Seems like my Dad was a Stan Lee fan before I’d ever heard of the guy. I uncovered this hand-me-down in one of the boxes from my house disaster of a few years ago. More “You Don’t Say!” is a little-seen non-Marvel Universe project by Stan, consisting of his humorous dialogue affixed to photos of political figures of the day, namely President Kennedy and crew.
Continue reading Stan Lee’s More “You Don’t Say!”
Here’s the last of the Ed-U-Card decks featuring flip animation that I found while going through boxes. Unlike the others, this deck features original characters, not licensed properties.
The illustrations are really beautiful; I’m sorry I couldn’t find an artist credit on the package.
Mixies is a game designed to be played as a solitaire game, or as a memory-type game for 2 to 3 players.
Continue reading Mixies!
Yet another Ed-U-Card game with flip animation on the back. This one, called Easy 3’s, features an eclectic assortment of characters from the King Features Syndicate stable. It has characters from Thimble Theatre, but not Popeye. It has Dagwood, but not Blondie. And the animation stars that peculiar mutant kid, Henry. When I was a kid I thought Henry and Popeye were related because they had similar chins and were similarly homely.
The game itself enjoins players to collect three fragments of each character to form a whole. The instructions call it “A new game of educational fun for children. Helps train powers of observation and relationship needed in developing reading skills.”
I hope you enjoy the show!
Another find from a corner of the closet. According to the cover blurb, this book is the first published collection of cartoons by Virgil Partch, who identified himself on his cartoons as VIP. ‘Funny Cartoons by VIP’ is a book I discovered and read when I was a young kid.
Another Ed-U-Card game, with flip animation on the back of the deck. Play-wise, this game (called Casper and his TV Pals) is functionally identical to the Popeye deck, with Harvey Comics characters swapped out to replace the Thimble Theater bunch.
Among the characters selected for use in the game is Little Audrey, who was created by Paramount Pictures’ Famous Studios to replace the Little Lulu series. She later starred in a comic book series first published by St. john, and later by Harvey Comics.
Found! Perhaps the only existing Craig Boldman/Joe Kubert art collaboration.
I was one of the early students at The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey, and as such, would occasionally be treated/subjected to the terrifying advent of Joe Kubert, comic book legend, looking over my shoulder while I was still trying to find my way around a piece of drawing paper and which end of a pencil was up. And once in a while, he’d excuse me from my chair and say, “Let me show you…”
Continue reading Brush With Joe Kubert!
I went looking for one thing; found this instead!
Yesterday while rummaging in the basement I uncovered a box of keepsakes I had all but forgotten. Among the items in the box were several decks of card games I and my siblings (as kids) used to entertain ourselves during visits to our grandparents.
This Popeye Card Game is one of several we played that were manufactured by Ed-U-Cards Mfg. Corp L.I.C. of New York. The instructions to this game states that the rules are similar to “Rummy.” The attraction for me, however, was the flip-card animation that was a part of many of these Ed-U-Card games, as you can see in the video.
Continue reading Popeye Card Game!
While continuing to sort through boxes that were packed away after the house flood, I discovered this page from the Dayton Daily News, August 16, 2004, announcing the opening of Comics and Games Emporium — How I got it or why I saved it, I can’t guess, unless it was just my custom at the time to file away articles about any area comic book activity that I stumbled across.
The gentleman in the picture, the owner of the Dayton comics shop, is Jim Broughton, whom I wouldn’t properly meet until a decade later. Jim and I became friends at the bi-monthly ASH Comics and Toy Shows in Indianapolis a few years ago, and until I ran across this newspaper clipping, I never connected him to the comics shop in the story.
I also never did get to Comics and Games Emporium — and apparently I missed my chance — but Jim Broughton, with Dan Taylor, now operate a great store, Jim & Dan’s Comics & Collectibles in West Alexandria, OH, and also host a quarterly comics convention at Wright State University which I enjoy and recommend (the most recent one was this past Sunday!).
Today is also Jim’s birthday, and I wish him a happy one and many more!
I’m continuing to sift through boxes of stuff that was salvaged from my house flood, and the item that surfaced today coincidentally ties in to my weekend’s television viewing.
The Decades TV network fills each weekend with a marathon of a different vintage television series. This time around, the selection was The Millionaire, an anthology series that ran on CBS from 1955 to 1960. The premise of the show was that an unseen multi-billionaire called John Beresford Tipton (voiced by animation actor Paul Frees), each week tasked his executive secretary, Michael Anthony (played by Marvin Miller), with delivering a $1,000,000 cashiers check to a random person of Tipton’s selection as a gift. The remainder of the half-hour dramatized how these people from all walks of life were impacted by their unexpected windfall.
I parodied this series in my work for Archie Comics through a character I called The Elevenaire. The late great Stan Goldberg brought The Elevenaire’s visuals to life, and Stan was kind enough to send me copies of his pencils for the inaugural story of this occasional series. Those photocopies turned up in a box stored in my basement today, so I thought I’d share some samples.
Continue reading The Elevenaire!
Here’s another item that was buried sufficiently deep in a closet that it survived the house disaster… and a great photostatic keepsake it is. It’s the splash page and additional art from a Superman story I wrote — and for fans of the classic era of Superman, there’s no mistaking the drawing style. The artist is Wayne Boring.
Wayne’s history with Superman runs deep. He was hired as a ghost artist for the Siegel and Shuster (Superman’s creators) studio in the mid-1930’s, and eventually became the main, credited artist for the Superman newspaper comic strip. When Siegel and Shuster split from their comic book publisher, Boring was hired by that publisher as a staff artist and became one of the main artists for the Superman comic book line for decades thereafter. His style couldn’t have been more distinctive; his Superman figures were the ones who looked like they were jogging across the sky rather than flying.
Wayne Boring had long-since retired when I began writing Superman stories for Editor Julius Schwartz in the mid-1980’s.
Around that time,I was invited to stop in and give a talk at my alma mater, The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey. I had attended the school in its earliest days and we alumni were frequently invited to give a progress report whenever we were in town.
Continue reading Wayne Boring Pencils!
