Comics: No blog complete without them

People seem to like the classic strips more than when I find someone older more obscure ephemera. I'm back with more excerpts from Comic Art in America, a history of the medium from 1959, so therefore stops at that point.

The book is mostly text but is illustrated profusely with the strips they're talking about. Herewith are those strips with captions underneath which say:

Enter Steve Canyon. Suspense was created in the very first Sunday page, on January 19, 1947.

Like I said when reprinting some reprinting some strips last week, Steve Canyon was something Milton Caniff created when he lost the rights to Terry and the Pirates.

The Sunday Steve Canyon of November 18, 1956, a high point in verbal and visual wit. The strip of tape in the last panel is a superb touch.

Unlike most of the strips that were taken from newspapers, you can tell this was taken from the original by some of the images going out of the margins.

BILL HOLMAN's panel Nuts and Jolts. Notary Sojac creeps in even here.

A Sunday Smokey Stover, by BILL HOLMAN, 1952. The puns are as outlandish as ever, and so are the characters.

Another Smokey Stover, HOLMAN's invention never flags. The man has been perpetrating these outrages for a quarter-century.

Slats Scrapple in action. By RAEBURN VAN BUREN.

The book doesn't say so, but this is from Abbie 'n' Slats.

Action and fine draughtsmanship in this NOEL SICKLES strip of Scorchy Smith. Sickles' influence on his contemporaries—e. g. on close friend Milton Caniff—is obvious.

A daily Chief Wahoo of January 1941 showing Wahoo with Steve Roper as he looked in those days.

Steve Roper, 1959. Long shot; close-up; medium close-up; slick chick and handsome hero.

A Sunday Mary Worth. Apple Mary has risen from the slums to the height of modernity and fashion. ALLEN SAUNDERS' continuity is sophisticated and KEN ERNST's drawing is in the best illustrator's style..

CARL ANDERSON's Henry. This was done three years after Anderson's death, though signed with his name. Henry hasn't changed a bit.

Nancy once more. ERNIE BUSHMILLER's strip is one of the half-dozen most popular strips in the world.

The Gumps again—GUS EDSON's Christmas strip, 1939. Andy, Bim, and Tilda are as homely as ever, but Min has become a bit prettier.

A daily Dondi, created by GUS EDSON and IRWIN HASEN in the aftermath of the [Korean] war. Its circulation has risen steadily.

I had Hasen as a cartooning teacher at the School of Visual Arts. As far as I know, he is still alive at 97.

Coronet 1 of 2

These cartoons are from the first issue of Coronet that was published in 1936. They were a digest-sized magazine that also did a lot of educational films as well. The magazine was owned by Esquire which is why they had a lot of the same cartoonists. If you've been following this blog, I've reposted a lot of their cartoons before. Check the tag below for more.

This first one is from E. Simms Campbell George Shellhase This isn't a cartoon, but I liked it anyway. I wonder what happened to the calf after eating that lemon. I think this is E. Simms Campbell again. The next two are from Shellhase Gilbert Bundy More Campbell Raeburn Van Buren Shellhase Paul Webb (see more clicking on tag) George Lichty Next Thursday: the rest of that issue.

Pages 245-249

Continued from last week:

Paul Webb Howard Baer Abner Dean, written about by Richard Calhoun, in an entry from the World Encyclopedia of Cartoons in 1980:

ABNER EPSTEIN (1910-*) American cartoonist born in New York City in 1910. Known professionally as Abner Dean (a derivation from his mother's name, Deanna), Abner Epstein attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, from which he received his B.A. In 1931. He then enrolled in the National Academy of Design and continued his art studies. His first work in the field was freelancing, particularly in advertising and industrial illustration. It was probably in this latter capacity that he designed the industrial folding table for which he has the patent.

One hesitates to call Dean a gag cartoonist, though one often laughs at the absurd but familiar antics of his simple, naked pen-and-ink figures, usually set against stark, almost lunar landscapes. A strong vein of alienation, however sardonic, runs through all his work, and his (not uncritical) debt to Freudian psychology is at times naively apparent. His captions are frequently “attitude” words or the intellectual clichés of modernity, and his capricious realization of them is undeniably unique. An example from one of his anthologies, It's a Long Way to Heaven : a man hanging by the neck from a single blasted tree in one of Dean's characteristically barren landscapes scribbles his way on his “appeal”, his face contorted into a ghastly burlesque of a smile; the caption, “Optimism”. As is so often the case with a Dean work, it is as depressing as it is amusing. (A clue to the reaction Dean is seeking in this and his other cartoons in Heaven can perhaps be found in the brief introduction to the volume, penned by no less an “angry young man” than Philip Wylie).

