HUGO TAKES A BATH

Four pages from the series (two issues) of HUGO published around 2005. The book sold so badly, that I was ashamed of it! But I cracked open a cover of the first issue today, and found it to be pretty dam good. Too bad you won't see it unless you plunk down $3.50 plus shipping.

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"Shout For Happiness", an appealing song played by Harry Hudson's Melody Men (as The Blue Jays)!

 COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT

THAT'S AN ORIGINAL!

Some of my few originals: a Jim Tyer cover from an issue of  MIGHTY MOUSE FUN CLUB MAGAZINE. I have the comic somewhere.

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The one page I own from an Oil Can Harry story by Jim Tyer. A group of friends & I won the whole strip on Ebay and drew straws for our choice. I picked the longest!!

On the reverse was a set-up for the original ending, hand lettered by Tyer himself!

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A Connie Rasinski page, drawn after the studio was sold to CBS, at which time, the comics improved. I have the whole seven page story. It's on hard 3-ply illustration board, and its quality then was amazing. The sizes they worked in back then were incredibly large, compared with today. I still work about 18 x 11". Another reason comics people think I'm crazy. (Dig Mitzi's legs!)

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Two SPOOKY gag pages by favorite & good friend Howard Post.

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We close with a robust British commercial jingle by distinguished composer Noel Gay!

And remember: "Don't kill your wife with housework, let electricity do it for you!"

COOKIE CUTTER CARTOONS

Such wonderful things can be done shooting hand drawings with computer technology. You only have to scan a 'cycle' once and you can repeat it for eternity. You can have an unlimited number of moving layers. But Hollywood didn't even consider it, because the move to 3d was not an artistic one. It's a production one. Fewer individual "creatives" to deal with; pre-assembled elements which can be pushed and moved by anyone in cheap labor nations; designs more easily translated into toys.

Animators cannot take the pride they once did in being part of a big studio project. Norm Ferguson, Ken Harris, Jim Tyer; all could point to their scenes with pride and think "I did that." And, if a viewer knew their styles, they could tell; but it all fit together. No one artist was committing a crime. I got in at the tail end of all that. Now, whether it's THE SIMPSONS or DESPICABLE ME 8, that's all over in Hollywood, probably for good.

I got here just before THE LION KING came out. Even then I had the feeling too much money was being thrown around and it wouldn't last. But I never could have predicted it'd change this way.  

As half the world is made sick by what Hollywood has to offer, the other half is seeking entertainment elsewhere. I, myself, feel I have made a sort of a creative "rejuvenation" on the internet. Of course, that and five dollars may get me a cup of coffee.

MK

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GOONY GOLFERS, a Heckle & Jeckle directed by Connie Rasinski. Loopy loveliness.

 

THE MAD VIRGIN!

Views of "The Mad Virgin", by Rik Wouters, Belgian, 1912. Sart-Tilman Open-Air Museum. http://www.museepla.ulg.ac.be/en/

Art with model.

WORDS FROM HOKUSAI

Words from Hokusai:

“From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing.”

“From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie.”

“I have drawn things since I was six. All that I made before the age of sixty-five is not worth counting. At seventy-three I began to understand the true construction of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes, and insects. At ninety I will enter into the secret of things. At a hundred and ten, everything--every dot, every dash--will live”

“If heaven had granted me five more years, I could have become a real painter.”

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VERY early version of "Nagasaki", the song used by Carl Stalling as chase music about a million times!  

GANDY'S "ART MODERNE"

Frames from POST WAR INVENTIONS (1945), a WWII Terrytoon fantasy that presents background paintings that were about eleven years too late, but dazzling in their Woolworth's beauty department way. Their painters were superba.

The film. Standout sequence with the Jessica Rabbit lookalike animated by Martin Taras.

I SAW "LAST DAYS OF CONEY ISLAND"

...by Ralph Bakshi.
 https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lastdaysofconeyisland

For all the negative things I've heard about this...I enjoyed it very much. If one comes to it hoping for a Hollywood cartoon with a narrative and a Preston Blair technique, of course they'll get sore. I came to it with no expectations of any kind, and got a fascinating graphic experience. I got a tour through the art of one man, not an imitation studio cartoon. In that sense, I find it more cohesive than his features. Possibly because I myself am middle aged, I could relate to a lot of disillusionment that is communicated, even though I gave up trying to understand what I was seeing in the first two minutes. The Kennedy shootings I can do without, and I found the loopy freakout stuff less effective than the quieter moments. But this is obviously made, with know-how, by a person who has had a gallery of true life experiences to draw from beyond precious memories of growing up watching TV. This rough line, "unconventional" approach would better serve to animate KRAZY KAT than anything that's ever been done. After all these years, it's the first thing I've seen that interested me even slightly in finishing that film project of my own, not that I ever will.

