Evergreen April 1968

I used to go to the comic convention in San Diego every year but it became less about comics and more about comic-like things. There are smaller conventions around the country that serve the same purpose anyway.

But while people were waiting hours in a hot sun to get Adam West's autograph, or whatever it is they spend $400 or more to do, I walked half a mile away to go to a flea market, looking for “old” things.

As a teen and pre-teen, twenty years earlier meant the sixties. I could find things from the sixties cheap. Before E-bay and even before most of the world knew old comics have value, you could still get things relatively cheap. Now people will charge $10 for a coverless moldy Richie Rich comic and if you complain about the condition, they'll tell you that because it's in a bag that makes it worth more. Twenty years ago now is 1994, so most of the things people sell as nostalgia are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Ren & Stimpy. I remember those things from when I was already an adult and working professional.

Being in an old hippie town there are a few dealers still around and where can find things occasionally. My most recent find was some issues of Evergreen Review. Evergreen was the anchor magazine for Grove Press, the company that did all those hippie and dirty (for the time) books. This was the 55th issue from April 1968. I'll be reprinting all the cartoons and humor pieces I come across.

The first thing was a cartoon by Georges Wolinski.

I didn't read most of the text pieces, but while I was scanning things, here's something that caught my eye so I thought I'd share it.

They had to have a certain amount of T&A to sell copies. But because they were for the most part a literary magazine, the nudity was in the context of early photography, or pieces like this.

Michael O'Donoghue was one of the founding writers of National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live, but before that he was a regular in Evergreen They had an introductory masthead similar to Playboy's “Playbill” that he was often in.

This cartoon here was by “McKee”.

Jan Kristofori from Czechoslovakia.

I think many of these cartoons came from magazines in other countries. Most have foreign names and/or only use one name, and I've never seen a lot of them anywhere else except in the Great Cartoons of the World annuals.

Here's one by “Caballero”

Adolf Born

There are a few cartoons by B.Kliban, one of my all-time favorites, that I don't recall ever seeing in any of the collections.

This one's by him too.

The next two are by “Paré”.

Here's an ad by Jules Feiffer. It's a cartoon so I'll include it. It wasn't in the newspaper itself.

Another by Kliban

Tony Munzlinger.

Great Cartoons of the World Series 7, part 10

Were in the home stretch with Great Cartoons of the World, Series 7. Here are the final thirteen cartoons.

There's no title in the book, but it looks like these three by Terrence “Larry” Parkes were from the same article in Punch.

Bruce Petty

Bill Tidy

Stan Hunt for The New Yorker

Robert Day in the New Yorker

Charles Elmer Martin

These next two were by Jules Stauber

Leslie Starke

Adolf Born for Dikobraz

Also Jules Stauber.

Great Cartoons of the World Series 7, part 7

Here is the seventh part of the book Great Cartoons of the World, Series 7 from 1973.

Chon Day in The Saturday Evening Post

Guillermo Mordillo

Charles Elmer Martin

Vlasta Zábranský for Rohác

Charles Addams for the New Yorker.This cartoon isn't that different from what's been going on in Brooklyn for the past ten years.

Editor John Bailey writes of the cartoonist in the introduction to the book:

The fascinating thing is, one cannot tell before meeting him whether an artist will be like his work, or will not be. Charles Addams does look slightly sinister, but the moment he speaks you realize he is not going to behead you. He is gentle and cultivated, and his creeping creatures are strictly the creation of his genuine spooky imagination.

Hans Moser

Donald Reilly for The New Yorker

Jean-Jacques Sempé for Editions Denoël

Pit Grove

Adolf Born for Dikobraz

Whitney Darrow, Jr.

Great Cartoons of the World Series Seven, part 4

In which I post the fourth part of the book Great Cartoons of the World, Series 7 from 1972.

Editor John Bailey, writing about the cartoonists are really like, continues with doublespeak in his introduction from last week, fulfilling his obligation to fill a few pages:

One would assume from Rouault's rich, luscious pigment that he was a big extrovert, but he was tiny and monklike. From his expressions of evil on the motion-picture screen, one would expect to be seized and strapped to a table by Boris Karloff, but he was a mind, kind, gentle, and wonderful person.

On the other hand, sometimes the talent and the person are identical, as is the case of Caruso. Leonardo was a logical genius, and the delicacy, the aristocratic expression of his thought, and the feeling of elegance in his work were all to be found in his person, if we can trust the remark of a friend who described him as being “as beautiful as an angel”.

Picasso was the full embodiment of his work. He was the bull. Hemingway personified what he wanted to be. No matter how hidden it is in the work, the subconscious is being expressed. Sometimes the relation is uncomplicated and “what you sees is what you gets.” Sometimes both the man and his work are as many-layered as Nabokov.

Ton Smits

A lot more John Glashan for those who didn't get enough last week.

William O'Brian

Mischa Richter in the New Yorker. The editor writes of him in the introduction:

I am certain that the picture formed in the public mind of Richter is that of a tall, swarthy, sinister figure, such as might be lurking around an embassy. He is not big, but when he talks one feels his strength.He has a strong mind, strong opinions, and a skeptical eye on the world, all reflected in the vigor of his line.

Guillermo Mordillo

Chon Day

Adolf Born

And we end as we began, with Ton Smits.