1. Collier’s February 16, 1946.

2. Collier’s February 16, 1946.

3. Collier’s August 14, 1948.

4. Collier’s May 14, 1949.

5. Collier’s December 31, 1949.

6. Collier’s March 11, 1950.

7. Collier’s July 22, 1950.

8. Collier’s August 19, 1950.

9. Collier’s May 11, 1956.

10. Look February 3, 1959.

11. Look February 17, 1959.

12. Look September 15, 1959.

13. Look May 10,1963.

14. Look January 15, 1963.

15. Look August 10, 1965.

-- This is an edited version of a blog entry dated January 11, 2018.

BBC Archive: Raymond Briggs Talks About His Graphic Novel "When the Wind Blows" (1983)

 

When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs was first published as a graphic novel in 1982. It's "known for its critiques against government issued preparations for nuclear war. Utilizing a cartoonish design, this graphic novel follows a retired couple, Jim and Hilda Bloggs, and their journey through surviving a nuclear attack on Britain launched by the Soviet Union. The novel was later adapted for different entertainment types including an animated film, radio play, and stage play" - Wikipedia.

Here's Mr. Briggs, in 1983, talking to the BBC about the book and its aims. It was not a "protest book," says Briggs, but a "human story." The short video includes some peeks at his studio, as well as a look at the recording of the book as a radio play starring Peter Sallis and Brenda Bruce. It was just released on the BBC Archive channel. 

 

Complete Guide To Cartooning by Gene Byrnes (1948)

 

The Complete Guide to Cartooning by Gene Byrnes is available at Archive.org, and do take a look at the Animation Resources site, which has hi res scans and more detail about this how to cartoon book, which features "157 Outstanding Artists."

The author, Gene Byrnes (1889 - 1974), created the long running Reg'lar Fellers syndicated comic strip (1917 - 1949). He had planned a career in sports, but broke his leg during a wrestling match. While convalescing, he copied cartoons by Tad Dorgan. Then he took the Landon Course. After meeting Winsor McCay, he applied for and received a position as sports cartoonist at the New York Telegram on his recommendation.

He drew a couple of cartoon features at the Telegram, with names like Things That Never Happen, Wise Awake Willie and It's A Great Life If You Don't Weaken. That last one featured a couple of the kid characters that would star in Reg'lar Fellers. 

Via Wikipedia:

"His humorous look at suburban children (who nevertheless spoke like New York street kids) was syndicated from 1917 to 1949.

" ... In 1923, he was interviewed by Helen Hilliard of The Oakland Tribune:

"I sat and watched Gene Byrnes draw a cartoon of himself for me. And I marveled as I watched. How anybody could sit down off-hand, take up pencil and paper, and start right off on a picture. When I had asked him for a photograph, he had looked rather dubious. He had his doubts if he had any pictures of himself. 'But,' he continued, 'I can make that all right.' A soft drawing pencil appeared magically in his fingers, and deftly he began to trace various figures on a square of drawing paper. As I looked on the lines gradually began to take shape until I could see the faint resemblance to a man. The pencil suddenly disappeared and its place was taken by a pen. This he dipped in India ink and with big swift strokes blotted out the penciled lines with streaks of heavy black. A small paint brush put on the finishing touches. And lo and behold! there was the picture all finished, showing Gene Byrnes, cartoonist, with two Reg’lar Fellers on the top of his desk."

His Complete Guide to Cartooning was influential on a generation of comic artists, including Ralph Bakshi.

Below are some sample images. 

 

Video: Walt Kelly's "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us"

On Earth Day, which was first established on April 22, 1970, Walt Kelly drew this famous drawing, which became a print, above. 

 

He also made a short movie about the topic. Nancy Beiman, who met and became friends with Walt Kelly's wife, Selby, posted this on her Facebook page on April 22, 2021. Here's Nancy and then a link to the short film: 

"In 1970, for the first Earth Day, Walt Kelly released a 12 minute animated short film with his wife Selby Kelly called WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US. I saw it in our Environmental Science class in high school. Kelly's animation is stunning. He was one of the all time greats. Selby was art director and her son Scott Daley wrote the final music.

