Don't Open Till XMas...!

 

Under the Tree...

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Surprises!

by Rick Marschall

I have been sharing Christmas cards and drawings from my collection, and I wanted to share a rare "corporate" card, and then miscellaneous cards from a variety of artists... no theme except Christmas itself. All the cards were produced for the three Fs -- family, friends, and fans. That is, not for stationers marketing in stores. Enjoy!

Back during the high-flying (literally) days of EC Comics, this was the "corporate" card Bill Gaines sent out. Among the elves are John Severin, Maries Severin, Al Williamson, Jack Davis, Al Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Joe Orlando, Wally Wood, and Bernie Krigstein.

As with many of the cards here, if a Christmas came and went without certain cartooning friends' cards, it would feel like a bleak midwinter. Wonderful Edwina Dumm, the creator of creator of Tippie the dog and Jaspurr the cat (her strip was the long-running Cap Stubbs and Tippie), sent cards every year. Some were privately printed; some were hand-drawn. As my children met her, and she cherished them, she often wrote greetings to them too.

This card was sent by Sidney Smith, before The GumpsThis 

In the last year of his life, the greatest mixing in a touch of his perennial themes. He was optimistic about the world's future...

Hal Foster, sans Prince Valiant

Fred Lasswell, in his early Barney Google and Snuffy Smith cards, emulated the style and shading that the strip's creator Billy DeBeck used in his cards.

Even after retirement from his great Toonerville Folks panel and strip, Fontaine Fox sent out cards -- literally, postcards. His drawn greeting was printed, but every card would have some pen-and-ink addition, and, always, hand-coloring.   

The great (and great friend) Al Kilgore usually sent custom-drawn images. In 1964 he reprinted a daily strip of his great BullwinkleThe great (and great friend) Al Kilgore usually sends custom-drawn images. In 1964 he reprinted a daily strip 

How to read a Nancy Christmas card...?

The great Cliff Sterrett drew Polly and ALL her pals, ca. 1927

Walt Scott's card was a custom silk-screen printed, a true and charming craft-driven creation. The characters are his classic Little People from his Sunday comic strip. 

A Crowded Life in Comics –

Of Art Young and young art

   A drawing of Art Young by my friend Walt Partymiller, cartoonist for one of the few Socialist newspapers of his day, the York (PA) Times. Walt late in life married Nellie Anna Opper, granddaughter of Frederick Burr Opper. 

By Rick Marschall.

A crowded life achieves that status by many means. As Solomon said, recorded in the Book of Ecclesiastes, “Time and chance happeneth to all.” Some knowledge, and treasures, and memories, come out of the blue, like last week’s Christmas card from Hergé and his wife Fanny; or through friends; or coincidental friends-of-friends… Being in the right place at the right time. Plausible events and match-ups occur more frequently as you plant seeds.

And some things happen unpredicted, unexpected, and almost unbelievable.

In the 1970s and early ‘80s I lived in Fairfield County, Connecticut. First in Bethel; later in Westport and Weston. The place in Weston was three acres in the woods, two ponds and a stream running through our paisley shawl, deer in the front yard every morning; but only an hour’s drive from Times Square. That was when I wrote Disney stories for Gutenberghus, the Danish licensee.

   Caricature in clay of Art Young, by Jack Sears

My first sojourn was when I drew political cartoons for the Connecticut Herald, and my place in Bethel was rented from my college mentor Dr Albro Martin of American University. I told him I secured a newspaper job in Fairfield County. He was still in Washington DC, or maybe then at his next school, Bradley University, in Illinois. The strange thing I think I never knew was why he had a house in Bethel CT… and why his mother, an elderly Arkansas backwoodswoman, lived there. Alone, much less.

Dr Martin asked if I would consider being a tenant and collaterally look after his mother. A nice house in a charming New England town, a lot of wooded land, a swimming pool, and an easy decision.

“The woods were full of cartoonists.” Literally. New Yorker cartoonists Joe Farris and David Pascal had homes on Bethel Road Extension, just opposite. New Yorker cartoonists Bob Kraus and William Steig lived in Ridgefield, and so did Maurice Sendak. Recently Cullen Murphy wrote a book, Cartoon County, about growing up as the son of the Big Ben Bolt and Prince Valiant cartoonist, and the folks who gathered weekly, or more often, for lunches, dinners, parties, golf outings, and cruises.

I was blessed to be working and living – and partying – among so many people who were my idols a few years earlier. And still were. I was accepted in the genial circles, and have shared memories here, and will in the future. Dik Browne, Dick Hodgins, Jack Tippit, Lenny Starr, Stan Drake, Jack Murphy, Jerry Dumas, Bob Gustafson, Mort Walker, Chuck Saxon, Dick Cavalli, Frank Johnson, Curt Swan, John Prentice, Hardie Gramatky, Eric Gurney, Mel Casson, Bill Brown, so many more. So many lunches.

One regular lunch group of mine was centered up around Bethel and Ridgefield. One of two days a week, a group roughly comprising Ron Goulart, Orlando Busino, Jerry Marcus, Gill Fox, Jack Berrill, and Bob Weber would meet at one of several restaurants until Jerry found something to complain about, and then we would re-gather at another restaurant.

