Excelsior!

Saturday Leftover Day.

I have shown most of these Sundays before in various forms, but never this complete. 

In January 1951 Stan Lee (and signed) wrote three episodes for Chad Grothkopf's Sunday only comic strip version of the popular children's television puppet series Howdy Doody. The series had started earlier in 1950 and the writing was co-credited to Milt Neil, a former Disney animator, who had perfected the design of the Howdy Doody puppet. Some writers assume that Neil was also the writer of the strip, although that abillity is in none of his other credits. The style of the strip is totally that of Grothkopf. Anyway, his name disappeared from the strip in early December (though most papers were slow in adjusting it on the top). All of the following December jokes are simple enough to have been thought of by Grothkopf himself.

According to several sources he asked his friend Stan Lee (whom he had work for at Timely and who had written one of the episodes of his earlier newspaper Sunday only strip Famous Fiction, Under The Flag anonymously) to write some episodes for him. They appeared in January 1951 and all three of them were signed.  They are also typically Stan Lee gags, with the same bad puns he was using for the comic series My Friend Irma he did with Dan DeCarlo. In his storyline, he introduced a kid version of the Featherman character that was introduced in the tv show as an adult indian chief (very much in the manner of that time).

Here you can see the run-up to that moment in The Commercial Appeal. They added the strip in November 1950, starting with the first strip which had first been made for much earlier that year. But as you can see it has no date, but rather 'number 1'. After that there are some single visual gags, probably written by Grothkopf himself. Then the usual holiday greetings and then the start of the Featherman story.

Featherman is now a little indian kid, who lives in an indian reservation and gets introduced at Howdy Doody's school. At the end of the gag, there is a figure in a large hat peeking in the classroom and the text is added: "Who's the mystery man at the window?" The next week we see it seems to be an adult indian, but we don't get to know yet what he wants from Howdy and/or Featherman. In the third episode the mystery man is knocked out at a barber's shop and we are told his identity will be revealed in the next week.

That next week is no longer signed by Stan Lee, but I think it was written by him, too. First of all, the whole sequence leads up to the reveal. Secondly, the same type of misunderstanding puns are used. Thirdly, when the mysterious 'indian' is finally revealed he turns out to be Spencer Spout, the Talent Scout - who seems to be a caricature of Stan himself. The long face, the premature balding head... and his hucksterlike attitude, when he says he is a talent scout, who wants to take Featherman to Holywood.

The story goes on for another eight episodes. Featherman (and his new friends, of course) go to Holywood, where is discovered and becomes so famous that he has to return home to escape the fans. I don't think that Stan Lee wrote the whole story. Although it does follow his style of continued narrative with gags along the way, the gags themselves usually are not in his style. The episode of February 14 is anybody's guess. The gag "Can I take your bag - No, go find-um your own!" is something Stan would write and the sarcastic joke "Let's do something different - I know, let's do a cowboy movie!" could be his as well. But then he would have started (and possibly done) the rest of the storyline as well and I don't think he did.

Anyway, now you can see for yourself.  As I said, I showed many of these before, but never this complete. But some of the others were in color, some were the full half page and some were both. If you want to see those, just follow the link.

I am also selling two of the Stan Lee Sundays and some more on Ebay right now. Get them while they are hot.

 

Tell Them Rube, Lou, Tom, Neal, Mel and Bil Sent You

In the pas t few weeks I was able to clean some scattered comic strip ads, enough to fill another post. Most of these are familiar to my regular visitors, but that doesn't make them less commentable.

Jack Bett's Peter Pain is such a familiar face to collectors of Sunday newspaper sections of the forties and fifties that we seem to forget how many of these the forgotten artist did. Ben-Gay was one of two pf Bett's regular accounts, the other was Neddy Nestle for Nestlé chcolate milk. He did one every two weeks for each for over 15 years... and very little else. An impressive output, but when Betts and his ad characters disappeared, so did his name from the comi history books.

Another longrunning ad seres was the one for Camels sigarettes. They had many formats but often used famous and semi-famous names to sell their sticks. Mostly semi-famous, so this ad with Dick Powell is in fact a rarity.