 

"In 1979 I started working for Zander's Animation Parlour in New York. I was 21 years old. One day our production manager told me that one of the assistants wanted to speak to me. I figured that they wanted to complain. No. The assistant was Selby Kelly, and she wanted to know who this young female animator was.

 

"We became friends. One day Selby said casually, 'Kelly and I made a film together. Would you like to see it?' (She always called him Kelly).

 

"Of course I would love to see the film again, I replied. I had a 16mm projector in my apartment and invited Selby for dinner and the screening. I saw something odd about the reel immediately. WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY was only 12 minutes long, yet this reel was a full 30 minutes (Before digital media we could measure the length of film by how much space it took up on a reel.) 

 

"I checked the first 30 feet for bad splices (another quaint custom.) 'There seem to be a lot of them,' I remarked.

 

"'Oh, this is the work picture. There are no copies,' Selby replied. My guts turned to ice. I checked the entire reel. I had to make one new splice.

 

Then I threaded up the projector and worried...but I had nothing to worry about. But I sure had something to look at.

 

"This was not the same film. Not at all. It was a Leica reel or story reel with filmed storyboards and Kelly reading the script, and a 'needle drop' track. (canned temp music) And it was twice as long because it had a horrific dream sequence and decidedly downbeat ending.

 

"Walt Kelly could not get anyone to produce this version. No TV studio in the USA, then or now, would have produced it. He got backing from a NGO for a 12 minute version, cut out the horror sequence and gave it an upbeat ending. The 12 minute version still exists, but not on YouTube.

In 1991 I was working for Warner Brothers New York. Selby was planning to move West and leave the city.

 

"I contacted producer Greg Ford and said 'We have to transfer this to tape before it disappears forever.'

 

"Greg did this and gave the Kelly family the Beta tape. 

 

"They released the film on VHS in 1992. Here it is.

 

"A word about the soundtrack: Kelly couldn't afford a session director. So the soundman in the booth never told him when to cut or do a retake. 'He read the script cold, and was getting madder and madder, because he wanted the man to tell him when he made a mistake,' Selby told me. (Kelly was a big bear of a man who took absolutely no crap from anyone and he obviously terrified the sound man.) Kelly read the entire script in one take. He did indeed make mistakes, but kept on going. This is what a good animation story pitch man does. I was amazed by how effortlessly Kelly switches between character voices.

 

"And this is the only recorded example of a Golden Age Disney Studio Story man doing a pitch.

Watch it. The shorter film has some dialogue cuts that help it, and Kelly made some lovely layouts that 'plus' the visuals. But this film is the more powerful version. It pulls no punches.

 

"There is no happy ending."

 

 

EDIT: The YouTube version, which I previously posted, has been pulled, but here's a 13 minute version from Archive.org: 

 

 Link to the longer "Leica Version" here.

- This is an edited version of a blog entry from April 22, 2021.

No More Ads On the Blog

 

A couple of weeks ago, I set up "Google AdSense," an app the puts ads on the blog. I asked on social media what people thought.

"After 17 years, I put ads over on my blog. I’m worried that this is such a distraction that it annoys people.

"Is it annoying? Do so many sites have ads anyway that you don’t notice? Are blogs soooooo 1990s that who cares really? Link in bio.

"Comments and funny remarks welcome."

And got some comments:

"The density of ads made it seem like they were making up for lost time."

"That interstitial ad after the first cartoon had me worried the there would one every three images or so. But that first one was the only one. I can live with that, and the sidebars."

"The ads don’t bother me. I really like your blog. It has so many cartoons and cartoonists I haven’t heard of and some of my favorites. It is lots of fun."

"I’m pretty used to ads by now so they don’t bother me."

"Blogs may be from the turn of the century but they are still fun to read."

"100% totally annoying. Now, if they were ads for cartooning books and supplies, maybe not so much."

"Late to the party but - yes. Just found you on Instagram, Decided to go to your blog...and then poof! Huge ad with eyes in a tree?! And then if you wait a second ...it covers the whole top of your blog and covers your name bar at the top. I didn't even look at what you had to say- I just backed out of it all so that I could get away from the ads."

