Saturday, October 31, 2009

"You certainly have a peculiar sense of humor" and more from Chas Addams' Drawn and Quartered


A truly great cartoonist, Chas Addams' drawings demand our admiration and attention. His beautiful compositions, characters in their bewildering activities, his "Addams Family" icons, his ghoulish and morbid jokes, represent some of the best the New Yorker had to offer during the middle of the Twentieth Century. Considering their roster of the greatest American cartoonists, that's saying a lot.

Addams died at age 76 in 1988.

We've had another posting from Addams' first book, DRAWN AND QUARTERED, First Edition, published 1942: Still more Chas Addams. Links there will lead you to more Addams cartoons.

DRAWN AND QUARTERED Copyright © 1942 Random House, Inc.





















Thursday, October 29, 2009

A Powelloween celebration

We usually don't get into golden age comic books or pre-Comics Code horror comics, but with Halloween in two days who could resist these stories by Bob Powell from the Harvey horror comics of the early 1950s? They're beautifully drawn, they're strange, odd, delirious, weird...just right to read while outside the wind howls and skeletal fingers tap at your doors, the chains rattle in the attic, the moans come from the basement, and the red-eyed vampires peer in the windows...

Pappy provided the scans for "Servants of the Tomb." Thanks, Pap.

Copyright © 1951,1954 Harvey Comics

BLACK CAT MYSTERY #41, 1954:








THRILLS OF TOMORROW #17, 1954:








THRILLS OF TOMORROW #18, 1954:








WITCHES TALES #6, 1951:









Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Ballyhoo 1937


Humor from seven decades past. BALLYHOO was a humor magazine founded by George Delacorte (Dell). It was a Depression-era sensation, ending in 1939.

These are some cartoons from the September 1937 issue, scanned and donated by David Miller. Thanks again, Dave!

Copyright © 1937 Dell Publishing, Inc.