Stop or I'll Scream!

There is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about with gag cartoons, to heavily paraphrase Ratty from The Wind in the Willows.

STOP OR I'LL SCREAM, a collection of cartoons from Collier's edited by its cartoon editor, Gurney Williams, was published by Robert M. McBride and Company in 1945 and copyright same.

"An Album of more than 300 funny drawings by nearly fifty of Collier's cartoonists," says the interior frontispiece. Regardless of me bandying about $5 words like "frontispiece," here is, for your blog reading pleasure, but a wee fraction of the interior.



George Lichty's style always looked like his ink line was just slightly out of control. His eccentric characters would later get daily exposure with his Grin and Bear It syndicated daily panel.

Bo Brown's cartoon reminds me that not that much has changed with bus interiors in 62 years. We still got the straps, the poles, and the rude drivers.



Sam Cobean contributes a wordless adventure. Like I mentioned yesterday, he would have been better remembered to today had he not passed away too early in a car crash.

Another Cobean. Lovely touch: the dropped hat & cane.

Virgil Partch or "VIP." Another cartoonist killed in a car wreck! At least VIP had a couple more decades' of work out there and he's still well remembered today. Just go and Google the guy! A great, unique gag.

Reamer Keller contributes a pre-sexual harassment era gag that would garner rejection after rejection these days.

By the end of the war, a lot of the ladies were involved in running industry -- but then again, if you didn't all ready know that, then you picked it up painlessly from the cartoon, didn't you!?



Dead pan, spot on Chon Day shows us the power of simple lines and a bit of wash.

-- Edited from a blog entry dated October 15, 2007.