   Two drawings by Art Young of the backyard cabin in Bethel – the studio  as it looked, and as he hoped to upgrade it as a small art gallery. 

One week, I mentioned that the property where I had lived in Bethel, ‘way back in the woods, abutted the property of the house where the legendary cartoonist Art Young lived. I knew because he wrote about it, and sketched parts of the property and studio in his two autobiographies. Art Young was a powerful cartoonist. As a radical he drew for The Masses and other Socialist and anarchist journals, and had been indicted during World War I for “obstructing the war effort.” He dozed off during his trial.

As a “straight” cartoonist, he drew some of the first color cartoons in newspapers (Chicago Inter-Ocean, 1892), and for Puck, Judge, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, even The New Yorker and the New York American, friendly with all.

Bob Weber asked if I had ever visited that house, or knocked on the door. “No, Art Young died in 1944,” I attempted to wisecrack. Bob suggested we go and visit the occupants – maybe they knew Young; or maybe he left material behind. Bob, who draws Moose and Mollie, is one of the great guys in the business, and shy about nothing except deadlines, insisted we try. Since I was driving him that day, it seemed natural. I never had thought of doing such a thing!

We drove, knocked, and were met by Clay Fairborn and his wife. Indeed, they had bought the house from Young’s children in 1944. We chatted about all they knew about Young – which was not much, never having met him – but were very grateful to learn all we could share about the famous radical and humor cartoonist. A charming couple of hours.

Bob finally asked if anything of Young’s had been left behind. Clay said, “I was just about to tell you that things were in the attic, and still are. I was going to ask you fellers if you would like them. You know more about Mr Young than we ever did. Seems right.”

   “Holy Trinity” – reportedly Art Young’s favorite of his own cartoons. About the Episcopal Church as a New York slumlord. I own the original, previously acquired to the afternoon at his old homestead in Bethel.

Yes. It sort of felt right to accept his offer. Clay brought down a small trove of books, artwork, and even Art Young’s student notebooks from Chicago, enormous sheets of sketches and studies bound in an elaborate leather book befitting the ambitions of am aspiring artist.

We thanked the Fairborns, then and afterward, and Bob and I were able to divide the artifacts, as I already had some of Art Young’s books and magazines, inscribed, and he cared less about the original art.

From a casual conversation over lunch to a random house call to driving home with precious cartoon artifacts – begun and finished in three hours or so – are threads in the weave of a Crowded Life in cartoons.

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63

Christmas With The Cartoonists

❄

ERIC GURNEY

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Wilhelm Schulz

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Vernon Grant

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Art Young

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Bob Zschiesche

[Our Folks]

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America’s First Color Newspaper Supplement (1892)

1 [1892] Cover of the first issue of  
The Inter Ocean Illustrated Supplement, 
 ‘Grover Cleveland,’ June 23.

by Richard Samuel West

Comic strip historians credit H.H. Kohlsaat as the grandfather of the Sunday comic supplement. Though he was not involved in the launch of the Sunday comic supplement, his brainchild — The Inter Ocean Illustrated Supplement — inspired it. Kohlsaat was in his late forties when he bought a controlling interest in the Chicago based Inter Ocean newspaper in 1891. The son of German and English immigrants, he had made his money in the bakery trade. As a life-long Republican, he wanted to use his wealth to influence national affairs and, especially, to push the political prospects of William McKinley of Ohio, who had recently lost his House seat but was maneuvering to run for governor of his home state and had his eye on the presidency.

2 [1892] Explanatory article in the first issue, 
‘An American Color Bearer,’ June 23.

Prior to taking control of The Inter Ocean in Chicago Kolhsaat had traveled to Europe where he learned that the widely read Paris daily Le Petit Journal was issuing an illustrated weekly supplement in color, something he had never seen before. Sure, he was familiar with Puck and Judge and Chicago’s Light, all of whom sported full color lithographs in each weekly issue, but this newspaper supplement was different — its color was produced mechanically on a perfecting press, a press that prints on both sides of the paper at once — which made it more efficient and less expensive than chromolithography. Kohlsaat was intrigued by the supplement and the printing process. He sought out the inventor of the press, one of the owners of the Journal, Hippolyte Maranoni, and ordered one for the offices of The Inter Ocean.

3-4 [1892] Top: June 23, ‘The Democratic 
Convention Wigwam.’ Bottom: September 4. 
‘Let Uncle Sam be the Arbitrator,’ 
illustrated by Art Young.

On Thursday, June 23, 1892, Kohlsaat launched The Inter Ocean Illustrated Supplement, an eight page tabloid sporting a full color front and back cover, with news features, fiction, and miscellany filling up the black and white interior. It was the first color newspaper Supplement issued in America. In the early issues, the color was a bit grainy and pallid. The illustrations were prosaic, mainly portraits of men in the news, street scenes, or buildings, usually drawn by Charles O. Jones of the Inter Ocean art department. In September of ’92, however, the Illustrated Supplement took on renewed vigor.

