Proxy

Saturday Leftover Day. 

 Due to a heatwave I have not been able to go upstirs and prepare some new scans. I did come across these original color guides to David Gantz's Moxie. Moxie was a failed proposal for a Pogolike strip in the early sixties, probably just before he sold Dudley D. (which you can see if you follow the link in the wordcloud). Moxie was featured in the short run Family Comics fake newspaper comics section that ran for only eleven weeks as a give-away for a Californian supermarket chain (again, a full sample is shown behind a link). I don't know if that was before or after the newspaper proposal (which actually made it to a complete syndicate offering) or if he was still developing it. Some of the strips in Family Comics look aas if they were failed proposals (by top talents, by the way). The syndicate offering is at the Billy Ireland Museum at Ohio State University and consists of a complete first daily storyline as well as a couple of promotional posters and ads. I have shown some of those earlier (again, follow the link in the word cloud). I like Pogo imitations almost as much as I like Pogo, and this one is a lot of fun.

 

Here is a photo I took of the promotional poster: 

 

Moxey M.

Saturday Leftover Day.

As part of my trip to the US I stayed a couple of days in Columbus, Ohio to visit the Billy Ireland Cartoon center, which has one or the largest collections of donated art by people from the cartoon and comic strip community, as well as the complete newspaper archives of the Francisco collection from Bill Blackbeard. They also had a huge collection of stuff that must have come from artist David Gantz himself, because it not only contained samples and clippings from his two most famous newspaper strips, Dudley D. (follow the link for samples) and Don Q. (which I have never been able to get hold of, so I haven't shown it yet). There were also a lot publicity materials from a strip I always believed had remained unsold, Moxy. Early versions of this charming strip about a Mouse and a Lion (equally inspired by Aesop's Fables and Pogo) had appeared in the short run Family comics, a mock Sunday newspaper which was produced by Zek Zekely for Californian grocery stores (again, follow the link for a complete sample). After that he tried to sell it to a syndicate and when that worked, they tried to sell it to newspapers. In the files at the Ohio State University was a whole sheet of newspaper ads, with actual papers named. So either it was sold and disappeared quickly or it was retracted just before the actual start because of insufficient papers joining in. Anyway, I plan to do larger article about those, but I though this would be a a great opportunity to show you two pieces of original promotion art made for this strip by Davind Gantz as well as a promotional one-sheet. The latter one was also in the Ohio collection, but I got these from various Internet sources. Also included in the library was a complete daily story in black and white proof, which I hope will one day be available.

Keystone Comics

Friday Comic Book Day.

Squat Car Squad was a slapstick series for Timely's Joker, created by Al Jaffee and later continued by David Gantz, most of which I have shared here. Who drew it when a final story turned up in Charlton's 'let's see what we have lying around' title Jack-in-the Box #12, I don't know. The Grand Comics Database suggest Joel Beck, whom I don't know. But they agree it must have been from some sort of garage sale, either from Timely's owner or the artist.

All For The Family

Saturday Leftover Day.

In 2007 Allen Holtz devoted a series of posts on his unmissable Stripper's Guide to a specialty newspaper section called Family Comics. Like me, he was alerted to it's existance by the fact that Ebay seller (and famous oriinal art dealer) Lowery had been selling original pages from the the strips in these sections. Without evidence of publication, they seemed to be either samples or unused pages by a lot of familiar names in the industry, most of which may or may not have been based on the West Coast (California) rather than the East Coast (New York). But they were pretty well done, stamped 'sponsored comics' on the back and some strips were represented with several samples. I myself even got two of them, one three tier half tabloid page of David Gantz' Wee 3 and a stylish full page of Gill Fox' The Mayor. Allan discovered these strips were actually used in a free give-away in Californian supermarkets, called Family Comics. Here is what he wrote initially:

"Family Comics. It consisted of 16 pages -- 11 pages of color Sunday-style comic strips, four pages of black and white recipe and homemaker articles, and an ad page on the back cover. The 'magazine' was on newsprint and priced at 5 cents.

