Congrats to ADDTF for one solid year of reading comics naked.

Also, welcome back ADD and In Sequence.

Did I miss anyone?

 
Hef - A comic biography, part 3.



"...an irreverent satire... with a collection of drawings that look like the kind Esquire might judge too racy for their readers." - An excerpt from the Chicago Tribune review of This Toddlin' Town.

Hef devoted all his spare time to promoting the book and engaging bookstore owners on a personal level, which resulted in one particular shop creating a window display of his work. He mailed review copies to newspapers, radio stations and television stations, and was eventually interviewed on a local television program for his trouble. Through these venues and mail order, This Toddlin' Town slowly started to sell through. All this extra-curricular work impacted upon Hef's other job. After getting fired, he latched onto a position with Esquire, his favourite magazine from his teens.

Hef was not terribly displeased when Esquire eventually decided to move its offices in Chicago to their new digs in New York City in 1951. The mundane reality of the Esquire offices could not possibly match the vivid fantasies Hef had built up in his mind since his teens. That, and the rambunctious and sexy nature of the magazine which had first appealed to him was diminishing as Esquire attempted to play down those aspects in a bid for respectability.

"When he had nothing else to do, he would draw pornographic cartoons of Blondie and Dagwood." Hef's former co-worker, Vince Tajiri, on Hef's hobbies.

By that time, That Toddlin' Town had almost completely sold out, and Hef was still making progress through his Comic Autobiography which had now surpassed the fiftieth volume. Hef and his wife finally moved out of her parents' home into their own apartment, which they decorated with full-colour original comic strips by Hef, including the use of such strips as wallpaper for the nursery of their first child. The apartment was featured in the Chicago Daily News with the title "How a Cartoonist Lives". Hef latched onto the flying saucer craze with a new series of strips starring little green men, but he met the same flurry of rejections as all his previous attempts.

One of the things I tried to do was, like The New Yorker, develop a stable of artists closely associated with my magazine." - Hef in conversation with Art Spiegelman.

It was then that Hef's lifelong obsession with magazine publishing would come to a head, with the creation of Playboy. Though he eventually abandoned the field himself, it's obvious by the direction of the magazine, one of the few to still prominently display and encourage the near-forgotten art of the gag cartoon, that Hef has a great deal of affection for comics and the art of cartooning. Though he hasn't been hands-on in the editing of the magazine for decades, up through the 80's at least, Hefner has selected the monthly cover picture, the Playmate... and the cartoons. Before he abandoned one faltering career for a more successful one, Hef overlapped his two loves on a personal level for the first few issues of Playboy by contributing his own gag panels, until, according to him, "I could afford better". The first issue of Playboy contained the panel by Hef found at the top of this post entitled "Man, is she stacked."
posted by Steven at 2:12 AM

 
Free Comic Thursday - Shel Silverstein

Another Playboy Alumnus, children's author Shel Silverstein, with a very tiny sampling of his completely work safe gag work.
posted by Steven at 12:34 AM

 
Hef - A comic biography, part 2



"A very original fellow, he has his own style of jiving, and slang expressions. His interests go to cartooning, acting, writing songs, horror stories and comic strips with Mope, crooning and collecting jive records." - From volume seven of the Comic Autobiography, Goo Heffer Graduates.

After high school, Hef enlisted in the Army, gaining a postition as a clerk. To alleviate the boredom of his job, he spent his free time contributing cartoons to the base newspapers. Upon his discharge from the Army in 1946, Hef, like many other soldiers before him, enrolled in University on the G.I. Bill. He once again got caught up in print publishing, this time as managing editor with the campus magazine, The Shaft. He also found the time to write and draw articles and cartoons for the school's nespaper, The Daily Illini, and continued his work on his Comic Autobiography.

After University, Hef tried to find a job with various newspapers, magazines and advertising agencies within the Chicago area. He attempted to sell two comic strips, "Gene Fantus, Psycho-Investigator" and "Freddie Frat" to the newspaper syndicates, but there were no takers. Hef worked briefly at a carton company, eventually quitting and spending all his time drawing cartoons, much to the chagrin of his new bride, Millie, who became the sole source of income for the newlyweds. Once again, he did not have much success in the cartooning racket.