Sunday newspaper ads started in the thirties. At that point they were usually done by illustrators rather than comic people.

The lettering was similarely not in the comic book or newspaper strip style and often (like the drawing style) quite stilted.

In the forties and fifties two things started happening. Some of the illustrators started working more in a comic book style. And comic book artist started to work in the 'illustrators' style. This is an example, which looks as if it could have been done by an early practitioner at the Johnstone and Cishung agance, Stan Drake. But I am not sure.

Another frequent contributor at Johnstone and Cushing was Creig Flessel, who had come from comic books but slicked up pretty well. He kept more of his Milton Caniff influence (very popular with comic book artists because of the time saving shortcuts it offered) than some of the others.

For a short period Milt Caniff and his friend and studio-mate Noel Sickles worked together in advertising under the pseudibymn Paul Arthur. This ad is very much in their vein, but not by them, I think.

A later sample (I am doing these alphabetically, rather than by date) by what seems to be Tom Scheuer. Scheuer joined Johnstone and Cushing and learned a lot from regular artist Carl Wexler. Neal Adams joined a couple of years later and took the Wexler style to a whole new level. Scheuer then began to take from Adams in such a way that it is sometimes impossible to tell them apart.

Mel Casson was a New York cartooonist, who created the delightful stip It's Me, Dolly with Alfred Andriola. He had a very modern style, but seems to have dumbed it down in later years. He was a client of Tony Mendez, who had a lot of his stuff in her files (kept at the Billy Ireland Museum in Columbus, Ohio). It shows a very hip and fresh cartoonist - more than this ad does.

A later ad, which looks as if it could be the later work of Carl Wexler.

This time I am pretty sure the ad is by Stan Drake. He has said his work was appreciated so much that he was one of a few artists allowed to sign his work, but I have never seen one and neither is this.

Not from Johnstone and Cushing, but interesting nonetheless. Al Hirschfeld was a prolific artist of immense importance to American culture and I am surprised that no one has ever presented a complete list of his work. I have shown many previously unknown samples on my blog and here he is again in an ad for a movie theater magazine.

Another longrunning series tht will have to be included if there ever is a book done. Started by Rube Goldberg and continued by a series of Johnstone and Cushing artists deep into the forties.

The illustrators' style in full force.

Two examples of the long running Philip Morris series of ads done by Lou Fine. The first one, a regular one (of which I have shown many if you follow the link) and the second one one of a few of the last ones, when Philip Morris became the sponsor of the I Love Lucy show and Fine switched to Lucille Ball and Ricky.

Another Lou Fine ad from a series that ran only for a couple of years, but keeps impressing. The ghostlike character was invented at the end of the previous decade and may have been an influence on many such characters in other ads as well as comic books.

This looks like Lou Fine's work and I have stated so in the past, but lately I have been wondering if it isn't the work of one of the more popular illustrators, Gunnar Peterson, who adapted his painted style to linework.

A very uniqua ad, which seems to have been done especially for the local area of this paper (The Milwaukee Journal). Only today I saw that the credit for this ad says it is by Freberg and Albertinco (?). Could this be Stan Freberg? The puppets, the ad connection and the humor seem to fit. Is there a Freberg fan out there who can enlighten me?

Another `lou Fine series, Sam Spade for Wildroot hair tonic, did not only appear in the newspapers, but it was recut to be used in the comics as well.O= Another ad strips that got this treatment was Captain Tootsie.

A newer one, but I had never seen it before, an ad with thepopular cartoon series by Bil Keane.

One of the artists who continued the Pepsi Cops strips was later Howdy Doody Sunday strip artost Chad Grothkopf.

Howdy's Partner

Saturday Leftover Day.

I was first attracted to Chad Grothkopf's Howdy Doodie because for four or five episodes in January 1951, the Sunday only strip was written by Stan Lee. But looking at the other epsides (espeicall the three iers) I strated to like it more and more. Grothkopf had a remrkable style and when he didn't hack the pages out, it was really something.