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January 9th, 2023

Magazine Cartoons: James Montgomery Flagg’s Nervy Nat

James Montgomery Flagg is best known for his iconic recruitment posters like the one above, but he was also an accomplished magazine illustrator and cartoonist as well.

In 1890 at the age of 12, James presented himself and a group of sketches at the offices of St. Nicholas Magazine, the leading illustrated children’s publication of the time. He was shown to the office of one of the editors who looked at his drawings and determined that he showed promise. The editor praised the boy’s work and encouraged his parents to seek out art training for him. Flagg took classes at the Art Students’ League in New York, and within two years, he was a regular contributor to St. Nicholas, and Life magazine, and eventually landed a staff position at Judge. Alongside great artists like Grant Hamilton and Eugene Zimmerman, Flagg flourished, becoming one of the top illustrators of his day.

Flagg was very versatile, and his sketches of beautiful women were just as well drawn as his caricatured cartoons. He was outspoken and critical of the art community. He once said that "the difference between the artist and the illustrator is that the latter knows how to draw, eats three square meals a day, and can pay for them."

From 1903 to 1907, Flagg drew a comic strip for Judge titled, "Nervy Nat". It appears to be based on the early vaudeville perfomances of W.C. Fields. Here are some examples of the strip from 1906 and 1907.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

This posting is part of the online Encyclopedia of Cartooning under the subject heading, Magazine Cartoons.

Labeled: comic strips, james montgomery flagg, judge, magazine |

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Posted by admin @ 12:14 pm

January 6th, 2023

RefPack049: A Peek At The Early Anime Section

People who aren’t members of Animation Resources don’t understand how comprehensive our Reference Packs are. Over a couple of weeks, we are posting what each section of our current RefPack looks like. Today we are sharing the Early Anime section. If you are a member of Animation Resources, click on this post to go to the Members Only page. If you aren’t a member yet, today is the perfect time to join! Our current Reference Pack is one of our best yet, and General and Student Members get access to a special Bonus Archive with even more material from past Reference Packs.

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Lately, Animation Resources board member JoJo Baptista has been researching the early history of Japanese animation. He has searched out video copies of 1960s anime to add to our Animation Archive. Over the past year, he has accumulated hundreds of hours of rare television programs. We will be will be sharing some of them with you in our Reference Packs. Our members have asked us to share complete films and publications with them, not excerpts, so we will be sharing complete half hour episodes with you. We don’t claim that everything here is great. But there are great bits. You can sift through them and discover the gems for yourself.

SD VIDEO:

Golden Bat

Curated by JoJo Baptista

Ep.16 / Ep.39 (1967)
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The character of Golden Bat goes as far back as 1930, and is, by some, considered to be the first superhero. He was created by Suzuki Ichiro and Takeo Nagamatsu, who named the character after a popular cigarette brand of the time. His appearance has undergone several incarnations, but he is most easily recognizable by his golden skull. He made his first appearance in a kind of traveling show called a kamishibai, also known as paper theater. The performances were not unlike a Punch and Judy puppet show. However, instead of puppets, what was presented in the miniature stage were illustrations accompanied by the narration of the showman. This form of entertainment remained quite popular in Japan until television took over the eyes and imaginations of Japanese children in the early 1960s.

First came a live action film. Then in 1967 it was time for Golden Bat to make the jump to the medium of television. This version of the character replaced his original 17th century swashbuckler attire with more traditional superhero attire— golden tights and a black cape with red lining. His appearance was likely streamlined to make drawing him easier for the animators to manage. He also lost his original cross-eyed expression, derived from Japanese warrior prints, replaced by mostly empty eye sockets. Not to be outdone in the optics department, in the redesign the villain, evil Dr. Nazo was given an extra set of new eyes!

While unfortunately, I don’t have much to say about the animation in this series, I can appreciate the fun ideas that went into it. There isn’t a lot of filler in this series. It’s wall to wall action most of the time. Golden Bat’s maniacal laughter is infectious. He makes you want to laugh like that! He cackles away at every opportunity as he beats his foes into submission. I found myself feeling a little sorry for his enemies because of it. It’s got to be humiliating to be laughed at like that when a bomb has just blown up in your face!