MK

LOVE THOSE SOUNDIES!!

WHAT THE COUNTRY NEEDS (1941) A pre-WW II feel-good song from Martha Tilton. Also in the cast: Comedian Vince Barnett as the would-be agitator who gets the girl; Leo Diamond on harmonica; and a chorus by Mouseketeer Jimmie Dodd. 

LOVE TURNS WINTER TO SPRING (1941) Martha Tilton.

MY DOG LOVES YOUR DOG (1942) Unidentified singers; song itself goes back to 1934.

  
GAY LOVE (1929) Number from a feature by Rita La Roy. Lionel Hampton is onscreen as the drummer; he appeared in a few movies of the era.

I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH ME (1946) Singer: Peggy Mann

 Happy post-Valentine's Day!-MK 

MORE "FOR GENERAL AUDIENCES"

When I was small (late 60s-early 70s), I got hold of an old comic or two and saw male & female characters that looked like burlesque performers. I was frustrated by the fact that new funny books were never so sophisticated. (No, not even Dan DeCarlo or Harry Lucey's ARCHIE comics.) This was a window on grownup stuff to me. Which is, I think, what kids REALLY want. By that, I mean kids don't want to be spoken to as "kids", which the media's forgotten entirely.
It's the feeling of being let in on an adult joke, which was very gratifying. It was being given respect and the credit for having a brain. Not every kid dreams about becoming a fucking superhero!!

SUZIE by Al Fagaly for MLJ/Archie comics, late 1940s. Panel stolen from Ron Evry for sole purpose of expressing my thoughts.

PROJECTICUS INTERRUPTUS

More from a graphic novel that will remain unfinished: The Cyril Lionel Robert James comics bio. (4 January 1901 – 19 May 1989), best known as C. L. R. James, who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist.

 

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I mentioned the interesting facial features of MM & how they're good for practicing. These are not intended as totally successful likenesses, but an attempt to capture some of those shapes & problems. It all helps me in loosening up & becoming "sure".-MK

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT

STRIKE A POSE!

This pose came into my mind last night. I always try to express the character's emotion in every detail I can. Here's a diagram.

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I did a SLUG & GINGER comic for SCREW in the mid 1980s: Ginger was whoring herself to billionare Ronald Rump, and Slug was jealous. It ended with Slug imitating Rump and making a phone call to a Japanese company and saying "You're Fired!", goading them into nuking Rump Towers, along with the greater NY area. Rump was gone under the rubble, leaving Slug & Ginger to enjoy a happy (but deformed) reunion.

We need these kind of comics now. Write your congressman.

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT 

COMIC BOOKS & POLITICS

Comic books are in themselves a fetish now, for the creators, the audience, and the "scholars". This does not bode well for widening their audience.
Cartoonists fall into creating for "niche" fan clubs and then complain about not reaching a "larger audience". Which do they want? Are they happy the way things are? For the love of Mike, I can't see why.

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Oh my gawd. I unfriended someone on Facebook yesterday because he had made some pretty offensive statements about my use of the term "racial issues". By the term, I was referring to the new wave of violence. He assumed I was referring to welfare and blacks wanting more "assistance", and the rest of the "your own bootstraps" shit. After the "unfriend", and explanation of my reason for it, I got back:

"I didn't realize "racial issues" was White terrorism towards Blacks. I thought Racial issues like economics and political beliefs encompassed all colors. You have been consumed by hatred. You do realize that Democrats have run the inner cities into the ground and you keep voting for them right? Yes, you know. You just hate me because I'm White. Irony."
 
*BLOCK* I dood it. 

It's so easy. If the Dems would get up nerve and speak frankly and not allow themselves to be so easily sidetracked into meaningless drivel, they'd mop up the floor with 'em.
I sent parts of my post to the website of the Democratic Party http://www.democrats.org/ , and doubt they'll even read it.

-MK  

WAR CARTOONS BETWEEN THE WARS! (A compilation.)

On a sudden inspiration, I've recreated my 2000 ASIFA-Hollywood video program from ten cartoons posted on YouTube!:
The harsh realities of war were seen as ideal material for animated fantasy during the 1930s. See dancing doughboys, funny Huns, psychedelic gunplay, and some of the happiest decapitations on film!

Click on flyer image to watch!-MK.