I've heard that geologists believe there were at least two great extinctions on Earth, one caused by an asteroid collision and the other by a volcano. I believe I can point to a third one, one that decimated funny cartoonists in the late 1920s and early 30s.Don't believe me? Look at Lantz's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (above) which I assume is close to the design Disney used when he invented the character in the 20s. It's a bit flat but it has guts and looks like it can sustain comedy. I can imagine this guy putting a hot iron in his girlfriend's underpants.
Here's (above) the same character years down the line. It's overdrawn, grotesque and definitely not funny. I can't even imagine pulling off a gag with a character like this. John thinks the studio mindlessly shot itself in the foot by attempting to copy Disney. Steve Worth thinks Lantz might have been a victim of his own success. Maybe he had so much work to get out that he had to hire a lot of unfunny people. 
Here's (above) another version which is cuter and more appealing. You can do some gags with a character like this but only some. The design emphasizes charcter and dimensional animation possibilities, not comedy. This was the era of the Great Extinction. If you were funny and worked at one of the big cartoon studios then you probably kept your jokes to yourself... that is, until Tex and Clampett came along. 
Print media underwent a similar extinction. Opper (above) was doing funny cartoons in 1903. Somewhere in the 20s a lot of the Opper-types were weeded out and a new species replaced them (below)...
...the designers! One of the best designers was George McManus (that's his strip above). His stuff is beautifully drawn but it's not exactly funny. Mc Manus could be hilarious when he wanted to be but during The Great Extinction funny artists had to keep a low profile. Exceptions can be found: Milt Gross, Segar, Goldberg and De Beck; nevertheless, open any newspaper cartoon anthology from this period and you'll have to look hard for the practitioners of funny.
Eventually the writers (including artist/writers) took over. Little Orphan Annie (above) had so much dialogue that the charcters must have become stoop-shouldered. Newspaper strips of this era were READ, just like a novel. Eventually a counter-revolution was mounted but that's another story. The Great Extinction in print media raged for decades and it's still with us, even today.
The top Oswald is definitely the best looking one, that second one down is downright grotesque! Oh, by the way, do you know of any funny/popular newspaper comic strips from the 1950s? I need one as part of a cartoon I'm working on and you seem to be an expert about these things.
ReplyDeleteThat second Oswald could give me nightmares!
ReplyDeleteApple: Funny in the 50s? Try Al Capp's "L'il Abner" or his "Fearless Fodstick."
ReplyDeleteL'il Abner, I can't believe I forgot all about that one! Thanks for the help Eddie, and keep up the great work with your blog, I enjoy it every day.
ReplyDeleteThere is a wordless comic book (manga) produced in Japan called Gon. It is well drawn (although the only cartoony character is the protagonist and it's not like the Oswald original design but funny nonetheless) but extremely entertaining nonetheless. What I like about it is the fact it's not even drawn in the traditional manga style, just a cartoony dinosaur in a realistic drawn world w/ no words, therefore anyone can browse through it and no translation is needed. Here's a sample of the splash page:
ReplyDeletehttp://manaworld.free.fr/imgs/fonds/gon.jpg
You can get it on Amazon too:
http://www.amazon.com/Gon-Introducing-Dinosaur-Paradox-Fiction/dp/1563897490/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7134286-7083017?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173813284&sr=8-1
Note: the only words are on the cover of the book and that's the title! :) The artform is alive, Eddie you just got to know where to look.
Darn long Amazon links:
ReplyDeletewww.amazon.com
in search engine, type "Gon"
Here is a Li'l Abner orignal comic strip I found on E-bay. I won it. They sure did draw big for their comics in those days.
ReplyDeleteLink:
http://banjobeaver.blogspot.com/
The Only funny comic I've seen in News Papers in recent years was: The Far Side ( Gary Larson).
ReplyDeleteA terrible artist but FUNNY as hell! Everything else seems to be a waste of ink!
It was all silly symphonies fault!
ReplyDeleteWhen Walt started making that crap (and it was successful), almost everyone tried to copy their shtick and it ruined them.
That second Oswald is simply macabre! but Eddie, what about the great extinction of cartoons period in the late 60s-early 70s?? Wouldn't that be more destructive overall?
ReplyDeleteNewspapers have some good ones today, Monty is really good I think, Get Fuzzy isn't bad. ...I think that's it. I get the Houston Chronicle, to which out-of-towners always comment has a lot of comics(four gigantic pages of 'em); and if that's true then the comics page is worse off than the Church, in its most perverse state it's ever been. I don't think it's possible to overstate just how bad the comics are. Mother Goose & Grimm is so bad it's actually infuriating.