After an incredibly short return to academia, Hef landed a job as a copywriter, which allowed him the time to pursue his dreams of becoming a professional cartoonist. This time, Hef compiled an entire book of gag cartoons with the city of Chicago as its theme and target. With the editorial input of his wife and brother, Hefner whittled his hundreds upon hundreds of roughs down to a manageable volume entitled This Toddlin' Town, A Rowdy Burlesque of Chicago Manners and Morals. Once again, all he received from the publishers he approached were rejection slips. Undaunted, Hef scraped together $1000 from his own savings and from friends and family for an initial print run of 5000 copies. Though this was not his first self-publishing venture, it was certainly the most ambitious and professional to date, and was one of his most formative steps towards building the Playboy empire.
posted by Steven at 12:07 AM

 
Free Comic Thursday - Kiraz

Not work safe!

The Drawing Board comes through once again with a large selection of work by former Playboy artist Kiraz, each more beautiful then the last. Shame that so many of the images no longer work. As mentioned on the thread, even more of his work can be found here.
posted by Steven at 12:02 AM

 
Hef - A comic biography, part 1



"I know what the life of a cartoonist is like, and I know what my life is like." - Hugh Hefner, when asked if he had any regrets about not pursuing a career in cartooning.

Hugh Hefner's personal involvement in the art of cartooning isn't well-known to the general public, though it's obvious from the content of his magazine that he has a deep and abiding love for the form. To celebrate the publication of Playboy: 50 Years: The Cartoons, I present this concise biography of Hef's humble cartoonist beginnings.

"He has me at my wits end. For the past week I've had to speak to him two or three times, every time he has a study period. He doesn't do his arithmetic, geography or spelling unless I stand right at his elbow. He constantly draws. I've tried persuasion, scoldings, and appeal to his love for mother - all to no avail." - From a letter written by Hugh Hefner's fourth-grade teacher to his mother.

The cartooning bug latched onto young Hugh Hefner from an early age and never really let go, even if he doesn't actively pursue the art himself any more. Hefner's early childhood doodling exploded into a full-on pursuit in his early teens. By the age of 14, he had completed seventy different hand-coloured comic strips. Each of these was placed in meticulous scrapbooks which he kept to record all his publishing and cartooning pursuits. One example of his early work was "Cranet", the interstellar exploits of a red-headed adventurer, leaving the terrestial bounds of his home planet to free the Martian people from their oppressors and become Emperor of Mars himself. Meanwhile, Hef kept track of those cartoons and pin-ups that would appear in Esquire magazine and their competitors, pasting the Petty and Vargas girls upon the walls of his bedroom. The normally puritanical Mrs. Hefner showed some leniency in allowing these posters to be displayed as she felt they encouraged Hef's artistic ambitions.

"I began using cooler expressions and actually started writing a cartoon autobiography of my life. I was living in a microcosm of what came later with Playboy. When I started doing that comic strip, I was creating a world of my own in which I was center stage." - Hef.

At 16, Hef began his most ambitious work to date, a "Comic Biography", a kind of illustrated diary that took several volumes to cover the period from the birth to high school graduation of his thinly veiled alter ego "Goo Heffer". In addition to this challenging project, Hef also contributed cartoons to the his high school newspaper, the Steinmetz Star, and was made the official cartoonist for the school yearbook. Among his acquired titles upon graduation were Class Humourist and One of the Most Artistic. He was also named One of the Most Likely To Succeed, though not as it turned out it wasn't necessarily for what he initially chose to pursue.
posted by Steven at 12:44 AM

 
Free Comic Thursday - American Natives

Early work-safe sketches from one of Playboy's most famed cartoonists, Erich Sokol.

If you're looking for art that's a little more work-unsafe, you could do worse then here.

Perverts.
posted by Steven at 12:06 AM

 
I'm Agile!


posted by Steven at 10:49 PM

 
Free Comics Thursday - Gumballhead the Cat

The Comics Journal #238 is fast becoming my favourite issue of that magazine. While so many in the "comics blogosphere" has been muttering something about the need for "mid-brow comics magazines" that would no doubt focus almost exclusively on the sub-sub-sub-sub genre of super-heroes, here was a mag that tackled such culturally important artifacts as John Stanley's teen comics, the Moomintrolls, Cola Madnes, CARToons and Silver (y'know, the adventures of the Lone Ranger's horse before he was the Lone Ranger's horse) with genuine interest in their merits. One such article concerned the DIY adventures of stoic anti-hero Gumballhead the Cat as told by Skin Graft Comix. I was sold. Hell, the punk rawk kid in me wanted to be Gumballhead. If the tiny reprint of the four-pager found in the article above doesn't do it for you, there's a better scan available at Skin Graft's comix page, along with a small pile of previews and and full stories of other raw comix trash.
posted by Steven at 2:11 AM

