Robert Kinoshita (1914 - 2014) is best known as the designer of the two best known robots in science fiction movies and TV: Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet (1956) and "Robot" from the 1960s CBS TV show Lost in Space. Here are a few images.
Hat tip to Mack White for these images.
Cartoonist, graphic novelist, character designer for many clients (Netflix, Warner Brothers, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, Sony, and on and on) Stephen DeStefano talks about AI (Artificial Intelligence) for Anomalia Labs on his Facebook page and I wanted to share it here. This is copyright 2024 by Stephen DeStefano.
"The fine folks at @anomalia_labs asked me to write an essay about my thoughts on AI. I can’t write good essays so I wrote a comic strip instead. If you’re going to be in Europe this August, perhaps consider taking my Anomalia workshop? We’ll be talking about character design, changing styles and all things cartoons. #aiart #ai #artificialintelligence #digitalart #comics #comicsoninstagram #comicstrip #cartoons #cartoon #animation #characterdesign"
The garden as of June 15, 2024. Some carrot “volunteers” that I’m keeping on. Otherwise, it’s zinnias in most of the raised beds and tomatoes and cucumbers on the side porch. Everything is green and growing fast.
The University of the Arts in Philadelphia suddenly closed on Friday, June 7th.
"The school officially closed Friday, as hundreds of staff members were laid off and more than a thousand students were left without a place to earn a degree. The school's closure was announced just a week prior to its shuttering, which set off outcries and protests in the days that followed." - The Philly Voice
The Daily Cartoonist has more links here.
Stan and Jan Berenstain met as art students there in the 1940s. Their career in cartooning, before their kids' books -- before The Berenstain Bears series -- was long and varied and, unfortunately, pretty much unknown.
Last time, we looked at the gag cartoons that they created, and today we have their "Sister" series of cartoons. Like "Little Lulu" and "Hazel" before it, "Sister" was a regular magazine cartoon feature that appealed to a middle class audience. "Sister," however, did not go the newspaper syndication route or see life in comic books. Dick Buchanan has clipped twenty of this 1950s family gag feature and presents them now. Thanks and take it away, Dick!
---
BERENSTAIN GAG PANEL: SISTER
(1950 – 1952)
Stan and Jan Berenstain’s gag cartoons were in great demand by the editors of Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post and other national weekly magazines which were aimed at a family audience. Their cartoons dealt with young families and children and they hit the spot with readers.
In
1950 Collier’s cartoon editor Gurney Williams gave them the opportunity
to publish a regular gag panel cartoon and their contribution was
Sister. Sister was a high-spirited young girl whose misadventures were
always amusing and she became of popular Collier’s feature for several
years.
Here, for the first time in a long time, are some examples of this series . . . Take a look!
1. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s March 11, 1950.
2. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s April 22, 1950.
3. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s June 10, 1950.
4. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s October 21, 1950.
5. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s October 28, 1950.
6. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s November 18, 1950.
7. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s December 9, 1950.
8. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s December 16, 1950.
9. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s December 23, 1950.
10. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s February 17, 1951.
11. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s May 26, 1951.
12. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s July 21, 1951.
13. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s November 24, 1951.
14. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s December 29, 1951.
15. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s February 2, 1952.
16. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s March 1, 1952.
17. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s April 5, 1952.
18. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s April 19, 1952.
19. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s August 2, 1952.
20. JAN and STAN BERENSTAIN. Collier’s August 9, 1952.
- Edited from a May 5, 2021 blog entry.
Stan Mack has a new book out compiling his long-running Real Life Funnies.
There is a new podcast:
"'To do them one week at a time is one thing, all you have to do is hit that darned deadline. But to look at 20 years in front of you... it’s such a wide span of what New York was in those days.'
"Stan Mack is on the latest Virtual Memories show: 'Legendary cartoonist & artist Stan Mack pioneered documentary comics and bought New York’s multitudes to life with 'Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies' (RLF) in the Village Voice, now collected as 'STAN MACK’S REAL LIFE FUNNIES: The Collected Conceits, Delusions, and Hijinks of New Yorkers from 1974 to 1995' ( Fantagraphics)'. Listen here"
And, if you are in NYC tonight:
Ever wanted to see the art by Steve Ditko from the very first Spider-Man story? Get down to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. This from Sara Duke, Curator, Popular & Applied Graphic Art at The Library of Congress:
The New York Comic Convention, or NYCC, is a big, annual event -- whose prices are increasing substantially for its artists, as well as other exhibitors and fans. Billy Henehan writes about this in "NYCC ’24: The High Cost of Artist Alley at New York Comic Con" for ComicsBeat:
"It’s been common knowledge for years that New York Comic Con is an expensive convention, both for fans and professionals. Fans wandering Artist Alley at NYCC are not surprised to see artists charging more for sketches and signatures at NYCC compared to smaller shows like HeroesCon, Baltimore and Terrificon. The 'NYCC tax,' as it has come to be called in the sketch collecting community.
