Saturday Evening Post, January 3, 1959

The first Saturday Evening Post of 1959 gives us an ice skating gag. "Artist Alajalov, who depicts the Wollman Rink in New York's Central Park (give or take a few details), could never make ice skates behave, but he was a whiz on roller skates," reveals an interior blurb.

So nice to see an actual gag on the cover; especially a racy Moms-I'd-Like-to-Double-Lutz sorta gag. Let's take a look at the interior gag cartoons.
Ted Key gives us a great gag. Bounce! Bounce! Bounce! Big Brother Boss is watching you!

Vahan Shirvanian sold to top markets like Reader's Digest all his productive life. This same year, 1959, he won the National Cartoonists Society Gag Cartoon Division Award.



It's New Year's and it's 1959. Drunks were fodder for humor back then. This was, after all, the era of Thirsty Thurston!


Al Johns gives us an Inuit (they used to be called "Eskimo") gag that is becoming less funny what with the ol' globe warming up and all.

Above: some things change, some don't.

Above: a wordless cartoon that still works. Although in-line skates are the way most go today, the design of the sleigh is unchanged.

Barney Tobey is a master of the inky wash. Look at those breezy lines!

Dahl shows, without using any words, that the only thing that you should not resist is temptation.


Are there still hurdy gurdy monkeys?


Around here, in the frozen Northern New England area, a lot of the pasty white teenagers go to tanning booths so as to look a Hollywoody, trendy toasty brown. I found the above cartoon by Gene Carr pretty relevant.


Chon Day gives us a great gag expertly depicted in simple line and wash.


And, of course, Ted Key's Hazel panel ends this issue.

-- Edited from a January 6, 2008 blog entry.