Category: Miscellaneous

By Nick Meglin (Watson-Guptill)
ISBN: 0-8230-0269-1

Another terrific book in dire need of re-releasing is this bright and breezy tome that lists and lavishly illustrates the work of a dozen of the world’s greatest exponents of funny drawing.

Author Meglin calls on his many years experience to outline not only the history and careers of his eclectic selection of creators but also includes commentary, exposition on the subject matter, individual’s techniques, approach-to-work and business practices of each comedy mastermind featured. It’s also great to see that the scope is not limited to strips, gag-panels and comic-books but also includes work from magazine and book illustration, covers, greetings cards, cartoon animation, advertising art and television graphics. Meglin also dips his toe into dangerous and controversial waters as he attempts to explain what is funny and why – and he should know, since he’s toiled at Mad Magazine for over fifty years, many of them as Senior Editor.

So if you think you’re funny or have ambitions to earn a living at it, or simply want some great laughs from the likes of Sergio Aragones, Paul Coker, Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Gerry Gersten, Johnny Hart, Al Jaffee, Bob Jones, Donald Reilly, Norman Rockwell, Arnold Roth and Maurice Sendak this is a volume well worth hunting down.

© 1973, 1980 Watson-Guptill Publications. All Rights Reserved.

Wondering, “WHAT SHALL I GET HIM FOR CHRISTMAS?”

By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN: 0-316-10881-2

After a woefully brief and glittering career as a syndicated strip cartoonist and socio-political commentator (so often the very same function) Berkeley Breathed retired Bloom County and Outland to create children’s books. He lost none of his perception or imagination, and actually got better as a narrative artist. He didn’t completely abandon his magical cast of characters.

Although not a Christmas story this charming and tearfully funny tale is a joyous celebration of the wonder of childhood and how little adventures can become great big ones. Starring his best-loved characters (although I personally identified far too closely with Binkley) from Bloom County and Outland: Opus the penguin, Bill the Cat, Milquetoast the Housebug, Ronald-Anne (her mother named her for President Reagan – because he had done so much to advance the cause of Poor Black Women) and Rosebud, the eponymous Basselope of the title.

Opus is a dreamer of great dreams and a frustrated explorer. In his unassuming, shy way he lusts for glory and the heady wine of immortality which can only be found by Discovering Something. Anything will do. And in the pages of the latest ‘National Geographic Enquirer’ he finds his dream waiting.

Organising a safari he heads for the woods at the back of the house in search of the most elusive beast in history and every crypto-zoologist’s Holy Grail. How he finds The Last Basselope and what he actually learns is a magical journey into the uncharted wilds of childhood’s imagination which reveals the strength, power and character of true friendship.

This beautifully illustrated, captivating and multi-layered fable is ideal for the eternally young at heart and all those still looking for a path back to their own wonder years.

© 1994 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

Wondering, “WHAT SHALL I GET HIM FOR CHRISTMAS?”

By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN: 0-316-10881-2

After a desperately brief and glittering career as a syndicated strip cartoonist and socio-political commentator (so often the very same function) Berkeley Breathed retired Bloom County and Outland and became a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He lost none of his perception or imagination, and actually got better as a narrative artist. He didn’t completely abandon his magical cast of characters.

We sneer at sentimentality these days but in the hands of a master storyteller it can be a weapon of crippling power. This glorious fable is purportedly one told every Christmas Eve to the author when a child by his own father and is shared with us in mesmerising prose and captivating illustrations.

In 1939 young Red Breathed was well on the way to becoming a snotty, cynical wiseacre. Sent to spend the Holidays with his Aunt Vy, he mooches about all day with her old dog Amelia, lusting after an Official Buck Tweed Two-Speed Crime-Stopper Star Hopper bicycle.

Tweed, of course, is the famous movie serial star “Red Ranger of Mars” and the only thing capable of brightening the benighted life of this woeful child. Times are tough though, and Red knows his chances of getting that bike are non-existent, but he just can’t stop himself hoping…

On his way home he sees an odd, pointy-eared little man heading for the ramshackle house of that reclusive old man Saunder ClÅ‘s. He’s a big kid now, so he knows there’s no Father Christmas and none of that magic stuff is true, but even so he finds himself sneaking up to the old house that Christmas Eve night…

This is a gloriously powerful tale that fully captures the magic of believing and the tragedy of realisation, and yet still ends with a Christmas miracle and a truly surprise ending. Get this book for the kids, get this book for yourself, but get this book – and on pain of emotional death, don’t peek at the last page!

