Category: Cartooning

Schulzian doings

Right now, Monte Schulz is at Warwicks, a bookstore in La Jolla, CA. Monte’s new book, The Last Rose of Summer is out, and I have my copy, although I’m 3,000 miles from La Jolla, so I won’t be able to get Monte’s autograph on it. I’ll be reading it as soon as I am through a couple of non-fiction books. I prefer to read novels without having any other books in progress. Monte owns the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, which this year is being held June 18-23 in, you guessed it, Santa Barbara.

On the Peanuts side of the Schulz family, which is run by Monte’s brother Craig, there is a new DVD coming out, and a graphic novel, the first Peanuts publication from the Kaboom! arm of BOOM! Studios.

You may recall that Charles Schulz never had an assistant helping him with the comic strip, but that did not hold for the Peanuts comic books from DELL (before there was a computer company by the same name), and later Gold Key. Jim Sasseville, then Dale Hale, worked with Schulz on those comics. D.F. Rogers has a great idea, that Nat Gertler should put together the complete collection of Peanuts comic books. High quality color scans from the original comics would be great.

I haven’t checked eBay lately, but I assume there are still sketches being offered that sellers claim are by Charles M. Schulz, but are obvious fakes. Here’s a sketch that looks like it might be genuine. The owner asked a newspaper columnist for an estimate of what it’s worth, and assuming it was done by Schulz I think he’s wrong about the personalized autograph holding down the value of the piece.

The Entitled?

Federal taxes for the rich were cut, reducing distributions to states and, in turn, communities. Thanks to financial deregulation Wall Street defrauded everybody, further reducing tax revenues and clobbering pension funds, then Wall Street was bailed out by the American taxpayers. And now cops, firemen and teachers are being denounced for being greedy? Huh?

I live in Massachusetts, the leader in public sector pension fraud, especially in Boston. The fire department has been particularly rife with abuse. The most notorious case was the allegedly disabled firefighter who was into competitive bodybuiding. But the real abuses are at the top. Retired state senator Billy Boy Bulger is a smooth operator who really knows how to work the system. He’s the brother of crime boss James Whitey Bulger, who knows how to work the other side of the fence. One of the first things that Mitt Romney did as governor of Massachusetts was force Billy Bulger out as President of UMass, but there was nothing Romney could do about Bulger’s sweet pension. Later, Romney introduced a health care system that became the basis for what the Democrats enacted in Washington. Romney has a tendency to shift his stated position as it suits the moment, but he’s not corrupt and when push comes to shove he does what he knows is right — like Scott Brown, come to think of it. I had my doubts about Brown as senator, but he’s AOK.

Speaking of brothers taking all they can get, there are the Kochs, who have done an impressive job of building up the wealth that was left to them by their father. They’ve set their sights on Wisconsin, and it seems plausible that they intend to buy up the no-bid contracts for operating that state’s power plants, but they don’t want to employ public union workers, so Governor Walker is determined to bust the unions for them.

I’m not familiar with what Governor Daniels has done in Indiana, but I agree with what Brooks and Shields say here about Governor Walker. Mark Shields reminds us of the importance of the G.I. Bill after WWII. My father went to college on the G.I. Bill, and he met my mother there. After the war Joe Sinnott worked with his father at a cement factory for a few years. Joe’s thousands of fans have the G.I. Bill to thank for making it possible for him to attend the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Spider-senseless

Last weekend D.F. Rogers was in NYC, and he saw Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, a musical that’s still in previews, but has been playing longer than many past Broadway shows.

Denro got a copy of the program book for me, and I’m flipping through it right now, and OUCH….! Paper cut. Darn, I dropped it on the floor. I’ll pick it up and OW!!! Hit my head on the desk.

So the reports are true. The Spider-Man show is dangerous!

Surfer white-out

Monday, while Denro and I were hanging out with Joe Sinnott, on the Kirby Dynamics blog Robert Steibel happened to post a nice piece about Joe’s inking on a classic Jack Kirby splash page, and today he posted a follow-up. This is a scan of the page from a copy of the original 1968 comic book that you can click to enlarge.

What isn’t obvious on the printed page, but can’t be missed on the original art, is the white-out and re-inking that was done on Alicia Masters’ hair.

My vote is this work was not done by Joe, but in the Marvel bullpen by somebody else, and I’m tempted to say Dick Ayers. Although it isn’t easy keeping a consistent line when inking on top of dried white-out, the brushwork doesn’t look like Joe’s “feathering” technique. It would be helpful to see a scan of the original art for page #2, because Alicia’s hair appears to have been partially reworked there, too, especially in the second panel, although the pen lines are definitely Joe’s.

Joe’s perfectionism might have led him to go over his work again, but when more than one panel is involved it’s more likely that Stan decided he wanted changes made. And if the finished art were already in Stan’s hands in the city, he wouldn’t have sent it all the way back up to Saugerties, he would have had somebody in the office do it.

Here is a short interview with Joe that confirms something I’ve always assumed — Joe met Jack Kirby for the first time in 1972, and not in 1975 as has been repeated many times.

The reason why I have always thought that Jack and Joe met in ’72 is because I know they were both at Phil Seuling’s 1972 Comic Art Convention in New York, as was I.

I wonder what the Statler-Hilton management thought when they saw the huge, broken mirror on a hallway wall? Did they write it off, or make the con pay for it? They should have charged the convention, because Seuling broke it. I saw it happen when he jumped up on a table that was placed against the mirror. He was with some other guys, and they all ran off like school kids who had broken a window while playing baseball. I was only 16 years old, and I wasn’t going to get blamed for it and try to convince hotel security it was broken by the guy who organized the convention, so I took off too!

Follow-up: The Kirby Museum has just posted photographic proof that Jack and Joe met in ’72, and here it is.

The Sinnott Inner Sanctum

I’m back home from my visit to Saugerties, and I sure hope I didn’t give Joe Sinnott my cold! Today I had the great pleasure and honor of spending time with Joe in his studio.

Here’s a rarity — Stan Lee original art! Stan sent this hand-made card to Joe for his birthday some years back.

My thanks to Mark Sinnott for the invitation to Joe’s open house at the Dutch Ale House, and thanks to Joe, Mark, and the Sinnott family for their hospitality this weekend.