YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW! Part Three

Above: a 1955 cartoon by Jeff Keate; relevant then, relevant now.

Part three of a selection of gag cartoons from the book titled YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW! , edited by Lawrence Lariar and published by Dodd, Mead and Company. It's copyright 1955 by Mr. Lariar.


Salo was one of the four Roth brothers who drew gag cartoons.


Argumentative spouses became Bob Barnes' bread and butter. A year after this book was published, he began his run 16 year run on the syndicated newspaper panel THE BETTER HALF. In 1958, he received an NCS Division Award for the feature.


Norman Hoifjeld gives me a laugh due to the goofy smiles the husband and wife exhibit. Scan biographical information about Mr. Hoifjeld exists. I know he did magazine gag cartoons in the 50s and 60s, with his work appearing in Baseball Digest and some of the Charlton magazines.

Did Goldstein knowingly or unwittingly draw the wife to look like she's wearing one of those striped shirts like a football referee?



It's the composition -- the fact that are eyes are drawn to the little wiggle lines by the exposed toes -- that Bill Harrison's cartoon works.


Here is Al Ross, another one of those four Roth brothers. He changed his last name from Roth to Ross. Al would develop an even sketchier style as the decades progressed. Oh, and here's a link to Arlen Roth's blog, with a photo of Al from December 2009. Arlen is Al's son.



I like how better dressed everyone was back then. Jim Whiting even makes sure there's a sharp crease in the male guest's slacks.



John Norment (1911-88) was a very busy fellow: a correspondent and photographer during the war, he would later, working for the Sundbloom Studio in Chicago, photograph all of the Coca Cola Santa Clauses. In addition to massive freelance work, John was an editor for Dell Publications. He won the National Cartoonists Society's Silver T-Square for editing The Cartoonist NCS journal. And there's a lot more I'm leaving out. He has a very good Web site devoted to his paintings, as well as an extensive bio. There is even a Zazzle store, managed by his niece, where you can buy one of his designs on a mouse pad.

More Barnes, more marital dischord for laffs.




Jack Markow had such a vervy line style.


Wilkinson reminds us of a time when a monkey named J. Fred Muggs was cohosting The Today Show.


George Wolfe shows the woman behind the man, egging him on, out of the house and upwards and onward.




Reamer Keller is one of my favorite cartoonists. Even for this simple layout, he gives us a bird's eye point of view, which gives a fresh dynamic to the composition.

I liked this cartoon by Mr. Boime, whose work I had not seen before. So far as I can make out, this may be Albert Boime (1933-2008), who dabbled in cartooning when he was in the army, and went on to get get his Master's from Columbia. He became a prominent art historian, leaving, so far as I can tell, the cartooning world behind. All this is according to the Dictionary of Art Historians.


Here are links to all of YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW!

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three
• Part four
• Part five
• Part six
• Part seven
  

YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW! Part Two

Part two of a selection of gag cartoons from the book titled YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW! , edited by Lawrence Lariar and published by Dodd, Mead and Company. It's copyright 1955 by Mr. Lariar.


















Here are links to all of YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW!

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three
• Part four
• Part five
• Part six
• Part seven
  

YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW! Part One

Here is part one of a selection of gag cartoons titled YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW! , edited by Lawrence Lariar and published by Dodd, Mead and Company. It's copyright 1955 by Mr. Lariar.


Virgil VIP Partch with the casual pain associated with marriage.



Some of these, like Currier's above, are simple sitcom put-downs. Mean and none too clever.


I saw Harrison's gag coming ...


Bo Brown with some excellent wavy linework.


From active to passive. Martin Giuffre reminds us that there was a time when people went out into the world, to their club, dressed in silly attire. Now we all stay in and watch a rerun of Jackie Gleason doing the above.


I like Kaufman's gags a lot.


George Wolfe with the clueless woman driver.



Tom Zib concedes marriage is a battlefield.




Pete Wyma, known for his girly cartoons, contributes a mother-in-law joke.



I like Henry Boltinoff's explanation here -- but it's still no way to treat a lady.

I like the moment that Clyde Lamb chose to depict: the moment just after the violent ripping of the paper from hubby's hands.


Bernhardt has a long gag line with a sweet putdown at the end that makes sense of the bitter marriage conceit that is the book's hallmark.


Cartoons signed "Corka" were the husband and wife team of John Cornin & Zena Kavin. More here.


Dam McCormick's cartoon did make me laugh.


I like that Burr Shafer chose to let the reader imagine the off-screen struggle between husband and wife.

Here are links to all of YOU'VE GOT ME – AND HOW!

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three
• Part four
• Part five
• Part six
• Part seven

Video: Brad Bird's 1980 Trailer for Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT

Via GeekyTyrant, here is Pixar's Brad Bird's 1980 pencil test for a movie version of Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT.

Steven Paul Leiva has the background:

"In 2008 as Frank Miller's live action feature film based on Will Eisner's 'The Spirit' was being released I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times on the time, back in 1980, when I became involved with Brad Bird and Gary Kurtz (producer of the first two 'Star Wars' movies) in trying to get into production an animated feature based on 'The Spirit' In that piece, which you can read here: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncate... I spoke of a pencil test "trailer" for the our proposed film that was made by Bird along with several classmates from Cal Arts, most of whom were working at Disney at the time. Quite a few people who read the article contacted me about seeing the film. I did have it on an old VHS, but it was deep in storage at the time plus as I did not really own the film, I told them they would have to look elsewhere to find a copy. Later, I found the VHS and put it aside. Recently Andrea Fiamma, an Italian journalist writing on the subject for the website Fumettologica  asked again if the film could be seen. As it is a small piece of animation history, I've decided to post it here."

Bill Peet's Magazine Cartoons

Bill Peet was a long-time Disney artist, not only working on all of the major animated releases from Snow White to 101 Dalmatians, but also contributing immensely to the choices of these projects, as well as to the writing. I had no idea that he tried his hand at gag cartooning as well. Here are a few from his wonderful Caldecott Award-winning autobiography BILL PEET AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

He sent them to the top markets of the day: Collier's, True, the Post and The New Yorker. They were all rejected. From The New Yorker he received this note:

"Your humor is too undisciplined, but we would like to see more of your drawings."

Bill writes in his book:

"That small glimmer of hope wasn't nearly enough to spur me on. Doing cartoons week after week, even if I sold them all, would be frustrating work."

Bill would go on to focus on children's books, creating thirty-six books. A lot of them were based on stories he would make up to tell his own kids.