5-6 [1892] Left: October 16. ‘Hon. John C. Spooner,’ 
cover illustrated by Art Young. 
Right: October 22, ‘Rip van Winkle Dazzled by 
the World’s Fair,’ illustrated by Thomas Nast.

Art Young, a Midwesterner who had come to Chicago in 1884 to study at the arts student league, had jumped from one Chicago daily to another during the latter half of the 1880s. After a stint in Paris, he returned to his adopted city and began working for the Inter Ocean at the beginning of 1892. He was the paper’s daily political cartoonist. With the September 4 issue, he began contributing political cartoons to the back covers of the Illustrated Supplement and then caricature portraits to the front covers.

7-8 [1892] Left: October 30, ‘Defeat,’ 
cover illustrated by Art Young. 
Right: October 30, JOHN BULL – 
“I say, Uncle Sam, how you have grown. 
Is it PROTECTION?” U.S. – “Well, 
I should smile.” Illustrated by Thomas Nast.

In October, during the homestretch of the 1892 presidential campaign, he was joined briefly by Thomas Nast, usually with Young drawing the cover art and Nast contributing a cartoon to the back.  Nast had come to Chicago at Kohlsaat’s request to judge a contest to select the best graphic representation of the city of Chicago. From then on, his work appeared sporadically in the pages of The Inter Ocean. (In 1894, Kohlsaat commissioned Nast to paint what has become his best known oil painting, “Peace in Union” which depicts Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Kolhsaat paid Nast $10,000 for the painting and then donated it to his hometown library in Galena, Illinois, also the hometown of Ulysses S. Grant.)

9-10 [1893] Left: January 28 cover, ‘Blaine.’ 
Right: March 5, ‘Another Hand Takes the 
Reins of Government,’ illustrated by Art Young.

Of course the big event in Chicago during this period was the World’s Columbian Exposition, which though originally scheduled for 1892, was delayed a year and ran from May to October of 1893. From June 1892 through April 1893, the Illustrated Supplement almost always accompanied the Sunday paper, but in a few instances it was issued on another day instead. With the advent of the Fair, the Illustrated Supplement stepped up publication to twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays. Young continued as the main artist for the supplement with assistance from another art department staffer named Williamson. In July, The Inter Ocean hired Charles Saalburg, formerly of the San Francisco Wasp, to head the art department; he also became a major contributor to the Illustrated Supplement. Saalburg’s polished work was a nice compliment to Young’s homegrown efforts and Williamson’s illustrations.

11-12 [1893] Left: April 16, ‘A Few Old Sketches 
Re-Touched,’ illustrated by Thomas Nast. 
Right: April 30 front cover, ‘I Will be Queen 
of the May,’ illustrated by Thomas Nast.

The  Illustrated Supplement created something of a sensation in the newspaper publishing world. In May of 1893, The World in New York, inspired by Kohlsaat’s innovation, brought out the first color comic supplement, using the same press model Kohlsaat had imported from Europe. After the fair ended in October, the Illustrated Supplement returned to a Sunday-only publishing schedule. Though it was downsized at the end of the year, it contained the same amount of color because an interior doublespread was added. 

13-15 [1893] Left: July 16 front cover, ‘He Rules 
the Roost,’ illustrated by Charles Saalburg. 
Centre: September 6 front cover, ‘Maine 
State Building at the World’s Fair.’ 
Right: September 10 front cover, ‘Ohio’s 
Strong Man,’ illustrated by Charles Saalburg.

Kohlsaat, Young, and Saalburg all left The Inter Ocean in 1894. Kohlsaat sold out his interest in the paper and moved on to other projects (though he bought back the Inter Ocean nearly twenty years later). Young eventually made his way to New York and enjoyed fifty more active years in the profession. At Pulitzer’s invitation, Saalburg became head of The World’s art department in New York. He went on to a long career in pictorial journalism and was a highly respected printing arts technician, eventually even patenting several color printing processes. 

16-17 [1893] Left: November 21 cover, 
‘Our Uncle Grover – As Usual, the Inter 
Ocean Was Right.’ Right: December 17 cover, 
‘The Song That Did (Not) Reach His Heart.’ 
Both illustrated by Charles Saalburg.

No one has determined the exact date that the Illustrated Supplement was discontinued. I have an Inter Ocean Illustrated Supplement from 1900, but it does not contain any original art (just reprinted cartoons from Judge) and I have been unable to determine whether or not the title was published continuously during the intervening years. Reprinted here is a generous sampling of cover art from this pioneering publication.

18 [1894] January 7, Front plus back-cover sheet, 

‘The Modern Paul and Virginia’ and ‘Looking 

Backward,’ both illustrated by Charles Saalburg. 

Please note that the final image reads 1893 on the 

title bar of the issue itself, but it’s actually from 

1894 (the issue was misdated when published).

Richard West’s new book ‘Iconoclast in Ink; The Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling’ can be purchased HERE.

Art Young (1866-1943)

Good Morning, continued under the title Art Young Quarterly, was edited by cartoonist Art Young and was published irregularly between 1919 and 1921 by The Good Morning Company.

*Original Art Young Sketch and Letters courtesy Don Kurtz