Thus, I share with you: How to explain marmaduke.
http://marmadukeexplained.blogspot.com
it's hilarious.
Mr. Worsham: I think I'll get that Gon, it looks great! I've been looking for a good new manga, having poured over my (original)Dragonball and FLCL enough already. I'd say I've looked over my Osamu Tezuka books too much, but that's simply not possible.
I remember how angry you got as we watched those cartoons and they slowly started to deteriorate (except for that Detective one with the talking baby worm). They all did get really bland really fast. So strange. But jeese, I watched some of the first ones again yesterday, and they're still really funny.
ReplyDeleteThe Hays Office Production Code of 1930 enumerated three "General Principles":
ReplyDelete1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
Specific restrictions were spelled out as "Particular Applications" of these principles:
* Nudity and suggestive dances were prohibited.
* The ridicule of religion was forbidden, and ministers of religion were not to be represented as comic characters or villains.
* The depiction of illegal drug use was forbidden, as well as the use of liquor, "when not required by the plot or for proper characterization".
* Methods of crime (e.g. safe-cracking, arson, smuggling) were not to be explicitly presented.
* References to "sex perversion" (such as homosexuality) and venereal disease were forbidden, as were depictions of childbirth.
* The language section banned various words and phrases that were considered to be offensive.
* Murder scenes had to be filmed in a way that would discourage imitations in real life, and brutal killings could not be shown in detail. "Revenge in modern times" was not to be justified.
* The sanctity of marriage and the home had to be upheld. "Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing." Adultery and illicit sex, although recognized as sometimes necessary to the plot, could not be explicit or justified and were not supposed to be presented as an attractive option.
* Portrayals of miscegenation were forbidden.
* "Scenes of Passion" were not to be introduced when not essential to the plot. "Excessive and lustful kissing" was to be avoided, along with any other treatment that might "stimulate the lower and baser element."
* The flag of the United States was to be treated respectfully, and the people and history of other nations were to be presented "fairly".
* "Vulgarity," defined as "low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects" must be treated within the "subject to the dictates of good taste". Capital punishment, "third-degree methods", cruelty to children and animals, prostitution and surgical operations were to be handled with similar sensitivity.
The motion picture industry really started rigidly enforcing it in 1934.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI seen an interview of Friz Freleng saying everyone was trying to copy Walt back then. Of corse he would have said that because he helped make Oswald cartoons. Walt gave him his first gig.
ReplyDeleteBut,why did everyone try to copy Walt for? It looked like he was formulating cartoons back before everyone was formulating cartoons.
Were they like Leon, they didn't know what they had till they had sold out? Like many cartoon out there now.
Quality dropped, they didn't care as long as the money came in. Many possibilities could have happened.
I'm just guessing here.
I recently bought some early Lantz Oswald cartoons. I didn't particularly find any of them to be funny -- at least none of them made me laugh out loud. In fact, no cartoon from the early thirties makes me laugh. It isn't until the late 30's at Warners that cartoons show some true humor for me. (Such as Porky in Wackyland, Thugs With Dirty Mugs, She Was An Accrobats Daughter, and Porky's Romance, for example.)
ReplyDeleteWhat I do find interesting in the early 30's Lantz cartoons is the weird, rubbery animation of Bill Nolan and some of the surrealistic gags. (Same thing goes for the Fleischer cartoons.)
>>But,why did everyone try to copy Walt for? It looked like he was formulating cartoons back before everyone was formulating cartoons.
ReplyDeleteWere they like Leon, they didn't know what they had till they had sold out? Like many cartoon out there now.
Quality dropped, they didn't care as long as the money came in. Many possibilities could have happened.
I'm just guessing here.
Abwinegar,
Most of the other studios were run by people who had no interest in cartoons. The studios only needed product for their package deals. The cartoons were produced as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Say what you will about Disney, he at least cared enough to try and improve the quality of his cartoons. It's true he didn't go for the raucous and surrealistic humor of the cartoons of the 20's and early 30's (his cartoons were better at pathos than humor), and in trying to create better animation he may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. But without the great strides Disney's artists made in the late 30's you wouldn't have the great animation in the Warner's and MGM cartoons of the 40's.
Disney's cartoons of the 30's brought critical acclaim and awards as well as being successful. The other studio heads wanted a piece of that. In the thirties there was a great effort to reproduce what Disney had accomplished. Van Beuren hired Burt Gillett (the man who directed The Three Little Pigs) to run his studio, and MGM made a deal with Ub Iwerks (one of Walt's most important animators at the time) to release cartoons. Harman and Ising tried to beat Walt at his own game and blatantly copied the Disney formula at both Warners and MGM. Their cartoons were slick, but soulless.The imitators were never as good as the original.
