Who knew? I sure didn't know that King Features offered old gag cartoon panels for its clients! Below is the official descrip. from the KFS site:
Times may change, but the laughs are forever! Here are three "retro" gag panels from the King Features treasure chest: Laff-A-Day, Hubert by Dick Wingert, and Mister Breger by Dave Breger. Older readers may get an extra chuckle from scenes of travelling salesmen, 2-ton Chevies, and women sporting funny hats.
Above are the sample panels from the King Features site.I noticed the Laff A Day feature in a local free weekly. It was strange to see some of these fashions and cars and televisions with antennas and so on. I clipped some of them and saw some familiar post-war gag cartoonists' signatures.
I have seen a lot of these in the papers when they first appeared (archived, of course - I am not that old) abd have gotten the impression that thy were repackaged magazine cartoons anyway. I have samples by Boltinoff, Gerhard and Orehek. There was a similar series from a different syndicate, with better cartoons. Laff-A-Day wmust have been very cheap, because it as often used very small.
ReplyDeleteThere's some neat styles on display there, and it's fun to see Dave Breger again. Any idea who drew the very first one ("Certainly I love you for yourself alone...")? I don't see a signature but the style's familiar.
ReplyDeleteStill, except for retro nostalgia, I can't imagine there's much market for these. Can't blame King for raiding the vaults, though; they've got some solid gold buried in there.
These used to appear in the 60's in my local paper in Waterville, Maine. The ones shown here seem to be older than that. As I recall, a lot of them I read at that time were by Syd Hoff.
ReplyDeleteJeff P.
the other similar series I mentioned is called This Funny World and they seemed to have better material.
ReplyDeleteHi Ger! Don Orehek and some other cartoonists have mentioned the old Laff-A-Day feature to me, but before this local newspaper, I never saw it -- much less imagined it was still an offering from KFS. These all look to be pre-1960.
ReplyDeleteBrian, that "Certainly I love you for yourself alone..." looks very much like Milt Gross, but that's just a guess.
Jeff, it would be cool to read Syd Hoff in the paper every day, wouldn't it?!