Comics: Felix The Cat In Mother Goose Land

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.


Recently, Marc Deckter shared his collection of Milt Gross Sunday pages with us. That gift just keeps on giving... the back sides of the Milt Gross pages featured Otto Messmer's classic Felix the Cat!


You might also remember our recent posting of 1932 Felix The Cat Sunday pages. Messmer was one of the most influential cartoonists of all time, in both comics and animation. John K called Messmer "the founding father of the American style of animation".


Here's a batch of Sunday pages from late 1930 and early 1931. They deal with Felix's visit to Mother Goose Land. Enjoy!









Many thanks to Marc Deckter for sharing his great collection with us! There's a great book packed with Felix strips... It's called Nine Lives To Live: A Classic Felix Celebration. Pick it up at Amazon. You'll be glad you did.

For more great comic strip action, see... Otto Messmer's Felix The Cat 1932; Milt Gross Sunday Pages and Dailies Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five and Part Six; Chic Young's Blondie, Rube Goldberg's Side Show; George Lichty's Grin and Bear It, Cliff Sterrett's Polly & Her Pals Part One, Part Two and Part Three; and Harrison Cady's Birds' Eye Views

If you enjoyed these comics, you owe it to yourself to check out Digital Funnies. Jonathan Barli is hard at work on an important project- documenting and restoring early cartoons and comics in digital form. He offers a wide variety of fascinating material for sale on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. Please take a moment to visit the Digital Funnies website, and let him know that the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive sent you.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Comics: Otto Messmer's Felix The Cat 1932

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.


You might remember our earlier posts featuring the work of Jonathan Barli at Digital Funnies... Dudley Fisher's Right Around Home and Harrison Cady's Boys Life Bird's Eye Views. Jonathan was kind enough to donate a large portion of his collection of meticulously restored scans of vintage comic strips to the Archive, and many of them are for sale on CD-ROM at his website. I encourage you to scoop up all of his collections. He's got a treasure trove of great comics!


Today we feature the depression era comic strips of Otto Messmer. Felix the Cat was the first really famous cartoon star and his popularity is due in large part to Messmer's creativity and craftsmanship. Messmer was a quiet man who eschewed the limelight. For many years, Pat Sullivan took the full public credit for Messmer's work. After Sullivan's death, Messmer quietly continued to pen the Felix strip until 1954.


John Canemaker wrote an excellent book on the history of Felix titled, Felix: The Twisted Tale of the World's Most Famous Cat. It's currently out of print, but if you see it in a used book store, snap it up. It's one of the best books on animation history.

Here are a selection of Felix Sunday pages from 1932...







These fabulous scans of original Sunday pages were provided to the Archive by Jonathan Barli of Digital Funnies. Jonathan is hard at work on an important project- documenting and restoring early cartoons and comics in digital form. He offers a wide variety of fascinating material for sale on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. Please take a moment to visit the Digital Funnies website, and let him know that the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive sent you.

Read how Felix the Cat became a Cultural/Historical Landmark in Los Angeles this week.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Comics: Dudley Fisher's Right Around Home

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.



You might remember an earlier post I did on the "Bird's Eye View" comics from Boy's Life magazine by Harrison Cady. (If you haven't seen it, by all means, check it out!) Here is a similar format comic, courtesy of our friends at Digital Funnies... "Right Around Home".

Dudley Fisher was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1890. He studied to be an architect, but dropped out to take a job as a layout artist at the Columbus Dispatch. After returning from WWI, Fisher created a comic strip called "Jolly Jingles". Year after year, he cranked out rhyming verse until he couldn't stand it any more. In December of 1937 he decided to take a break from jingles and draw what Christmas on his grandmother's farm would be like (if he had a grandmother and she lived on a farm!) He drew it as one big full page panel and readers immediately took to it and clamored for more. King Features picked up the strip and titled it "Right Around Home". These great Sunday pages date from early in the run- 1939.












When asked by a young artist what sorts of pens and paper to use to draw cartoons, Fisher recommended not worrying about things like that, saying "I feel certain that Michaelangelo could have done a masterpiece on meat wrapping paper with a toothbrush and shoe polish. It's all got to come out of the artist- not the ink bottle."

These fabulous scans of original Sunday pages were provided to the Archive by Jonathan Barli of Digital Funnies. Jonathan is hard at work on an important project- documenting and restoring early cartoons and comics in digital form. He offers a wide variety of fascinating material for sale on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. Please take a moment to visit the Digital Funnies website, and let him know that the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive sent you.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

4.29.09
.

Stumble It!