• Early Harrison Cady

    In the course of a seventy-year career, Harrison Walter Cady (1877-1970) was best-known as the artist of Thornton Burgess‘s (1874-1965) Peter Cottontail, and the Peter Rabbit comic strip (1920-1948). Cady illustrated Burgess‘s fictions for almost fifty years, including books, comic strips and a newspaper daily called Bedtime Stories. I am very fond of Cady‘s work.…

  • Gimme That Ole’ Time Misogyny

    Yes, it’s true. There have been a slew of “men’s adventure” magazines over the years, many of which promoted the domination, exploitation and punishment of the opposite sex. If you find this hard to believe, here is proof that these magazines really existed, produced for a large male audience anxious to buy them. Most are…

  • Art of the Fleischer Studio

    If you’ve seen the first Popeye, Betty Boop, Koko the Clown or early 1940s Superman cartoons, you’ve seen how good the Fleischer Studio (1929-1942) could be. They also made the full-length animated movies, Gulliver’s Travels (1939) and Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941). The Fleischer Studio was the creation of two brothers, Max (1883-1972) and…

  • Big Daddy Toth

    Here’s a genuine rarity. It’s a six-page story by all-time comic book genius Alex Toth (1928-2006). The weird part is that this was published in Big Daddy Roth Magazine #1 from October, 1964. For those not familiar, Big Daddy Roth, here’s a description from Wikipedia: “Ed “Big Daddy” Roth (March 4, 1932–April 4, 2001) was…

  • Mapbacks

    Until the 1930s, a published book was largely known as a hardback. Softcovers would occasionally appear, but they didn’t really get much attention until the 1930s. By the 1940s paperbacks were a huge industry, appearing not in book stores but in drug stores, candy stores, airports, groceries, etc. Initially they were twenty-five cents or less.…

  • Midcentury Ads

    This is a departure from the stuff I usually offer. I’m a big fan of midcentury modern design, especially in furnishings. A while ago I collected a group of ads and put them away. I’ve just re-discovered them and thought you might find them interesting. From 1956: From 1958: From 1952: From 1953: From 1957:…

  • Jiggs and Maggie

    As if George McManus‘s art isn’t enough to please, the story, the characters, the side characters are all done just right. I grabbed this from Jiggs and Maggie #14 from May, 1950. This story is from the comic strip Bringing Up Father.

  • Joe Kubert

    Joe Kubert (1916-2012) got his first job comics job as a teenager, quickly developed and was a professional comic book artist before he was out of his teens. He drew continuously until his death in 2012. He worked for DC Comics for about 30 years, drawing Sgt. Rock of Easy Company. He worked on many…

  • Real Screen Comics

    I guess the field of animation is still thriving, but the comic books that featured talking animal characters has shrunk significantly. There used to be a DC comic called Real Screen Comics, which featured the Fox and the Crow, originally created as characters in their own Screen Gems cartoons. These cartoons ran from 1941-1950. Real…

  • Illos by Lawrence

    Recently, I posted a piece on the ever-wonderful Virgil Finlay. I said he was the best pulp illustrator. I may have jumped the gun. Lawrence Sterne-Stevens (1884-1960) may have been just as good. It is, after all, subjective. Lawrence had an earlier corporate career as a designer and illustrator. He entered the pulp field in…