The magazine was marketed to food store chains, mainly in California. I can vouch for two chains that used it - Shopping Bag Food Stores and Hughes Markets. It may have been marketed to other businesses as well, but for that I have no evidence. The food stores got their name in the masthead, ads on the back cover plus sometimes an additional ad inside. The marketing gimmick was obviously to get kids to beg their moms to shop at that grocery store chain every week so that junior could keep up with the funnies. To that end, the strips were tipped in favor of continuing adventures.

The first issue of Family Comics was dated the week of May 4-10 1959, and the latest issue I have is #10, dated July 6-12. If there are later issues we could probably determine it easily enough from original art as most of the strips were coded with the issuing week. For instance, on the strips in issue #10 each has the code 7/6-12 lettered on it."

After this he found out that the man behind this was former George MacManus assistant Zeke Zekley (through his outfir 'sponsored comics')

Allan finally got hold of an almost complete run of the publication that used these strips and discussed almost every one and it's possible artist. After that he sold his run of the section and I don't know why I didn't get it, but I believe I was outbit or sniped at the end. Darn. I would have loved to have seen all of them, especially that beautifull Gill Fox strip and Norman Maurer's contribution Happy Days 1969, which must be one of the smartest and best drawn things he ever did.

Ever since I have been looking for my own copies of Family Comics without luck. A couple of months ago I finally came across one single copy in excellent state. Sadly it is the same issue Allan seems to have used for his presentation, but that does not hold me back to share the whole thing with you here with some comments of my own. Here's to hoping the rest will follow before The End of Blogs.

I will use the information Allan has unearthed abd urge you to have a look at The Stripper's Guide for more.It may take me a while to annotated every one, so please come back for more.

Dave Davely

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

David Gantz was a classmate of Al Jaffee in the forties. For a long time he worked in comics. He even joined up with a guy called Brown to do realistic work, but nothing really stuck. In 1959 Al Jaffee got a newspaper strip Tall Tales)  at the Herald Tribune Syndicate. At that point, Gantz was also trying to sell comic strip ideas. One of them was called Moxy and was a reworking of a Pogo-like strip he had done for Zek Zekeley's Family Comics, a line of 'Sunday' comics done especially as give-aways for a chain of grocery stores in California. When he failed to sell Moxy, he tried again with a more bland subject, the story of a man and his dog. The dog was called Dudley D., which I take it stands for Dudley Dog. Zek Zekeley (who himself had done a newspaper strip called Dud Dudley) must have been an inlfuence on the name. The dog could not talk, but we did see his very human thoughts. Th strip ran from 1961 to 1964 before it fizzled out, like many Herald Tribune strips before it. Maybe the blandness of the strip itself was to blame, but the Herald Tribune Syndicate had a very poor record of selling it's strips and a couple of years later a very similar  strip, drawn in a similar style about a  Basset Hound and his boss, called Fred Basset became a world wide succes which is still running to this day. Fred Basset was created by the Scottish cartoonist Alex Graham in 1963, although I am in no way mplying he might have seen Dudley D. I am just wondering why that strip took off and this one didn't.

I have shown other samples of this strip before, both in color and black and white. The balck and white Sunday from december 196 is from a short period when the color engravers on the Herald Tribune were on strike. All of the other strips mentioned have been shown as well. Except for Fred Basset, which you'll have to find on your own.

Waiting for D.

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

I thought I had some more color images of David Gantz' Dudley D. They will have to wait until another time. Here are more of the dalies of this gentle, but well drawn strip.

Jan 3 1962:


Jan 5 1962:


Jan 7 1962:


Jan 8 1962:


Jan 9 1962:


Jan 10 1962:


Jan 11 1962:



Jan 12 1962:


Jan 13 1962:


Jan 14 1962:


May 15 1962:



Jan 1 1963:


Jan 3 1963:


Jan 4 1963:


Jan 5 1963:


Jan 08 1963:


Jan 8 1963:


Jan 9 1963:


Jan 10 1963:


Jan 11 1963:

Jan 30 1963:


Jan 8 1964: