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).
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.
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!
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!
Go have fun!
3 comments:
sweet find sherm! Yeah the art is let pretty loose with some really dynamic and cool compositions.
I was just diggin on the color of this old stuff too, it's great use of color with the simplest flat half-tones.
Page 20 and 21 with the film maker and genius bits has some awesome stuff in it.
keep em comin sherm.
Hey, Mike...yeah...they really knew how to color comics in those days. I think it made them more creative when they only had like 64 colors to use. Marie Severin's coloring on the old EC comics (especially the Harvey Kurtzman-edited war titles) was beautifully economical. She would color an entire crowd with one solid color as if to say, "this A mob...not twenty different people. This is A company of soldiers...not eighteen different men." It was a story point. Now colorists go crazt just because they can.
My favorite modern colorist: Lee Loughridge. He understands storytelling.
Check out this article by Todd Klein on old-school comic book coloring: http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=798
Hi, Sherm
Don R Christensen, the artist & writer of these stories is not to be confused with Don Christensen, the producer at Filmation. Don "Arr" used to regularly attend the San Diego Comic Con and "CAPS" in the '80's and he was retired by then. He was a reall friendly guy and loved to talk with young "kids" in the cartoon business.
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