Category: Cartooning

Old Yorker, J. B. Handelsman

New Yorker cartoonist J.B. Handelsman has died at 85. Like a lot of artists and cartoonists whose eyesight holds up, he worked pretty much up to the end. He wasn’t a favorite of mine, but anybody with staying power at The New Yorker must be respected.

Here’s a mini-gallery of Handelsman cartoons from 1965-1970. Click to enlarge. I picked those years because Handelsman seemed conservative, and that was a time of great upheaval. I consider these to be the best of the bunch, and I’ll be honest and say that compared to other New Yorker cartoons, I don’t think they hold up very well. Handelsman’s humor could be dry to the point of being banal, even when insightful.

J.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New Yorker

J.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New Yorker

J.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New Yorker
© The New Yorker

Eric’s Anime Pick — Kurau

Kurau Phantom Memory is about a girl with extraordinary powers who’s a secret agent; but not for the government, which is out to get her. At least that’s what’s happening in the story as far as we’ve seen it. Kurau has a kid sister named Christmas to protect, who is actually a younger version of herself. Where this is heading, I don’t know!

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUN07/Kurau.flv 400 300]

The video has the “clean” (captionless) versions of the opening and closing to Kurau, along with a clip from episode 6.

Brutal Bluto

A couple of posts ago I asserted that some of the Popeye cartoons from the 40’s and 50’s seem to have a sadistic bent. One thing I’ve noticed they have in common is they were directed by Max Fleischer’s son-in-law, Seymour Kneitel. Here’s another example of sadistic brutality that I recall from childhood.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUN07/PopeyeSuperman.flv 400 300]

“She-Sick Sailors” is from 1944, the year after the last Superman cartoon had been produced by the Fleischer/Famous studio. Note how the Superman “S” emblem is quickly dropped to simplify the animation work. The cartoon features a scene where Bluto challenges Popeye to shoot him with a machine gun, and to let him shoot Popeye in return. When I was a kid I was really bothered by this sequence, and now I realize why.

Unlike the black & white Fleischer cartoons, Bluto was no longer Popeye’s rival for Olive. Instead, he had become a truly evil villain. He intended to cut Popeye to ribbons with the machine gun, then assault and murder Olive. Unreal cartoon violence this isn’t. Perhaps it was an attempt at returning to the Perils of Pauline of the silent movie days, but I now think there’s more psychology behind these flashes of cruelty than just an interest in creating suspense and to entertain.

Silver Surfing Safari

It’s amazing that both Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four are major motion pictures in release at the same time, just as they were cartoons on TV at the same time 40 years ago. Stan Lee believed in the mainstream acceptance of this material, but it sure seemed unlikely it would ever materialize.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer seems to be doing all right at the box office. I haven’t seen it yet, and there’s no need for you to rush out either, because you can watch the 1967 cartoon version of the story.

It’s funny how the movie title makes no mention of Galactus, and the cartoon title from 40 years ago makes no mention of the Silver Surfer. This was on TV only a year after the original Fantastic Four comic books were out, featuring these bizarre, but now classic, Jack Kirby characters. Hey, the Surfer is wearing BVD briefs!
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUN07/FantasticFour.flv 400 300]

The recording has a few seconds missing where the DVR jumped between time slots. The animation in this cartoon sure is minimal! Many of the still frames reveal some rather amateurish drawing, including the video preview frame above, but at least the show is colorful. Still, the quality is quite a comedown from the days of Jonny Quest, featured previously.

The Phantom Artist

Just up the road from my town lives cartoonist Paul Ryan. His steady gig is drawing The Phantom comic strip. The Phantom is considered by many cartooning buffs to be the first super hero character. The Boston Globe had a feature article about Ryan this past Sunday. [Link] Ryan’s Web site is Second Star Graphics. [Link]

I see some striking parallels between Ryan’s childhood and my own, but our lives now are quite different, with Ryan living a life that I once coveted. What kept me from it is revealed in this paragraph.

A few years later, Ryan learned that a company in Connecticut was offering opportunities to amateur comic artists. By then, he was pushing 30 and had a low-paying job.

The company in Connecticut was undoubtedly the now-defunct Charlton Comics. At 30 I just didn’t have the stomach to live with such uncertainty. I’d already had my gigs in radio announcing and newspaper graphics, and both were low-paying jobs. I admire Ryan for having the talent and determination to make a living drawing pictures.

Popeye’s Alien Abduction

There was a major Sci-Fi craze during the 1950’s, helped along by the UFO sightings that began after WW2. Another 50’s fad, a brief one, was 3-D movies. The 1953 cartoon “Popeye, The Ace of Space” was released in 3-D. Keep that in mind while watching the video.

 

This cartoon contains a couple scenes of “alien experimentation” that upset me greatly as a child, despite Popeye escaping unharmed (thanks to spinach, of course). Scanning through some of the later Popeye cartoons released by Paramount, it seems that someone at the Famous studio had a real sadistic streak that crossed the line from cartoon mayhem into something darker and more disturbing.