Powerhouse Pepper by Basil Wolverton -- Who’ll Guard the Bodyguard?

Powerhouse Pepper 4-pager
from Tessie the Typist #10 June 1947
story and art by Basil Wolverton

Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper appeared in various comic books published by Timely Comics, the 1930s and 1940s precursor of Marvel Comics, from 1942 through 1952. The strip was characterized by alliterative, rhyming dialogue, screwball comedy and throwaway gags in background.

Stumble Inn by George Herriman

There's a lot of George Herriman's Krazy Kat being reprinted these days, but not so many people are familiar with one of his other newspaper comic strips from the 1920's, Stumble Inn.

Stumble Inn is kind of like Fawlty Towers in that it all takes place in a small hotel with a small cast of regular characters...

The Main characters are:
Uriah Stumble,

-- the long-suffering proprietor of the eponymous hotel...

Mr. Owl-Eye,

the "house dick"
(or hotel detective, if you please...)

Mr. Weewee (oui, oui)

the French chef who works in the kitchen

and Joe Beamish --

a character who does absolutely nothing but sleep in the soft chairs in the lobby. I gather from the strip that he's not a paying guest, but rather just a lazy local who takes up space. It's amazing how much mileage George Herriman can get out of a character that never so much as opens his eyes!

Oh -- and a never-ending supply of "guests"

that can "stumble in" to the strip for added comedy situations.

Okay -- enough intro!
__________________________________

On with today's Stumble Inn comic strip ...

Here's the whole Stumble Inn comic strip at 300dpi...

Yes, folks...this giant 6-panel strip is a DAILY comic strip! It measure about 6 inches tall by 12 inches wide. Too big to fit in my scanner. It's bigger than today's Sunday strips! I bought a small run of 26 consecutive comic strips on eBay a few years ago, and every single one of them has just as much love and detail and early 20th century urban funkiness as this one does.

I love when Herriman is drawing in this mode. It reminds me of his illustrations for the Archy and Mehitabel books.

His pen strokes are so assured and bouncy, filling his cartoons with vim and vigor!

According to Allan Holtz at The Stripper's Guide, George Herriman's Stumble Inn ran 10/30/1922-1/9/1926. That's right in the middle of his Krazy Kat output. George Herriman worked on at least 27 different comic strip titles in his life, and oftentimes many different strips ran at the same time. During his 1913-1944 run on Krazy Kat, he also concurrently created strips such as this one and Baron Bean ( I always liked that play on words: barren bean = empty head. I love it when people called someone's head their "bean.")

There's a nice example of a Stumble Inn color Sunday page HERE.

On a personal note, it is the cartooning genius of George Herriman (along with Roy Crane, and Harvey Kurtzman) that got me really excited about the boundless possibilities of cartooning. Now that there are so many reprint projects going on, I urge you to seek out the work of these "old masters" of cartoon art.

Mister Breger and the Beaurocratic Genie

Dave Breger was the creator of the WW2-era comic strip, “Private Breger Abroad,” which later morphed into “G.I. JOE” for the U.S. Army’s own “Yank” newspaper. (Breger created the term GI Joe…but had nothing to do with the toys or cartoons that came much later)

When his character, “Private Breger” got out of the army after the war, his comic strip was reborn as “Mister Breger.”

This One-page filler comic is from the Katzenjammer Kids comic book #6, Autumn 1948

 
  

Here’s the whole page…click for a BIG version!

…and here’s a bonus page from the same comic…
”Right Around Home” by Dudley Fisher

“Tremendous Urgent Demand for Cartoonists” and other Vintage Art and Cartooning School Ads

“Regardless of how little you know
about cartooning now, you can easily qualify
for a position in this attractive,
high-salaried business.”
---------
“New Method Makes Cartooning
Astonishingly Easy to Learn!” -------

“You will be amazed at how quickly it teaches you to draw salable work…”

”Enjoy the fascinating life of a successful cartoonist – easy hours, freedom from routine, your own boss, and $3,000 to $15,000 a year for this work that is play!”
…and that’s in 1925 dollars! Sign me up!

…and see more ads like this at:

http://bit.ly/ArtistsMakeBigMoney
http://bit.ly/MasterCartooningAtHome
and http://bit.ly/AnimatorsNeeded
and http://bit.ly/HiddenTalent

How to Draw Cartoons the "Old-School Way" by animator Bill Nolan

A couple years ago, our pals at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive scanned in this "how-to-draw" book by animation pioneer William C. Nolan: "Cartooning Self-Taught"

Update: seems like all the old links to the Archive site are broken, so I'm posting all the images right here until they return to the Asifa Archive blog.

Bill Nolan is one of the hugest unsung heroes and animation -- is often credited with creating the rubber hose style of cartoons. It was Bill Nolan that helped Otto Messmer refine Felix the Cat into the bouncy, round, cartoony character that he became in the mid-20s.

I just love the giant hands on all these characters, reminding me of Bud Fisher's Mutt& Jeff, Elzie C. Segar's Thimble Theater (Popeye) and George Herriman's Stumble Inn. It's kinda strange how different decades have different cartooning styles. I wouldn't mind at all if this old-timey "bigfoot" style started to make a comeback!

This book is a quick survey of the most basic building blocks of how to draw cartoon characters: There are different mini lessons on how to draw the head, hands, feet, full figures, action poses, animals and kids. Like a lot of books of this type, it doesn't go into great detail, but it's fun for what it is!