Cartoon SNAP: August 2008

Dick Briefer Does Dinosaurs and Cavemen Cartoons at Pappy's

Cartoon Dinosaur fans rejoice! Pappy's Golden Age Comic Blogzine brings us Yankee Longago -- a beautiful seven-page prehistoric romp (scanned from from Boy Comics #13, December 1943) by the wonderful Golden Age cartoonist, Dick Briefer!

cartoon dinosaurs in Dick Briefercomic adventure Yankee Longago

Click on any image to jump right over
and read the full-size 7-pager over at Pappy's

This silly yarn is seven-pages full of goofy situations and beautifully loose brushwork, typical of Dick Briefer when he's in his humor mode.

Cartoon Cavemen Running from a rampaging dinosaur drawing by Dick Briefer

Look at those faces...there's no "stock expressions" there.
Dick Briefer's funny comics always look like they were drawn straight to ink, with only the slightest bit of pencil breakdowns. They have that spontaneous look I love!

Big Cartoon Dinosaur with a comic caveman in his mouth

Dick Briefer is best known for his TWO classic Frankenstein comic book series. The first Frankenstein series was a humor comic, and later, in the fifties when horror comics were the rage, he re-launched the Frankenstein series as a straight horror book. The weird thing is that BOTH takes are absolute classics in their respective genres.

Cartoon caveman drawn by Frankenstein comics artist Dick Briefer

G'wan over to Pappy's and check out the whole seven-page inkfest. It starts out silly and ends up...well--let's just say that you've gotta see what happens on the top of page seven!

More on Dick Briefer's Frankenstein:
http://eeweems.com/artandartifice/Dick_Briefer.html

Three funny Dick Briefer comic stories at the American Comic Archive
http://www.americancomicarchive.com/feature.html

More Fantastic Frankenstein comics scans at Pappy's:
http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2007/02/number-97-frankenstein-friday.html
http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2007/02/number-94-frankenstein-friday-death.html
http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2007/02/number-91-frankenstein-friday-monsters.html
http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2007/02/number-88-frankenstein-friday-world-of.html

Freaky Cartoon Frogs - Flip and Flopper Comics by Don Arr - Don R. Christensen

This is some of the trippiest old-time funny animal comic book art that I have ever seen! Here's the splash panel to Flip and Flopper by Don Arr from Coo Coo comics #27.

Flip and Flopper cartoon frog comic book scan drawn by Don Arr

The whole six-page Flip and Flopper comic book scan is on display HERE (Make sure you click on the thumbnails when you get there because each image is linked to a nice BIG high-resolution comic scan).

Cartoon Frog getting stomped on by heavy shoes

The entire story is filled with some of the wackiest and most amazingly cartoony art I've seen in a long time. Definitely NOT your standard generic funny-animal comics. I wonder if some of R. Crumb's 1960's psychedelic comic-book fever dreams were inspired by this loopy tale!

The cartoonist is Don Arr (a pseudonym for Don R. Christensen, 1916-2006) who was an animator, writer and cartoonist whose career stretches back to pre-WWII Disney Studios.

silhouettes of cartoon frogs walking dow the sidewalk in a cartoon cityscape

He was later a storyboard artist for the Robert Clampett unit at Warner Brothers Animation, and then a comic book writer and artist for various comic book companies, including Western Publishing's Dell Comics and Gold Key Comics. He continued to work on TV animation projects up through the late 1980's. A real lifer!

Cartoon Frog on his knees in Flip and Flopper Comics by Don R. Christensen aka Don Arr

There are lots more vintage funny-animal comic book scans from the 40's and 50's from Nedor and Standard Publishing over at the Nedor-a-Day Comic Book Blog.
Go have fun!

Cartoon Frog in a straw hat bowtie and white gloves

More on Don Arr (Don R. Christensen) here:

http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2006_10_27.html

Foxy Fagan #1 - One of the GREATEST Funny Animal comic book stories ever

Foxy Fagan Comic Book cover drawing by Harvey Eisenberg -- cartoon fox paints eggs with gold paint and tries to sell them as golden eggs

This unbelieveably great Foxy Fagan comic book story was featured on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive website back in February. I don't know how I missed it. Luckily, I stumbled across it while looking at another cool comics blog, Alternative Comix.

This Foxy Fagan comic book story is seriously one of the greatest feats in Funny Animal comics I have ever read. I've never seen a comic that captured the feel of animated cartoons as well as this one...it reads like some of the best animation of the golden age. That's because this story erupted out of the heads of a couple of the greatest cartoonists ever: Joe Barbera and Harvey Eisenberg.

You ever read something amazing and you just want to run around and show everybody you know how great it is, but there isn't anybody around who really cares, but you can't stop yourself so you blather on anyway? Ahh...thank you, Mr. Internet.

There's a LOT of great information about this comic, along with full-sized scans of ALL the pages from this story at the ASIFA-Hollywood Archive's article on Foxy Fagan.

If you aren't already a fan of the Archive, you really need to check out this treasure trove of classic cartoon rarities and delights!

Here's a nice article about Foxy Fagan comics by Mark Evanier.

And check out this great post by John Kricfalusi about Harvey Eisenberg's Tom & Jerry comics.

Robotman Comics...Good Ol' Fashioned Comic Fun!

My pal Chris Duffy (Editor Extraordinaire @ Nickelodeon Magazine) has posted a wonderfully silly comic book adventure featuring Robotman on his "Comic Books are Interesting..." blog.

Spoilers lurk below this paragraph,
so go read
"Robotman Around the World in 24 Hours"
before you spoil it by reading
my dopey comments.
______________

How freaky is that scene on page 3...Doc Payne is basically raping Robotman...yeeesh!

Love these one-liners:

"Not even mountains can stop me!" --that's my new motto

"If I'm lucky, my head will roll free, undamaged! Here goes!"
...and of course, "Tarnation!"

I love the structure, too! Great, exciting opening splash panel followed by a framing sequence that makes you go "Whaa?" I thought the head-in-the-box gag was a fantastic hook...I wonder if David Fincher ever read this comic...?

It all adds up to good old fashioned silly comic book storytelling. I mean, once started, nobody could STOP reading this story no matter how hard they tried!

What? You didn't read it yet? Well click on over and have some fun!

Read RobotMan Comics