In episode 16, Golden Bat whacks a robot off a cliff and watches him plunge hundreds of feet into the ocean. Golden Bat stands triumphantly at the cliff’s edge laughing his ass off. It turns a dramatic scene into something funny. I think the following scene with Dr. Nazo slamming his claw down in anger and scolding his subordinate is funny too. Nazo slams his claw a few more times, each time accompanied by the exact same pathetic sound effect.

By the way, the robot in this episode roars like a lion. I don’t why. Maybe they didn’t have a lot of sound effects to choose from. But it’s a nice touch. Perhaps the most disturbing sound effect is used in episode 39, where a monster is bloodily devoured by a pack of sharks. There’s a visceral wet chewing noise that made me feel very squeamish!

This series delivers exactly what kids in the 1960s wanted… giant monsters, superheroes, robots, evil villains and tons of stuff exploding into bits. Enjoy!

I’ll have more early Japanese TV series to share with you in our next Reference Pack.

REFPACK049: Golden Bat ep16

MP4 Video File / SD / 24:06 / 251 MB Download
REFPACK049: Golden Bat ep39

MP4 Video File / SD / 24:05 / 269 MB Download

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Animation Resources is one of the best kept secrets in the world of cartooning. Every month, we sponsor a program of interest to artists, and every other month, we share a book and up to an hour of rare animation with our members. If you are a creative person interested in the fields of animation, cartooning or illustration, you should be a member of Animation Resources!

It’s easy to join Animation Resources. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online…

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Posted by Stephen Worth @ 11:30 am

January 5th, 2023

Pinups: Jack Cole And More Great 50s Playboy Cartoonists

Today, we continue our series of posts on the great cartoonists who worked for Playboy magazine over the years. Today, we feature artists from the late 1950s. Starting with…

JACK COLE

More than any other artist who worked at Playboy, Jack Cole was most responsible for establishing the tone and style of the single panel full page cartoons that appeared in its pages His watercolor technique was loose and free, but the overall impression was brilliantly planned out and remarkably expressive.

50s Plastic Man Jack Cole Born in 1914 in New Castle Pennsylvania, Cole was a self-taught artist. At age 17, he bicycled across the country to Los Angeles and sold the story of his odyssey, along with his own illustrations, to Boy’s Life. After graduating from High School, he moved to New York and took up work in the comic book business. He moved up through the ranks at Harry A. Chesler, Centaur Publications and Lev Gleeson on a variety of crime and action comics. In 1940, he assisted WIll Eisner on The Spirit, ghosting the strip when Eisner was drafted during the War. He is best known though, as the creator of the Marvel superhero, Plastic Man.

In 1954, Cole began selling one panel "girlie" cartoons to various magazines, and his work caught the attention of the editors of the fledgling publication, Playboy. For the next few years, Cole’s cartoons appeared in every issue, until his untimely suicide in 1958. Here are a few of Cole’s beautiful watercolors from the late 1950s…

Here’s a Valentine’s Day feature by Cole…

Jack Cole Shel Silverstein Valentine Gift

JACK DAVIS

When you think of Jack Davis, you probably think of his work with Harvey Kurtzman at Mad magazine, his covers for TV Guide, his advertising work and movie posters, and perhaps the Little Annie Fanny comics he painted for Kurtzman at Playboy. But you don’t normally think of him as a one-panel cartoonist. Here’s a rare example…

CHARLES W. MILLER

I don’t have any info on Charles W. Miller. His tighter style is closer to the illustrators who worked for Colliers in the late 1940s than it is the washy, stylized work of Dedini, Sokol or Cole. But he was obviously a very accomplished artist- check out the sophisticated lighting in the second example for proof of that. If you know details of his biography, please post to the comments below.

AL STINE

Al Stine is still living, painting and teaching in South Carolina. In fact, he recently started doing editorial cartoons for the Anderson South Carolina Independent Mail. His masterful transparent watercolor technique really sets him apart. If you enjoy his work, drop him an email through his website- AlStine.com. It would be nice if someone out there would interview him and collect the info for our Biography Page.

If you’re a fan of Playboy artists like Cole, Dedini, Wilson and Sokol, you will want to get this great collection of cartoons, Playboy: 50 Years- The Cartoons. Check it out!