Stanley, I Presume

Saturday Leftover Day. Just a small contribution today, but if it is what I think it is, it's pretty rare. John Stanley is a revered comic book creator. He wrote (and for the first few years) drew the Nancy comic books, as well as lot of other comical fare. From his biography (by the greatly missed Bill Schelly) I know that he also dabbled in cartooning, at least at the start of his career. I had only seen some of the work he sold (or tried to sell) to The New Yorker. But before that, apparently, he tried out his chops in less respectable magazines. I found three cartoons signed Stanley in two issues of Gags Magazine a (then still broadsheet sized) cartoon magazine that was famous for buying up unsolf cartoons cheaply. I got most of the later ones for the three to ten Mort Walker cartoons you can find in then from 1948 onward), the earlier ones I bought just to see who was in them. If I was lucky thet had cartoons by Hank Ketcham or even Jack Cole. Other regulars were Reamer Keller, Paul Murray and Henry Boltinoff. Anyway, I am not enough of a John Stanley connaisseur to recognize the style or even the signature (most of his work in the forties and fifties wa unsigned and the (later) ones I have seen are too generic to compare). I am just putting this out there to see if anyone can help me with that. The gaps in the cartoons are because Gags in it's broadsheet format often put cartoons over each other, shifting hem every which way. I accidentally left out the caption of the first cartoon, but I add it later.

Stanley, I presume

Friday Comic Book Day.

John Stanley is all over the internet. His fans have found and shared his work everywhere. Here's my contribution, which I found in the last issue of Raggedy Ann and Andy (which I got for the Walt Kelly material). Apparently Stanley did a couple of stories like this for the later issues. It is quite fast and careless, but also a good exmple of Stanley's early looser work.

Dutch Cartoonist Evert Gerards has asked me to change the background of this blog to something lighter and easier to read. Since I guess he is a big Stanley fan, I am obliging him until more people ask me to change it back.

Peterkin Pottle from Raggedy Ann and Andy: