WHEN THE SUNDAY FUNNIES ACTUALLY WERE FUNNY

Here's Rudolph Dirks' "Katzenjammer Kids" from 1902! Click to enlarge. This is better than anything in the funnies now and it's more than a hundred years old! Good Grief! Where did we go astray!?

I love the spacious layouts. Having room to breathe makes the action funnier somehow.

How about an Alphonse & Gaston page (above) from 1904? The writing isn't exactly Hamlet but it doesn't impede the graphics like most TV writing these days. .

Here's (above) a George McManus page from 1906. Once again, the story isn't much but it enables funny, beautiful layouts and that's no small thing.

STAGE DESIGN

This is too big a subject to cover in one post but I can still put up some pretty pictures. My interest in stage design comes from being blown away by the sets (or the influence of sets) in cartoons like "What's Opera, Doc?" and animated features like "Fantasia" and "Alice in Wonderland." The backdrop above is from "Guys and Dolls" (1950) but it also looks a lot like the street outside the stadium in "Baseball Bugs." Animation is full of theatrical influence.

Guys and Dolls was famous for its backdrops. Here's (above) a moody sketch of the sewer where the crap game took place. The designer made it seem immense, important and mysterious, like the interior of a cathedral.

I also like the sketches generated by theatrical costume designers. I say "sketches" because the real clothing seldom looks as good as the sketch it was derived from.

Set design went through a lot of drastic changes in the last 100 years. Here's a Russian design from the years immediately after the revolution. The chair in the middle gives us the scale. Russian modernists were incredibly inventive but their efforts came to an end almost overnight when Lenin decided that he preferred realism.

I'm not a fan of Hockney's swimming pool paintings but his stage design is interesting. Forget the simplistic vertical curtains in the design above. Look instead at the way he uses the orchestra pit as a set design element. He paints the floor white so the standing musicians in black look like sticks or spikes. In another picture (unseen) he blackens the floor so the black musicians are invisible then he puts bright red caps on them. In yet another one he underlights the musicians so they look like zombies. Nifty, huh?

ANOTHER APOLOGY TO MIKE

I feel so bad! Mike is a wonderful host (I should know, I've been sponging off him for eons) and here I've gone and told the world that he's cheap and lives in a trailer park. Really, that's a terrible thing to do to a friend.

I don't have the words to express my sorrow so I thought I would read from book that puts into words some of what I feel. It's a childrens' book and the protaginist even looks like Mike. I'll just scan it in. It's named for the dog in the story: "Poohul."

Once upon a time there was a generous host named Mr. Michael. He loved to bake cakes and pies for the many guests he invited to his beautiful house.

Whatever the guests couldn't eat they took home in buldging doggie bags. "What a friend!" they all said, "Hoorah for Mr. Michael!"

What a shock then, when they discovered that a sleazey internet artist had accused Mr. Michael of being cheap! "He says Mr. Michael never has toilet paper for his guests! That's not true," said one outraged neighbor, "He almost always has toilet paper! And he's so generous with his pies! Who would print such a thing!?"

Who indeed? It was none other than "Uncle Bucktooth," a disgruntled guest who didn't like Mr. Michael's pretzels.

Now it so happened that Mr. Michael had a poodle named Poohul. Poohul was very upset by the slander his master had received. Not even a bath could calm him down.

"I'm gonna kick that guy's butt!" said Poohul.

And he did! Passers-by said it was the most gruesome beating they'd ever seen. Poohul acted rashley, they agreed, but all seemed to feel that Uncle Bucktooth had it coming.

A couple of months later when the heat had died down Poohul emerged from hiding.

The two friends were re-united and they danced and danced the whole night through. Poohul even wore womens' clothing! They were very, very happy, and lived happily...you guessed it... ever after!

The End.

APOLOGY TO MIKE

I just got a call from Mike Fontanelli who was very upset that my previous posts made me appear him appear lowbrow. Gee, I feel terrible. I certainly didn't mean to give offence. By way of making up for it I'd like to invite everyone here to a party in honor of Mike. It can be at my house or his house, whichever he prefers.

Directions to my house: park near the wall (above); don't worry about your car, the valet will take care of it.

You'll be met at the gate by my butler Bam Bam who will take you to the house on a scooter.

It's a small house. You won't have trouble finding your way around.

Here's my household staff clowning around with a neighbor. Feel free to ask for anything you want.

Why not take a dip in the pool? When you're finished you'll find helpful staffers ready to dry you off by giving you a group hug in their terry-cloth bikinis.

Maybe Mike will want to hold the party at his place! Directions: hang a right at the Bail Bond place and it's the last trailer on the left. Lock your door securely; you might want to leave a guard dog inside. Try not to step on anything rusty.

Have a seat anywhere. Mike isn't a stickler on formality.


Mike's maid will probably be there. Ask for anything you need. Mike is usually well-stocked with Pez but you might want to bring your own toilet paper.

Well, that's it! It makes me feel good inside that I can do a good deed for a friend!

CARTOONING'S "GREAT EXTINCTION"

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.

BEATNIK POETRY

Sorry to put up more YouTube videos. I really am overdoing it. I'll return to mostly print, I promise. Anyway, here's the poem that opens up the film, "Trainspotting." It's actually a good poem, or at least it seems that way when given the star treatment that the filmmaker gave it. Technically it's a punk poem rather than a beatnik poem but the beatnik pedigree is pretty obvious when you hear it.





This is an awful poem but it's too funny to exclude. Were beatniks really like this?

TWO OF MY FAVORITE MOZART ARIAS

OK, OK, I know cartoonists hate opera but you can't hate ALL opera, that doesn't make sense. What's there not to like in this beautiful song by Mozart, "Voi Che Sapete?" I love songs that make an argument, as this song does. With a little time I might be able to articulate what that argument is. Reading the lyrics will probably be slight help. The content of musical argument usually has more to do with subtext than with formal story points.

Too bad YouTube didn't have Elizabeth Schwarzkopff's version of this song.





This (above) is from Ingmar Bergman's version of "Magic Flute." It's not the best aria in the film, that would have been the one that's sung earlier in the story when the queen is first introduced to the knight, but this is still pretty good.

Radical feminists hate this song because it portrays the heroine's mother as crazy, or at least lacking balance, and sets up the case that the father would be a more fit guardian for the daughter because he's more...what's the word...philosophical. I'm not taking sides here, you be the judge!