What’s Gary Larson doing these days?
Category: Cartooning
Covered in Kitties
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/Anime/Sakaki.flv 400 300]
Poor Miss Sakaki. She loves cats, but they don’t love her. Here is a sequence from Azumanga Daioh that’s sort of a follow-up to a previously posted video.
More Sparky
First click here to watch a video I posted of Charles Schulz from 1963…
…then come back here and watch an interview from 1985, to see an older Schulz with his daughter Jill. Note how in ’63 Schulz insisted he was Charlie Brown, and in ’85 he denies it!
Between Heaven and Haibane
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/Anime/Haibane.flv 425 240]
Honorable son Eric’s latest animé pick is a very odd offering, indeed. Odd because Haibane Renmei depicts angel-like (although not angelic) creatures who are perhaps on their way to Heaven? Seems like a rather Christian basis for a Japanese story. Without Netflix there’s no way we’d be able to see all of these animé titles.
Kamen Islands
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Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter, was Stephen Colbert’s guest Thursday night. Dean’s brother is a physician specializing in childhood cancers. That’s their father, Jack Kamen, in the still frame for the video that has Dean’s appearance on The Colbert Report.
Jack Kamen was an artist for the notorious EC Comics. Entertaining Comics Comics. Redundant, but so is DC Comics — Detective Comics Comics.
An example of Kamen’s work is in the gallery. The character Seymour bears a remarkable resemblence to Dean as an adult, but Dean was only 1 year old when his dad drew this story!
Jack was never a “fan favorite” artist, but he was a capable and dependable craftsman. Kamen’s work was always solid, consistent and, above all, never late. He’s what editors and publishers call a “pro’s pro.”
Back in the 50’s, EC Comics were a target of a Senate investigation into juvenile delinquency, and were considered to be a bad influence on kids. EC’s were admittedly gross and violent, sometimes in the extreme, but I’d say that Dean and his brother seemed to have turned out all right.
Does Whatever a Spider Can …
I continue to appreciate the previously-mentioned reprints of classic Spider-Man comic books that are found in some Sunday papers. I hope that Smart Source will continue to distribute them.
Above are a couple of panels I scanned from this week’s installment. They’re good, but far from the best, examples of artist Steve Ditko’s uniquely compelling approach to drawing the human figure in motion.