Clik here to view.
A Hot Smokey Stover Fireman Sunday Page From 1939
Hey Girlies, I'm swamped today, so no time for pithy analysis -- here's a Bill Holman extravaganz, scanned from my own paper collection, foo you to henjoy!February 20, 1939Remember to foo...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Energy Patterns Observed in a 1927 Screwball Salesman Sam Sunday by George Swan
Today I offer a nice paper scan of a very rare Salesman Sam Sunday by it's creator, George ("Swan") Swanson. I think this may be one of the last Sundays that Swan did before C.D. Small took over the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
For Your Ice Only: A Cool 1926 Milt Gross Nize Baby Color Sunday Comic
From my own paper collection, I offer for today's Milt Gross Monday a deliciously screwball 1926 Nize Baby that totally cracked me up (cough cough).Before the days of electrical refrigeration, people...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Say, Are You Looking at A Computer? Rube Goldberg's Foolish Questions
Q: What's this, a blog?A: No, it's a clam playing poker.Presenting a look at Rube Goldberg's hit panel, Foolish Questions. Readers like me, who grew up reading Mad, will read these cartoons and see a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
H.M. Bateman and The Speed of Life: Four Cartoons from 1923
Here are four pages of the brilliant English cartoonist H.M. Bateman's cartoons from 1923, scanned from a scrapbook I recently acquired. I believe these are all from the pages of Life, a black and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Screwball Sunday Supplement V17 No 148 - Ahern,Goldberg,Gross,...
A big thank you to Dan Nadel and the folks at the The Comics Journal for the link - your support is greatly appreciated and very helpful. ANNOUNCING a change in direction. Instead of a daily posting,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Screwball Goes to the Dogs - Doc Syke, Milt Gross, Swinnerton, and Smokey!...
Welcome to the second Screwball Sunday Comics Supplement! In this issue, we have literally gone to the dogs. Here's your chance to bone up on some forgotten screwball classics. With one exception,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Screwball Sunday Supplement Vol. 3 No. 33 - The Squirrel Cage, Swinnerton's...
GREETINGS FROM THE LAUGHING ACADEMY!Welcome to the third issue of our Screwball Sunday Supplement. This issue is packed with comics that ALL have produced guffaws and laffs amongst me self and me pals....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Screwball Sunday Supplement - Hairbreadth Harry, Petty Patty, Squirrel Cage,...
Welcome to the fourth Screwball Sunday Supplement. This issue features two consecutive examples from 1913 of the early screwball masterpiece, Hairbreadth Harry, by C.W. Kahles, in which all the water...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Rube Goldberg Machine For Voting - Election Special
To commemorate election day 2012 in the United States, I offer to the world an impressive screwball machine that Rube Goldberg invented for recording votes. Click on the cartoon to enlarge.Voting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pigging Out on Jimmy Swinnerton - A Rare 1912 Color Sunday
James Swinnerton had a remarkable appeal in his screwball drawings of dogs and children. Here's a very rare color Sunday page from 1912 that features plenty of hilarious kids and pigs, plus a great...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Secret History of Screwball: A Squirrel's Progress
While Gene Ahern's world of Our Boarding House and Room and Board explores the archetypes of early 20th century small town America, his multi-year Foozland continuity in The Squirrel Cage vastly and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Some Winsor McCay Pilgrims for Thanksgiving
I'm thankful for comics. Even at age 50, I still discover comics I never heard of before that I can feel excited about. It helps to make my own DULL CARE valise seem lighter and bearable. I find my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gene Ahern Does Rube Goldberg (Our Boarding House 1933)
There can be no doubt that Gene Ahern very deliberately followed in Rube Goldberg's footsteps. As of yet, I have found no evidence that the two great cartoonists knew each other personally. Rube spent...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Major Hoople's Guide to the Island of Jujuwok (1931) With Side-Trips to...
The "Legend"In this season of heavy rains and flooded basements, I offer as relief a classic Our Boarding House excursion to an exotic water-logged isle, in a nice big paper scan from my own...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rube Goldberg's The Boob Family (1917)
That generative genius, Ruben Lucius Goldberg, was a wellspring of new ideas. His biographer, Peter Marzio, estimated that Rube created somewhere around 50,000 cartoons in his 56-year career from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Season's Greetings From Major Hoople 1930
Dear Fellow Friends in Screwballism~Wishing you a happy holiday season. I had intended to share more holiday-themed comics from my collection but, alas, there rarely seems to be enough time to do it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Taking the Bate: The 1922 H.M. Bateman Punch Cartoons
Here's another pile of punchy screwball mini-masterworks by that early English comics master, H.M. Bateman.I am super busy at the time of this posting, thus I can only offer brief comments on these...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of Screwball: The Lost 1904-06 Gus Mager Sundays - Part One
I have some screwy news!I just completed an essay on the birth of American newspaper screwball comics that will be included in the forthcoming Sunday Press book, Society Is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy at the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of Screwball: The Lost 1904-06 Gus Mager Sundays (Part 2)
In 1906, Gus Mager was on the verge of something great.Working mostly in weekday comic strips, Mager created two knockout Sunday comics: What Little Johnny Wanted, and The Troubles of Pete the Pedlar....
View Article