Yesterday, I shut down the ads on the blog. It's not just a visual disruption. Google wanted a copy of my driver’s license or passport — and I ain’t gonna give ‘em that. Ugh.

From the Dick Buchanan Files: Henry Boltinoff

There is a wall between the world of comic books and the world of magazine cartoons. Certain people draw comic books, certain others draw single panel cartoons. Almost never the twain. One exception is Harry Lampert, who created the golden age Flash character for DC Comics (Then called National Periodical Publications.) and, when the comic book business took a hit in the 1950s, he began drawing gag cartoons. And there's another exception. Someone who did comic books and magazine cartoons and newspaper panels all at the same time. That's Henry Boltinoff. 

Dick Buchanan shares some biographical information about this prolific cartoonist and, of course, his magazine cartoons. Take it away, Dick!


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HENRY BOLTINOFF
(1914 – 2001)

Boltinoff was one cartoonist who actually looked like a cartoon character. This self-portrait is from Best Cartoons of the Year 1947, Crown Publishers, New York.


Henry Boltinoff was a terrific cartoonist whose work in appeared newspapers, magazines and comic books. He was born in New York City and attended high school with future cartoonists Ben Roth and George Wolfe.

Boltinoff began his career as a teenager, drawing for the theater section of the New York American. In the late 1930’s, due to the encouragement of Wolfe and Roth, he began drawing magazine gag cartoons. In the early 1940’s he was married and about to become a father. Knowing a freelance career was a precarious one, he decided to find regular work. He found it with National Periodicals, drawing full page and half page fillers for their comic books. The first filler was Dover & Clover, which appeared in the November, 1943 edition of More Fun Comics. An astounding number of features followed. Casey the Cop, Cora the Carhop, Varsity Vic, Lefty Looie, Abdul the Fire Eater, Professor Eureka, Little Pete, Sagebrush Sam, and Tricksy the World's Greatest Stunt Man are but a few of the features which amused DC comic book readers over the years. 

While toiling for DC Boltinoff continued to draw gag cartoons for both magazines and newspapers. He was a regular contributor to newspaper syndicated gag panels This and That (George Adams Syndicate) Laff-A-Day (King Features) and This Funny World (McNaught). His cartoons appeared in most of the day’s leading publications, The Saturday Evening Post, Look, Collier’s, This Week, American Legion Magazine, Ladies Home Journal, Judge, Look, Boys Life and 1000 Jokes Magazine. 

In 1960 Boltinoff began drawing the one-panel gag cartoon series “Stoker the Broker” which appeared on the financial pages of various economical publications, syndicated by Columbia Features and the Washington Star Syndicate. Boltinoff perhaps is best remembered for the syndicated feature Hocus Pocus, a clever strip syndicated by King Features, featuring two similar panels. Readers were challenged to find a least six differences. In 1981, he was the recipient of the National Cartoonists Society’s Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award.

Here is a teensy-tiny collection of some of Henry Boltinoff’s many magazine gag cartoons. Take a look . . .

 

1.  Collier’s  October 11, 1941.

 

2.  Collier’s  August 14, 1943.

 

3.  American Magazine  November, 1944.

 

4.  Collier’s  February 26, 1944.

 

5.  The Saturday Evening Post  August 25, 1945.

 

6.  Liberty  August 18, 1945.

 

7.  Collier’s  July 20, 1946.

 

8.  Collier’s  October 5, 1946.

 

9.  Liberty October, 1947.

 

10.  American Legion Magazine  January, 1948.

  

 

11.  American Magazine  October, 1949.

 

12.  The Saturday Evening Post  May 14, 1949.

 

13.  Collier’s  June 17, 1950.

 

14.  Collier’s  August 12, 1950.

 

15.  The Saturday Evening Post  December 20, 1952.

 

16.  The Saturday Evening Post  November 21, 1953.

 

17.  The Saturday Evening Post  July 10, 1954.

 

18.  The Saturday Evening Post  December 25, 1954.

 

19.  Look Magazine  December 13, 1955.

 

20.  Collier’s  November 9, 1956.

 

Related:

Henry Boltinoff: Gag Man to DC Comics