All from that magnificent blog..."Stripper's Guide," whose address can be found in my list of links. I'm dying to comment on these but I'm so sleepy that I can hardly sit upright.
It goes without saying: be sure to click to enlarge. These won't look like much at thumbnail size.
That Harvey Kurtzman strip is pure gold. I wish his stint in newspaper cartooning lasted longer.
ReplyDeleteI hear that there's a book collecting his "Hey Look" strips. Are they worth seeking out?
I had totally forgotten, if I ever knew, that Kurtzman had a newspaper strip.
ReplyDeleteE. Riley, the golf gag, seems to be the prototype from which Mort Walker developed. It looks like the stuff he did in high school. Simple formula circles for noses, not too much worry about details of shadows (which might be natural if your gag contained dozens of people). Kurtzman both simplified, and ruibberized this more into a highly expressive and variable style, while someone like Mort Walker worked within the constraints.
The rest, as much of the era of the first few decades of 20th century cartooning was much more caricatured realism. Detailed facial expressions, anatomy, clothing, and exaggerated proportions and posing. Shadows Wrinkles and texture were important. You don't even have this level of anatomy in most superhero comics these days, although, there was probably plenty of swiping of poses and just as much emulation of style back then.
What exactly made the detailed Punch school fall away towards a more symbolic simplified style? Animation influence, where the simplification was necessary? Design movements of modernism in the twenties, that probably nudged John Held Jr's success? A single particularly successful bulb nose stylist?
My favourite is that STEP TO THE REAR OF THE BUS!!! comic. The rest were just one big WTF that washed over me.
ReplyDelete"Further proceeding will be depicted next Sunday" is the ultimate all-purpose end panel.
ReplyDelete>>I hear that there's a book collecting his "Hey Look" strips. Are they worth seeking out?<<
ReplyDeleteYES! They are! Except the book is out of print (Kitchen Sink Press went out of business, unfortunately) and any old copies I've seen for sale online are pretty expensive. I wish someone would reprint them again, at an affordable price. Those strips are classic!
Brubaker: Of course!!!
ReplyDeleteHans: Interesting question, one which I've wondered about myself. It never occurred to me that John Held
might be responsible. Maybe Herriman was.
David: What about the Herriman?
Shawn: Kitchen Sink was a great publisher that deserves a lot of credit. I'll try to find out more about it.
As others have pointed out, Kurtzman's "Silver Linings" is best. Or maybe it's Herriman's. They're both so good!
ReplyDeleteBut I loved the Musical Maurice strip. It's a lot better than the usual crude fare of the era (though they were all great).
http://www.nachshon.org.il/~itzs/Don%20Martin/posters/bannana.JPG
ReplyDeleteDavid: What about the Herriman?
ReplyDeleteDo you mean that boxing comic? It had some nice little jokes in the middle but it didn't really end off with a big joke. So, for me, it seemed anticlimactic.
Anon: Thanks a million for the Don Martin old lady! That's one I hadn't seen before!
ReplyDeleteDavid: Who cares about the written gag? It's the drawing that makes Herriman special. There are some fuuny poses and body proportions in that strip. Hmmm. Maybe I should do a blog about that.
What happens to Red Squab?!
ReplyDeleteHerriman went more abstract than his sports cartoons with Krazy of course (were there many anamorphic funny animals proceeding this?)
ReplyDeleteI still think Herriman kept what John K calls an Itchy style. Its hard to point out where the hatching may have dropped out for a lot of folks, and clean lines came in instead, which is why I brought up John Held who did have a strong geometric design sense driving his work. Geo McManus (maggie and Jiggs) seems to be one of the earliest to go a relatively clean line, I would say the KatzenJammer Kids may have been easing away from the Punch style fairly soon, probably because of brush work rather than pen. McCays Little Nemo sort of straddled the detailed scratchiness and a clean architectural line and thick outlines, but there wasn't that much simplification of form. Maybe it was the influence of animation
Wonderful strips, Eddie! Hey, if you din't know, there're more Kurtzman strips over here, including the one you showed! http://comicrazys.com/2008/06/12/silver-linings-harvey-kurtzman/
ReplyDelete