 
First I'm getting rid of my Peanuts collection, now this.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.
posted by Steven at 11:45 PM

 
Free Comic Thursday -Bill Watterson rarities

Isn't it great when good news leads to other great things? Calvin and Hobbes : Magic on Paper, which I wouldn't have found if I hadn't had my interest in C + H reignited, digs deep and comes up with a great page of rare Bill Watterson art. Included are cartoons commenting on the state of the medium as originally presented in Watterson's interview with the Comics Journal, which is also reprinted. In fact, when you're done with all the pretty pictures, you may want to indulge in the The Derkins Library for Calvin and Hobbes Research, a near comprehensive collection of writing by and about Bill Watterson and his creation, including Watterson's tribute to Peanuts, The Cheapening of the Comics, and appreciations of Krazy Kat and Little Nemo in Slumberland, to name a few highlights.
posted by Steven at 11:14 PM

 
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

Online version of Journalista officially closed down.

Exclusive 4-page Street Angel story set for Slave Labor's Free Comic Day primer.

Webcomic blog seeks dedicated blogger or team of bloggers to pitch in.

Blogger's cartoon mentioned amidst debate over meaning of the term "outsourced".

Over at Jim Hill Media, Wade Sampson pays tribute to animator and comic artist Jack Bradbury.

After 15 years, DC Animated writer and producer Paul Dini parts company with Warner Bros. I'm looking forward to whatever he cooks up in the years to come.
posted by Steven at 9:23 PM

 
Free Comic Thursday - Invader Zim

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Squee artist Jhonen Vasquez' comic and animation concerns collide in this special 4-page short story drawn for Nicktoons magazine. Fans of the cartoon version of Invader Zim must have been particularly dumbfounded when confronted by pure Zim straight from the source. Screw continuity.
posted by Steven at 4:17 PM

 
"I wake up angry every morning and start reading. Then I'm furious."



I did a very short stint as a political cartoonist several years back. The staff at the local paper had gone on strike and I popped in to ask them if I could help out. I had just recently began studying political cartoons, and was fascinated with the form. Political cartoons are one of the most transient yet widely-read forms of comics in North America, with a proud history of bluntly exposing lies and hypocrisies on all fronts. Unfortunately, as I read more, I realized that the fire had died down somewhat in recent years. That humour, once only one of many weapons in the politcal cartoonist's arsenal, had become so overwhelming as to dilute almost all the impact which a good politcal cartoon could create. Working for a strike paper, outside of corporate control, allowed me to try my hand at this kind of hard-hitting editorializing (with mixed results). It wasn't until years later that I found out that spirit hadn't actually disappeared.

Paul Conrad is my favourite political cartoonist. I've only managed to track down one of his books, Drawn and Quartered, and I was reminded of it again today upon hearing of Ronald Reagan's passing. For many people Herblock defined Nixon, but Conrad retroactively did the same for my image of Reagan. Conrad uses few words in his cartoons, and rarely needs them at all. Word balloons and labels have little room in his simple and effective compositions. Conrad's images are the definition of stark, and even when he means to be funny there's a hard, scary edge to his work. Inky pools of black draw your eyes to horrors you'd rather ignore. An African mother holds her dead child to the sky, screaming in despair, two cans of powdered milk in place of breasts. The leaves on an olive branch are replaced by missles. A Christmas tree made up of weapons of mass destruction is topped by an atom. Conrad doesn't draw to wound, he draws to kill.

Conrad has an official site with a small gallery of poorly scanned images. Interviews and samples of work by this master of a dying breed can be found here and here. His latest strips are also showcased at Comics Page.
posted by Steven at 2:02 AM

 
Free Comic Thursday - Professional Cartoonists Index

One of the things I like most about editorial cartoons is that even though they're made for the present, they're equally effective as a learning tool, rooting through panels from the past and seeing what outraged society at any given time. Your one-stop shopping for revisiting recent events through editorial cartoons is Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index, which also contains an even wider range of Conrad's art. There you can view hundreds of editorial cartoons based upon date, subject, artist and location. Especially amusing is how Cagle will often group together cartoons that deal with the same subject in the same cliche way.
posted by Steven at 1:13 AM