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Rube Goldberg Machine Cartoon: Simplified Can Opener (1929)
Continuing our week-long extravaganza of Rube Goldberg inventions, here's his Simplified Can Opener, originally published in the July 27, 1929 issue of Collier's weekly magazine.Of course, nothing...
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Rube Goldberg Machine Invention Cartoon: An Automatic Cigar Cutter (1930)
Rube Goldberg's pseudo-scientist alter-ego, Professor Lucifer G. Butts, A.K., first appeared in a 1928 Collier's short story by Rube Goldberg called "It's the Little Things That Matter." You can read...
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Rube Goldberg Machine Cartoon Invention: The Only Sanitary Way To Lick A...
How many invention cartoons did Rube Goldberg create? Thus far, no one has actually successfully cataloged the entire output of this seminal American humorist-cartoonist.We simply don't know. Certainly...
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Rube Goldberg Machines Found in Bobo Baxter and Lala Palooza
Rube Goldberg first created his famous invention cartoons around 1914. They appeared sporadically in his daily newspaper comics, randomly rotating with a host of other series such as Foolish Questions,...
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The Roots of Screwball Comics: Dink Shannon
Little is (yet) known about Dink Shannon, a notable, if unknown, graphic stylist of the early comics page. Shannon's work offers one of the more distinctive visual styles of the early comics with...
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The Art of Rube Goldberg (Abrams ComicArts, 2013) New Book!
Web Exclusive! Here's a preview of the cover art for THE ART OF RUBE GOLDBERG comic from Abrams ComicArts in November, 2013.I believe this blog is the first place on the Web to unveil this art! We've...
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The First Rube Goldberg Invention Cartoon (1912) -- Two Years Earlier Than We...
In his excellent Rube Goldberg biography, Rube Goldberg: His Life and Work (Harper and Row, 1973), Peter Marzio -- the man who also curated the 1970 Smithsonian Institution's 1970 retrospective of...
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Rube Goldberg's Cartoon Machine Inventions of 1913
About 10 months passed between the production of Rube Goldberg's first and second invention cartoons, from July 17, 1912 (view that cartoon here) to May 7, 1913. As with the first cartoon, Rube's...
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Rube Goldberg's 1918 Fourth of July Cartoon - War and Pieces
Happy Fourth of July, 2013!As you probably know, Rube Goldberg was born on July 4, 1883. To my knowledge, Rube never trumpeted his own birthday in his daily cartoons, but he always seemed to make a...
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Before Bob Clampett and Will Elder, There Was The Comic Anarchy of H.C. Greening
I love this guy. H.C. (Harry Cornell) Greening -- forgotten today -- was a screwball master of the first order. He wrote and drew numerous short-lived comic strips and Sunday features from about...
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New Sunday Press Extravaganza Unveiled at Comic-Con 2013
Sunday Press publisher, editor, and comics historian Peter Maresca has unveiled his wondrous new creation, SOCIETY IS NIX - GLEEFUL ANARCHY AT THE DAWN OF THE AMERICAN COMIC STRIP 1895-1915, at the...
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"I Seen Yo' Ad In Dep Paper" - SAM and His Laugh (1905-06): Joyously Subversive
One of my favorite screwball artists is James "Jimmy" Swinnerton (1875-1974). Born in Eureka, California. In 1892, Swinnerton began his career as a staff cartoonist for Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner,...
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What Is Art? - A Milt Gross Count Screwloose From 1931 Frames The Question
When you ask yourself questions like "what is art," you are probably setting out on the path that leads to the fruitcake factory. Enuff books and articles have been published on this subject to fill...
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A Week of Rube Goldberg's 1918 Comics Featuring Mike and Ike
In just a few days from the time this post is being written, the brand new, deluxe art book entitled The Art of Rube Goldberg (selected by Jennifer George, Abrams ComicArts, 2013) will be available...
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Rube Goldberg's Drawing Board, My Feet, and The New Book
It's official! The deluxe, super-sized book, THE ART OF RUBE GOLDBERG is available for purchase wherever fine books are sold!After two days on the market, the book has skyrocketed to the #1 bestseller...
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The Rube Abides: Thanksgiving 1915
In 1915, Rube Goldberg was on fire as a creator. The satirical subjects and the grotesque imagery that he poured into his ever-shifting kaleidoscopic array of daily comics from about 1915-1917 are...
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Ving Fuller's Screwball Radio Ads (1944-46)
Ving Fuller is what you get when you turn a hustling American entrepreneur into a screwball cartoonist.I never cease to be amazed at the number and variety of schemes the man created to sell his...
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Hear Rube Goldberg Sing! (1917)
Presenting the earliest known recording, by far, of Rube Goldberg's voice. In 1917, Rube Goldberg sang on a record. The song, which he also wrote, was "Father Was Right." I'm pleased to present this...
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Tracks of My Tiers: A Jimmy Swinnerton 1909 Video and Runaway Pie Wagon Comix
READING THE FUNNIES with Paul C. TumeyHere's a little video I made from a scan of a great James ("Jimmy") Swinnerton half page Sunday comic, originally published May 19, 1909.I made this video using...
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Rube Goldberg's April Fool's Day Comics
Of all the great American newspaper comic strip cartoonists, Rube Goldberg most sought to inject into his work the spirit of the mischievous prankster. It's no surprise that, while Goldberg regularly...
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Blowing Rainbows: Paul Bunyan in Gene Ahern's The Squirrel Cage
Gene Ahern's masterpiece, The Squirrel Cage, had several interesting phases throughout its approximate 15-year run from 1937-1952. from 1942 to 1944, Ahern shifted from his wacky inventors (Ches and...
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A Toothful Espisode of W.R. Bradford's John Dubbalong (1911)
Yesterday, I had a tooth pulled. I confess, I was quite brave. I went in with nary a protest, and uttered only two groans at the procedure's most intense moments. Yes, friends, my bravery was eclipsed...
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The Comic Writing of Harry J. Tuthill in The Bungle Family
Harry J. Tuthill's comics are extremely wordy. This can be somewhat daunting, at first. It takes some work to read all those words. If you try to read his comics the way you might read a modern comic...
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Rube Goldberg Wishes You a Merry Christmas
Over the course of his 35 years or so as a daily and Sunday newspaper humor cartoonist, Rube Goldberg celebrated many Christmases in pen and ink. Here is a selection of just a few of his...
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Deluxe New Screwball Comics Retrospective Coming Soon!
Screwball! The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny is coming October, 2018! It will be a large, full-color hardcover art book offering around 275 pages resplendent with rare comics, art, photos and...
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