My theory is it comes down to what type of humor is running the operation. Some of the types I consider distinct include absurdism (the character has a WTF moment, and it is funny), sarcasm (the character expresses bitterness and anger through a wry or forced smile), scapegoat (this is the real "sick" humor), wit (Dorothy Parker and James Thurber are two masters) and various others.
ReplyDeleteYou can drive humor by juxtaposing sensibilities; for example, Charles Addams' famous cartoons forcing macabre against straight with the result that straight began to look twisted.
I would like to know what veterans like John K. and Eddie have to say about my proposal that it is the sense of humor of the person in-between the cartoonist (e.g., John walking in with samples) and the fatcat at the big mahogany desk that tells most about whether a decent proposal will sink.
The various Oswalds, from raffish to saccharine, seem to me to reflect the shifting winds of humor types as various people moved in and out of controlling him.
Eddie, thank you for a valuable essay today. I will redouble my efforts to keep the characters I develop versatile in their humor potential.
J.J.hunsecker,
ReplyDeleteThank you. But, why did they have to make a formula? For people to understand cartoons of the 20's and 30's?
I thought they where just for entertainment. There wasn't a lot of televisons in homes and they went to the theatres on weekends. I was wondering why they didn't experiment more with animation.
My great grandmother told me about the depression and going to the theaters was a way for people to get away from their problems.
She remembered people laughing out loud at these cartoons. Because they didn't see stuff like that everyday.
SCartoonist: True, sometimes the lieutenants are more intolerant than the generals. Sometimes it's hard to know who to blame. If we do a good job of circulating the good cartoons and if everyone with influence has seen them, then at least we'll all have common references and that's bound to help.
ReplyDeletePersonally I can't stand a lot of reading in a comic book, or strip. I don't "read" a visual media to read a novel. Same reason I don't like cartoons where the character explains what they are doing. There are a few comic book artists I really like, one being Stan Sakai. Even though sometimes there can be wordy portions, the parts I really enjoy is when there is panel after panel of wordless drawing that tell a story though the visuals. A reason I like Enrico Casarosa's book The Adventures of Mia, stretches where the visual tells the story better than any narration boxes could.
ReplyDeleteFilm as a visual medium died with the introduction of "talkies". I saw the 1925 Ben Hur a few weeks back with full symphony. I enjoyed that movie as much as any "talkie" I have seen in recent years. I think all the text panels could have fit on a page or two of paper.
Now I must go off and find me some old Oswald.
Great post Eddie!
ReplyDeleteMaybe the last few existing cartoonists should get an island and breed like crazy.
>>But, why did they have to make a formula? For people to understand cartoons of the 20's and 30's?
ReplyDeleteAbwinegar,
I'm not sure what you mean. Studios didn't have to follow a formula, they chose to do so because they thought it was the easy route to success.
Sometimes it has to do with the individuals involved in the making of the cartoons. For instance, the white "cute" version of Oswald followed the departure of Bill Nolan from Lantz's studio. (And Avery was gone by then too.) The redesignt was Lantz's idea. Obviously it was people like Nolan and Avery who were responsible for the humor in the early Oswalds, not Lantz himself even though it was his studio. Lantz must have thought he was keeping up with Disney by changiing Oswald into a blander rabbit, with more "realistic" features.
J.J.hunsecker,
ReplyDeleteOk, I see now. I was confused on why they did that. I was thinking, why fix something that wasn't broke. They broke it on purpose to make money. To sell out.
>Maybe the last few existing cartoonists should get an island and breed like crazy.
ReplyDeleteJohn, you're only saying that because you know there's a 5:1 ratio of girls to guys!
Just kidding!
John, you're only saying that because you know there's a 5:1 ratio of girls to guys!
ReplyDeleteNOW you tell me! >:^( I knew I should have gone into welding.
Be like most cartoonist fans -- blame everybody!
ReplyDeleteOurs has been and always will be a medium for people carrying a certain rare gene, and the rest of the world has NBA, knitting, and other distractions.
>Great post Eddie!
ReplyDelete>Maybe the last few existing >cartoonists should get an island and >breed like crazy.
John,
It sounds like your proposing a new reality tv pilot there. It would be a cross between "Survivor, Temptation Island," where the cartoonists not only breed, but look for all the lost cartoon memorabilia and hone their survival skills by trying to out-draw each other. I LIKE IT! XD