Perhaps the best brief, serious appraisal of this controversial artist's work comes from Clifton Fadiman's introduction to Dean's anthology What Am I Doing Here?, published by Simon and Schuster. “The urge to call Dean bats,” Fadiman writes, “will be strong, but that is only because we have so large a vested interest in being 'normal' that we panic easily when this investment is threatened.”

As an artist Dean has been represented in most of the major magazines, including the New Yorker, and has published no less than eight anthologies of his work, bearing such provocative titles as Come As You Are (1952), Cave Drawings For the Future (1954), Not Far from the Jungle (1956), and Abner Dean's Naked People (1963).

*He died in 1982 E. Simms Campbell Juliette Kida Renault, who did another cartoon in this book. Raeburn Van Buren, who was written about by Richard Marschall in The World Encyclopedia of Comics:

RAEBURN VAN BUREN (1891-*) American artist born January 12, 1891 in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of George Lincoln and Luella la Mar van Buren. The young van Buren, showing an early talent for drawing, joined the art staff of the Kansas City Star immediately after graduation from Central High School in Kansas City, Mo., where the family had moved.

Van Buren called the Star “the best school for pen and ink illustrators in the country” at that time (1909) because its owner, Col. Nelson, eschewed photographs and half-tone drawings. After four years as a sketch artist van Buren traveled to New York to take courses at the Art Students League and freelance illustrations.

The former endeavor ended after a few short frustrating weeks; classes—with Terry Fogarty's father and others—seemed too slow-paced and rudimentary for the talented van Buren. Freelancing was more fertile and rewarding, however. Upon arrival in New York in 1913, van Buren became a frequent contributor to Life (for which he had been drawing several years already), Puck, Judge, and Street and Smith publications, the pulp, Smith's Magazine, was the first to use a van Buren illustration (his work for the humorous journals was captioned cartoons.)

Van Buren, whose early work betrayed no sign of youth or relative lack of training, soon became one of the country's leading and most polished illustrators. His credits include 368 stories for the Saturday Evening Post, 127 for Collier's, and numerous others in Redbook (one Life cartoon was enough to prompt Redbook editors to offer a six-part Opie Reid story, “River of Romance” to van Buren, Cosmopolitan, Green Book, Esquire, the New Yorker, McCalls, and newspaper illustrations for King Features Syndicate and the McClure Syndicate.

In the mid-1930's, Al Capp contacted van Buren and offered him the drawing duties on a comic strip creation, and van Buren accepted on the strengths of Capp's prediction that radio would kill the big magazines. Thus Abbie an' Slats was born in 1937 and van Buren added splendidly to the unfortunately small list of accomplished illustrators in the comics:Alex Raymond and Frank Godwin were brothers in this small band.

Van Buren's art was sometimes distinctive, individualistic and at home with the strictures and conventions of the comic strip. His adaptability was part professional and part due to the guidance of Capp, but was mostly attributed to his overwhelming talent and genuine concern for Abbie an' Slats. His heroes were handsome and dashing; his heroines racy and winsome; and incidental characters were humorous or villainous to the extreme as the situation demanded.

Van Buren's long work in illustration gave the comic strip a constantly fresh, breezy, and narrative feel. Although some of his magazine work was in crayon, his medium was pen and ink and he was a master of blocking, shading, vignettes and—in the comics—well-used close-ups.

Today(**) he is retired and painting, dividing his time between his homes in Long Island and Florida.

*He died in 1987.

**Today being 1975. Howard Baer Barbara Shermund Dorothy McKay Concluded next Saturday

I hope you like this installment because I spent 20 minutes looking for the mistake in the HTML that was making everything (including the sidebars) italic.

pages 136-141

Howard Baer Eldon Dedini Walter F. Sprink, one of the more prolific artists for Vogue. Jerry Marcus Raeburn Van Buren E. Simms Campbell Not a reference to +o-> More Esquire cartoons next Saturday.