Last month, a whole lot of CartoonSNAP readers (from all over the world!) downloaded Dan Gordon's Cookie Comics story from Cookie #20, so I decided to go back to the very first issue of COOKIE Comics to see how it all started...
ACG Comics images © Roger Broughton 2009
Cookie Comics #1 was published in 1946 by Michel Publications
of St. Louis, Missouri. 48 pages plus covers for only a dime.
Instead of putting up little thumbnails of the pages,
I picked out some of the best panels from the story
to show you up close. There's a link at the bottom of this post
which you can click to download all the pages in one file.
Meanwhile...here's a sample of what you'll find inside Cookie #1--
Contrast in character design
________
Check out the shadow under the old guy's beard.
Really makes it pop! His head is as wrinkly as his suit!
Foreground + Middle ground + Background = DEPTH of staging
He does this in almost every panel.
Silly situations, funny drawings and painful violence. That's a cartoon!
Dan Gordon poses = mayhem
So much action and movement!
In the panel above, notice how the colorist
pushed Angelpuss back into the background
by coloring her in monotone.
...and these detail shots
are from a Jitterbuck solo story:
(check out the SOLID construction and anatomy on that dog!)
Dan gordon puts in a lot of blacks like that in his inking
which really gives his drawings a super-solid feel.
The shadows also let us know that the dog's right leg is toughing the fence,
but his left leg is still trailing behind in mid-air.
You don't notice these details while reading the story because they go by so quickly, but if you stop and admire any of these pages in detail, you can really see what a master craftman and master cartoonist Dan Gordon was!
Dan Gordon excels at drawing the backs of characters' heads.
If you like these samples from the comic, you can download all these stories at once below. I've been experimenting with different methods of posting these comics, so I'd appreciate it if you'll leave some comments to let me know what you think is easiest. I just don't want to make people have to click and save thirty different images, because it really bugs me when I have to do that.
Click on the COOKIE #1 COVER below
to DOWNLOAD all of these stories
in one convenient 67Mb PDF file
Or click HERE to download the all the stories
in a .ZIP file which contains all the pages as separate jpegs.
in a .ZIP file which contains all the pages as separate jpegs.
...and remember...
If you missed the previous post where I shared
Cookie #20, you can find it HERE.
ACG Comics images © Roger Broughton 2009
For ALL the Dan Gordon posts, click HERE!
UPDATE: There's LOTS more comic book scans to look at and download! Click HERE
- ...And if you liked this post, please help me share it
5 comments:
Sherm, I think I stared at the hatching on the underside of the dog's head in the "get that dinosaur outa here" panel for 5 minutes--never once reading the word balloons--before I finally made it down to your caption about how well Dan draws the backs of people's heads.
Why did we go right there?!
I'm a huge Cookie and Dan Gordon fan, so I love your posts on this topic. Minor correction about Cookie; it all started in Topsy Turvy Comics #1, a one-shot which the folks who went on to form ACG produced for another publisher (R.B. Leffingwell) a year before Cookie #1 appeared. The scans are out there and it's recommended!
Hey there, Pat! Thanks for that tip about Topsy Turvy Comics #1.
I'm glad to know that there are other Cookie fans out there...these comics are way too good to be forgotten.
..If you happen to know where I could find that scan I would be really grateful.
Very nice blog, by the way! Readers: check out Pat's Silver Age Comics blog at http://sacomics.blogspot.com/
I'm working on getting Topsy Turvy up at that Golden Age comics site. I first noticed Cookie because of the cover to Cookie #27; I bought two other issues as well from that seller's batch and was completely hooked.
It's a beautiful series. The plot elements were simple, but the mayhem level was high and the characters are memorable. The cast isn't quite as large as the Simpsons but if you look at all the people who do reappear you'll realize that Cookie's little town was tightly crafted and had reasonable continuity.
As a friend of mine remarked, ACG was fortunate that Dr Wertham did not review the Cookie series, as almost every issue featured cross-dressing, adult babies or mannequin fetishes.
I've uploaded TT #1 to the GA Comics website; might take a day or two for them to get it sorted. Enjoy! It's kind of an "origin" issue, showing how Cookie and Angelpuss first got together.
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