Category: Cartooning

Big Apple Con — Sinnott and Son and Steranko

A big highlight at the Big Apple Con in New York last weekend was seeing legendary comic book artist Joe Sinnott, who is featured at this link. It’s been thirty years since Dennis and I first met Joe. Dennis saw him earlier this year, a few months after Joe lost his wife Betty, and shortly before Joe had a heart attack! So it was with great relief that we saw Joe looking hale and hearty, with the ol’ Sinnott gleam and glint in his eyes. Here’s Joe with Dennis and myself.

Dennis Rogers, Joe Sinnott, DOuG pRATt

At a panel moderated by Mark Evanier (more about that later), Sinnott commented that he felt he’d reached his peak in 1962 and hadn’t diminished since then. Joe is a modest fellow, so that isn’t boasting, it’s just plain fact! At the convention Dennis bought an original Spider-Man strip from this past August that Joe had inked over Alex Saviuk’s pencils, and it looks as clean and slick and snappy as anything Joe has ever done. The man is amazing, especially considering that he’s retired!

Dennis spotted Joe talking with Steranko (with a name like Steranko, I wouldn’t bother with my first name either!) and snapped this great picture. That’s Joe’s son, Mark Sinnott, behind these two titans of comic book art.

Joe Sinnott and Jim Steranko

One of the many memorable examples of Sinnott inking over Steranko’s pencil drawings can be found in Strange Tales #167, from almost exactly 40 years ago. The story was called “ARMAGEDDON!” In it is something that had never been seen before — an extravaganza of four full pages that formed a single picture. I’ve always wanted to see these pages put together, and thanks to my scanner I’ve finally done it!

Strange Tales #167 pages 2-5
Click to enlarge

I was 12 years old when I saw that. What a time it was to be a comics fan! These gifted gentlemen were paid so relatively poorly, for turning out page after page of stunning material like this! I’m so glad that I can tell them how much their talents are appreciated.

Did you see the Zaro’s black and white cookie I got at Penn Station? While Dennis was at the counter I saw Joe and Mark Sinnott outside of Zaro’s, deciding if they were going to eat there. Well, I wasted no time helping them decide! What a surprise Dennis had when he came back to the table! We sat and ate and chatted with Joe and Mark, and for me it was the highlight of the weekend — yes, even more special than meeting Stephen Colbert.

P.S. The man in the blue shirt behind Joe is Mike Burkey, otherwise known as Romitaman, the highly reputable dealer in original comic book art. Dennis and I will probably be doing some business with Mr. Burkey in the near future.

 

Big Apple Con — Groo-some Guys

'Kirby: King of Comics'It’s already been a few days since the Big Apple Con. Marvel Comics artist John Romita Sr. was feeling under the weather and couldn’t make it to the show, and that was disappointing. But I was pleased to finally meet Mark Evanier in person, who I have mentioned countless times, and whose biography of Jack Kirby, Kirby: King of Comics, will be released in February. Here I am sneaking up behind Mark, trying steal one of his lollipops. The orange gadget is Mark’s Blackberry. That thing was constantly getting a call or e-mail. Evanier is a multi-tasking machine!

Mark Evanier and DOuG pRATt

Mark collaborates with MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragonés on the long-running comic book Groo the Wanderer. Here’s Dennis hanging with Sergio.

Dennis Rogers with Sergio Aragonés

Sergio is a riot. “Shy and retiring” are words that do no apply. In fact, Aragonés seems to have no plans to retire at all! He was inking Groo pages while he talked, and it was a lot of fun watching him work. I’m very familiar with Sergio’s cartooning over the years and the art he’s doing now is stunning, especially when seeing his originals.

Sergio Aragonés Banner For Groo

The Mr. A Cookie

I’m back from NYC, and in an upcoming post I’ll have something VERY special to tell you about the trip, but first I want to show you a cookie I got in Penn Station at a wonderful bakery/eatery called Zaro’s.

Zaro's Black & White Cookie

I hope Steve Ditko knows about this, because it could be called the Mr. A cookie! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll have to watch the first two minutes of this part of the superb program In Search of Steve Ditko.

Dog Rat In New York

For the next couple of days D.F. Rogers and I will be at the Big Apple Con in — where else? — the Big Apple. I hope to finally meet Mark Evanier in person. Dennis and I also hope to talk to comic book artist Joe Sinnott, just like we did 30 years ago! I’m traveling light, and won’t be taking a laptop computer, so unless the hotel has more than just Wi-Fi hot-spots for Net/Web access, my next post will be sometime Sunday.

The Complete ‘Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’

Long before the cartooning innovations of Charles M. Schulz, there was Winsor McCay. Preceding his masterpiece, Little Nemo In Slumberland, McCay drew a comic strip called Dream of the Rarebit Fiend that I featured very early in this blog’s existence, here and here (sorry, the video isn’t embedded).

Maude DuFour - 1891Windsor McCay NYT clipping - December 23, 1914McCay the artist dominated the industry, but McCay the man was dominated by his wife Maude. The portrait of Maude is how she looked when she met McCay. They had a whirlwind romance and eloped in 1891. If Maude looks young, that’s because she was 13. Some accounts give her age as 14, while others say she was still briefly 12 after she ran off with McCay, who was 10-12 years her senior, depending on Maude’s true age. McCay made phenomenal amounts of money for a time as a cartoonist, animator and vaudeville performer, while Maude spent his money and allegedly took lovers. There were public difficulties, such as the account published in The New York Times on December 23, 1914 (click image to enlarge).

Maude and Winsor McCay

A new, complete collection of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, is available for the modest sum of $133 US. The Boston Sunday Globe has a nifty slideshow about it that you can watch by clicking here. The video player has a Rarebit cartoon by McCay, called ‘Bug Vaudeville’. Be prepared, however, because it’s long, repetitive and tedious.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/NOV07/Rarebit.flv 400 300]

The Michaelis Method

My buddy D.F. Rogers points out that the synopsis of David Michaelis’ biography of N.C. Wyeth isn’t all that distinctly different from that of his biography of C.M. Schulz.

N.C. Wyeth by David Michaelis

For forty-three years, starting in 1902, N.C. Wyeth painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and murals, as well as illustrations for a long shelf of world literature. Yet despite worldwide acclaim, he judged himself a failure, believing that illustration was of no importance. David Michaelis tells the story of Wyeth’s family through four generations — a saga that begins and ends with tragedy — and brings to life the huge-spirited, deeply complicated man, and an America that was quickly vanishing.

After a lot of furious flipping through various portions of the Michaelis biography of Schulz, I am now slowly and deliberating reading it front-to-finish. Yes, Schulz was complicated, but in the book “complicated” does indeed seem to mean the same thing as “negative.” By definition, a single significant aspect of someone’s personality isn’t what makes them complicated.