© 1994 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

The Best Drawings of Charles Dana Gibson

Compiled by Henry C. Pitz (Dover)
ISBN: 0-486-21986-0

There is obviously something in the human psyche that needs visual art. In our modern world we’re bombarded with graphic images from an increasing number of sources until practically numb but still we respond to a certain cartoon, a piece of wall or tee-shirt art, or a poster, and it becomes for a time ubiquitous and inescapable.

This is not a new phenomenon, and from the earliest days of reprography images and designs and the people who made them have started fads and fashions, often becoming rich and famous in the process.

Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) was a master with ink and pen, as well as a brilliant observer of the modes of his time. His commercial illustration career began in 1886 when he sold his first illustration to a new general interest publication entitled Life Magazine. Gradually his abilities and commissions grew until by 1888 he was a household name amongst the emerging literate middle-class of America. From then on he stopped observing fashion and society as his drawings increasingly dictated it.

His depictions of young women became the way women should look, his sly knowing snipes at relationships became the way young couples should act, and his trenchant digs at the pastimes of the nouveau riche became a guidebook to fashionable manners and mores. No artist in history has had the influence and power that this mild and quiet craftsman unwittingly wielded. The ‘Gibson Girl’ became the aspirational paradigm of a generation of young women and men, who either wanted to be one or wed one.

For twenty years he ruled the graphic consciousness of America until World War I destroyed that cosy world. During the conflict he turned his considerable skill to patriotic themes but once the shooting was over a different society felt little affinity to the genteel, demure and polite subjects Gibson represented. After a period as editor of Life he retired to a life of painting and contemplation.

Not just for his skill and talent, but also the uncanny ability to be a pictorial zeitgeist, Charles Dana Gibson is one of the most influential artists in the last 500 years. His style of rendering instantly equates to a certain time and place and mind-set. He is an artist every comic fan owes an unpayable debt to, even though he never drew a single comic strip in his entire career.

© 1969 by Dover Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Compiled and written by Trina Robbins (Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 0-913035-20-3

The newspaper comic strip was a powerful and ubiquitous tool used to raise circulation and promote customer loyalty in the first half of the twentieth century, and as well as laughs, thrills and escapism creators often added games, cut-out collectibles and paper toys to their output in their efforts to succeed. The common belief was that young children and girls loved this kind of “dress-up” play, but I suspect many young men also joined in the fun.

One of the most popular and effective – even to this day (and don’t take my word for it, crank up that search engine and see for yourself), was the addition of favourite characters in their underwear, with fashions you could dress them in – and even design your own outfits for.

This practise graduated from the strips to comic books, and every title from Sugar and Spike to Millie the Model had their own paper-doll pages. Even my quite smart and utterly sensible wife is not immune to the seditious allure of these things.

Feminist cartoonist and comic historian Trina Robbins produced this slim and entertaining book to commemorate the subject (and we’re well overdue for a bigger, longer, updated edition) reproducing some of America’s greatest strip characters by some of the industry’s top creators.

So grab those scissors – don’t run! – and revel in the modes and fashions of Alley Oop, Winnie Winkle, Dixie Dugan, Brenda Star, Dick Tracy, Flyin’ Jenny, Torchy Brown, Mopsy, Boots, Smilin’ Jack, Jane Arden, both Terry and the Dragon Lady from Terry and the Pirates, Miss Fury, The Gumps and Katy Keene. It’s so oddly seductive… yet strangely satisfying…

Text © 1987 Trina Robbins. All Images © 1987, 2007 their respective holders.

By Charles Addams (Methuen)
ISBN 0-413-55370-1

Charles Addams was a cartoonist who made his real life as extraordinary as his dark, mordantly funny drawings. Whether he manufactured his biography to enhance his value to feature writers or was genuinely a warped and wickedly wacky individual is irrelevant, (although it makes for great reading: Once again the internet awaits the siren call of your search engine…).

What is important is that in all the years he drew and painted those creepily sardonic, and macabre gags and illustrations for The New Yorker, Colliers, TV Guide and others (from 1932 onwards, but regularly and consistently from 1938 until his death) he managed to enthral his audience with a devilish mind and a soft, gentle approach that made him a household name long before television turned his characters into a hit and generated a juvenile craze for monsters and grotesques that lasts to this day.

This volume is a reissue of his second collection of cartoons, first published in 1947, and semi-occasionally ever since. Although his works are long overdue for a definitive collected edition, many of his books (eleven volumes of drawings and a biography) are still readily available and should you not be as familiar with his actual cartoons as with their big and small screen descendents you really owe it to yourself to see the uncensored brilliance of one of America’s greatest humorists.

