This week’s Spider-Man comic, inserted in the Sunday paper, starts reprinting issue #5, from 1963. Spidey is hopelessly mis-matched, battling Doctor Doom, one of the principal character inspirations for Darth Vader.
I was impressed that the colorist for this little freebie comic made the TV a black & white set, as it was originally, 43 years ago; emphasizing that the comics were in color, but TV (for the most part) wasn’t. Nice touch.
I’m a very big admirer of the late cartoonist Charles Schulz. Someday I’ll visit The Charles M. Schulz Museum. The museum has released a DVD of the long-neglected 1963 TV show, A Boy Named Charlie Brown. How neglected? It was never shown!
I’m providing 2 minutes of footage from the show as an enticement for you to buy it. His ideas were very similar to those of Fred Rogers, don’t you think?
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/sparky/Sparky.flv 400 300]
Order the DVD here. Unfortunately, the museum doesn’t take orders online, and you’ll have to click the “Videos” link to see the ordering information for the DVD.
The show also includes the first Peanuts animation, done a full two years before the ground-breaking special, A Charlie Brown Christimas. For a measly $15, anybody who is interested in the work and life of Schulz must have this unique DVD!
A blogger named Ian “iSnoop” Anthony has come up with a nifty and free service that lets you pick comic strips for delivery via e-mail. He calls it the Comic Strip Snagger. It was offline for a while, but it’s working again, so give it a try. Not every syndicate makes its comics available for this sort of access (RSS feed), but there’s still a nice collection to choose from.
Click for full-size image.
The New York Times, which has never carried regular comic strips, ran a feature last Friday called “See You in the Funny Papers.” Credit for bringing this to my attention goes to my well-read friend Morris.
The Times being the way it is, access to the article may be iffy, so here it is. Please note that the illustration above is of Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend by Winsor McCay, which has been featured twice already in this blog, here and here.
Lately, the fun in the Sunday comics hasn’t been in the strips, which are mostly mediocre, but with a comic-book that’s being inserted with the flyers. It features reprints of the earliest Spider-Man stories by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
Each comic is 16 pages total, the printing quality is excellent and, hey, they’re free! This nifty promotion is from SmartSource, the coupon distributor. To see a list of all the participating newspapers, click here.
My first favorite cartoon character was Popeye. Here’s Popeye finding himself in the totally incomprehensible world of today’s animated offerings.
This is a YouTube™ video, so if the area above is blank, don’t blame me!
