Jean Jeanie

Saturday Leftover Day.

Because I am not done scanning a new one tomorrow and an oldie today. But what an oldie it is.

I have shown some samples of Gill Fox's Jeanie before. Jeanie was one of those New York Herald Tribune strips that started out as a Sunday filler, got bumped to a Sunday only and later even had a daily version added. It was also one of the few of the Trib's strips that did get sold outside of the mother paper (although not enough to make it a lasting succes). The artist is no one less then on eof the most prolific artistic chameleons of the forties, fifties and sixties (and even beyond). Gill Fox started in the forties at Quality, where he drew a few strips of his own, but also added to the brand by being one of the few artists who could follow in Jack Cole's footsteps. After the war, he joined the famed advertising agent Johnstone and Cushing, where he apparently teamed up with Dik Browne. Their styles blended into a seemless unity, slicker than Browne on his own and more lively than Fox solo. There are several ads from that period where I can't say who did what or even if they worked together on it. At some point either was allowed to sign, both using exactly the same style. I have written an article about that period and Harry Haenigsen's influence on their styles for Hogan's Alley, which will appear in the next issue.

Somewhere along that time Fox was teamed up with Selma Diamond to create Jeanie. Diamond was at that point mostly known as a New York sketch writer, who worked for the famous Your Show of Shows, along with such greats as Mel Brooks and Mel Tolkin and a few others not named Mel. It is said that she could stand toe to toe with them, which is suite an accomplishment because she was not much over five foot. She later also worked as an actress and you may know her best as the gravely-voiced bailiff Selma Hacker on the tv comedy Nightcourt.

The humor in Jeanie is more subtle than that of her contemporaries at Your Show of Shows, which may show another side of her talent. The strip started as a one tier Sunday only. The larger size has confused some collectors of original art. A lot of it is still around, probably because Fox himself kept and sold it at the end of his career. I am not quite sure if she wroote them all herself. The early diary ones are probably hers, but after that it is possible someone else took over. On the other hand, on the first few one tier gags she seems quite capable of dling proper comic strip gags. The more storybased daily version (which you can see if you follow the links) may be less of her style. Somewhere in 1953, he left the strip (when it had added a time consuming daily) and Leon Winik took over in a similar but less inspiring style.

Recently I found and scanned a whole new set of Sundays. For this presentation I have gone back and recleaned all of my previous scans (I always keep the raw scans) so it adds up to a nice overview of this unjustly forgotten strip.

Goin Out Where The Voters Are

Satuday Backlog Day.

Here are the two Leon Winik Jeanie Sundays I should have uploaded Thursday.

The second panel in this strip shows why Winik was nor as good an artist as Fox. Why is the face of the guy blacked out? Where to focus in this panel. And in the first panel the grain on the beam's wood just attracts attention instead of framing the picture, as it would in Fox' work. From May 10 1953:


From May 17 1953:

You're My Wonder Wall.

Yesterday I showed you two Jeanie Sunday by the relative unknown artist Leon Winick. Later in the fifties Winick worked on a Dennis the Menace knock-of for publisher Stanmor. Funny enough, Gill Fox, his predesessor on Jeanie was at that time working on the Sunday only gag filler Bumper to Bumper for the Daily News in a similar (but much better accomplished) Ketcham-derived style.




As promised I also have more work by Howard "Howie" Post. In one interview he stated he packaged a funny comic for DC. I think he misremembered. In fact he packaged a book called Wonderland for publisher Stanmor in 1945 and 1946, whixh probably lead to his assignments for DC in 1946 and onwards into the forties.

Wonderland was clearly inspired by the succes of Walt Kelly's Fairy Tale Parade issues of Dell's Four Color series. Not only did Post ink his stories in a style inspired by Kelly, he also used Kelly' handinked panel borders and the subject of the book was funny fairy tales, just like kelly's. Half the stories in each issue were drawn by Post. He may have written or even sketched others. There were only eight issues. The cover of the seventh issue was one of the most Kelly-like. guess that either Post was asked to join the DC funny line based on that book or he went into the DC's offices himself and used it to get the new assignment. He immediately went to work on a new feature for New Fun. I showed the originals foir one of the stories a couple of months ago. Clearly DC paid better than Stanmor, because he obviously spent a lot more time on that series. He also took over Presto Pete, which isn't strange as he was doing a magician feature in Wonderland as well.

Here is the cover to Wonderland #7:


The cover to #3:


Two one page fillers which show Post's problem to me... he may have been an interesting artist, but he rally wasn't much of a writer. His biggest successes are when he is illustrating someone else's work, which I will illustrate in a couple of later posts. One day I will have to compare these to the one page filler Mother Goose Rhymes pages Walt Kelly did for Raggedy Ann and Andy for you.




The last one page filler is from Wonderland #8. This you can compare yourselve to the elephants in Kelly's Ellefunnies.