© 1940-1947 the New Yorker Magazine, Inc. In Canada © 1947 Charles Addams.

By Andy Riley (Hodder & Stoughton)
ISBN13: 978-0-340-92370-2

This is a good-old fashioned bad-taste animal atrocity collection from writer and cartoonist Andy Riley, whose work has appeared on Trigger Happy TV, So Graham Norton, Smack the Pony, and in The Observer Magazine. He also co-wrote Robbie the Reindeer, The 99p Challenge (for Radio 4) and Gnomeo and Juliet for Disney. First released in 2003 this book is a re-mastered compilation with many additional cartoons and gags.

What’s it about? It’s about time that our Lepine bretheren were allowed to die with dignity whenever and however they choose. It’s also good if it can be devilishly ingenious or wickedly funny, too.

Dark, sardonic, guilt-wrackingly hilarious drawing and supremely disturbing in its inventiveness, this is a fine addition to the grand tradition of British maltreatment of cartoon creatures. Buy this and laugh yourself hoarse. (Hoarse? Horse? Has anyone done them yet? Can I have a go..?)

© 2003 Andy Riley.

Volumes 1&2 (1982, 1984)

By Dick Giordano, Frank McLaughlin & various (Garko Systems/Skymarc Publications)
No ISBNs

These two books came out in the 1980s and as far as I know have never been reissued or updated, which is a shame as they are without doubt the absolute best handbooks for the serious fledgling comic artist. I’m reviewing them here in the vain hope that someone somewhere will get these terrific technique-bibles back into the hands of the keen, dedicated and hopeful…

It’s always comforting for a “how-to” book to be produced by someone you’ve actually heard of, and better yet if said producers are acknowledged as proficient in their craft. The two volumes produced by Giordano and McLaughlin as an offshoot of their foray into teaching drawing skills as The Comic Art Workshop is probably one the very best distance learning packages ever compiled (the only thing to rival them is the correspondence course of the Joe Kubert School – assuming they still do that) , and even after more than twenty years the insights into the disciplines of the commercial cartoonist are still as valid and vital as during those high-sales, high-volume days.

The first book begins with the set-up of a working area, with both artists’ own studios used as examples, and is followed by an extensive section on the use and care of drawing tools, including reference files and even photomechanical shading sheets – Letratone to you or me. Even in these computerized days there’s still a place for sticky paper and a really sharp knife… The section on the use of Polaroids may be slightly outdated, but if you own one, they’re still a damn sight more practical in many situations than a digital camera or phone.

Next comes a comprehensive chapter on the fundamentals of actual drawing – and yes, ask anyone, it still applies – THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR PROLONGED AND REGULAR LIFE DRAWING – with a great emphasis and many tips on that thorny perennial, Perspective. This might be a little technical for some but it’s good stuff, well thought out and well presented. If you’re serious about the job you need to be able to do it properly. The latter part of the book is given over to Drawing the Human Figure both realistically and in a super-heroic manner with especial consideration given to heads and hands, authored by John Romita Senior.

Volume Two starts with Stan (Juliet Jones, Kelly Green) Drake outlining his methods of dealing with design layout and emotion in realistic strips and then cartoonist Mel (Boomer) Casson deals with pencilling humorous comic strips, using not just his own work but examples from Hagar the Horrible, Beetle Bailey and others. John Byrne writes extensively on storytelling, with particular emphasis on panel placement, establishing shots, use of angles and the staging of the panel and the page, all of which seems pretty obvious until you go into print having got it wrong!

Frank McClaughlin contributes a brief chapter on adapting real people into cartoons or caricatures and Dick Giordano returns to the subject of storytelling, dealing with layout and graphic narration, credible designs, movement, showing how to lead the reader’s eye (‘directing traffic’), designing characters and even providing some useful design exercises for the fledgling creator. Storyboard artist Mel Greifinger closes the lesson with a dissertation on narrative and context, and a short run-down on markers and materials which has greater relevance to cartoonists today when everybody has access to computers and scanners.

Although probably hard to find and long overdue for updating and re-release these books are an absolute godsend for people just past the absolute beginner stage, when they’re still full of bad habits and misconceptions, but determined to try for a career in comics.

©1982 Garko Systems. ©1984 Skymarc Publications. All Rights Reserved.
All Characters used for illustrative purposes © their respective copyright holders.