"It’s rare to find out just how much more artists are paying for their NYCC Artist Alley tables. ReedPop, the owner of NYCC, publishes the Artist Alley price right on the application on the NYCC site. But few people outside of artists applying for a table head to that part of the NYCC site. So when artist TC Ford announced on his Facebook that 'Artist Alley NYCC is $565…IF they accept you…', the community woke up to just how much artists are paying to present the products of their labor there.
"And that all caps 'IF' is very prescient. Despite the higher than ever Artist Alley table price, ReedPop will likely be turning people away when it comes to booking a table in Artist Alley at NYCC this year, as it has it years past.
"The Artist Alley table is just one of many costs involved at tabling at NYCC. Out of town artists have to contend with paying for hotels, travel and food. These costs will no doubt be passed down to fans, the ultimate consumer at NYCC, who may find their favorite comics pros charging even higher prices for signatures and sketches at NYCC compared to other shows or previous years.
"Artist Alley cost $525 at NYCC in 2023. This isn’t the only cost increase to happen at NYCC for 2024. Professional badges increased $15 from $85 to $100. And it’s not just professionals feeling the hit. Ticket prices went up across the board. Compared to last year, Four Day passes increased from $230 to $240. Individual day passes increased from $70 to $75. Even kids aren’t immune to the price hike. A NYCC Sunday Kids pass cost $25 in 2023, but was bumped up to $30 for 2024. Even the per ticket service fee that NYCC charges on each ticket went up this year, from $3.25 in 2023 to $3.50 in 2024. Four Day pass holders pay an even higher service fee. If you a bought a Four Day pass this year before they sold out, a service fee of $9.50 was tacked onto your order, bringing your cost up to $249.50 before tax and shipping charges.
"New York City is an expensive city for sure, but it wasn’t that many years ago that NYCC cost $65 for a Three Day pass. Now you can’t even get in the front door one day at NYCC for that price. Unfortunately, for both comics pros and comics fans, NYCC ’24 is shaping up to be the most expensive one yet."
I have tabled at a couple of conventions through the years. If you are fortunate enough to be in the National Cartoonists Society, you can have a space at their table and that helps solve that return on investment equation. A lot of people I met who tabled had a full-time non-comics job and that was how they paid the thousands of dollars in overhead. But with that formula, you are forever tethered to your job.
Karen Moy has written the "Mary Worth" comic strip for the past two decades. Image Credit: Mike Jee.
Mary Worth writer Karen Moy is interviewed by her alma mater, the Binghamton University News, about her twenty years of writing the Mary Worth comic strip.
"After working in medical advertising, Moy got a job as an assistant with Hearst Corporation, which owns King Features. She served as a comic strip ghostwriter when the need arose.
"'I said: ‘Yes, I can do it’ and submitted samples of my work,' she says. 'Based on those scripts, I was accepted as a temporary ghostwriter for other comic strips. When ‘Mary Worth’ needed a ghostwriter, I volunteered for that, too. I was already a fan of the ‘Mary Worth’ world, so it came easily to me and was a good fit.'
"In early 2004, Moy became the credited writer of the comic strip after John Saunders (son of original 'Mary Worth' writer Allen Saunders) died.
"Collaboration and inspiration
"Moy put her own touches on the strip after taking over the storytelling, introducing new characters and neighbors for Mary. For her first 12 years as writer, Moy worked with comic-book artist Joe Giella, a legendary illustrator who was an inker for DC Comics during the “Silver Age of Comic Books” in the late 1950s and 1960s. After retiring in 2016, Giella was replaced by June Brigman, who spent 16 years illustrating the “Brenda Starr, Reporter” comic strip (Brigman drew the 'Mary Worth'-style illustration on the cover of Binghamton University Magazine).
"'June has been doing this for so long that I have great faith in her,' Moy says. 'She has so much experience. Drawing ‘Brenda Starr,’ I knew she was familiar with a continuity strip, which requires more demands and details than a gag-a-day strip.'"
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