Love this. Check it out. Reminds me of the guy on the snow boarder during the blizzard.
Remembering friends from my youth
A friend sent me a notice that it’s the anniversary of Tom & Jerry. I’m not sure why, maybe because my name is Tom, but I never really watched Tom & Jerry growing up. I was a big Hanna-Barbera fan and that was one of their first cartoons, created in 1940, but I was a big Hanna-Barbera fan of the 1960s cartoons like Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.
I’m wondering what makes a kid a fan of certain cartoons or cartoon studios. I’ve never been into Warner-Brothers cartoons or Disney. Not sure why, but most Hanna-Barbera stuff I loved and grew up with. I loved Fractured Fairy Tales, too. I had forgotten about them but a friend recently has been posting episodes on Facebook and it all came back to me. And I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle, which I think featured Fractured Fairy Tales and Sherman and Mr. Peabody, they were by Jay Ward Productions.
This is true: my earliest memory is me at age two or three, running around our Brooklyn apartment, with my mother chasing me, trying to get me into the bath and Huckleberry Hound was on the tv. The show was just coming on, I could hear the theme music in my head as I ran around trying to avoid bath time. That’s it above.
And the first character I can remember drawing is Fred Flintstone. I used to draw Fred daily I remember, from when I could first hold a pencil. So along with Huckleberry Hound, I loved The Flintstones and The Jetsons.
I loved Magilla Gorilla and Yogi Bear, Quickdraw McGraw, Wally Gator, Peter Potamus, Jinxie and Pixie and Dixie, Touché Turtle and Dum Dum, etc.
I remember Huckleberry and Magilla and Yogi and the others being on certain nights at about 7 or 7:30 pm on New York tv. They were reruns at the time and for instance, Huckleberry Hound was on Monday night and he had three parts – his own adventures, and Pixie and Dixie and Hokey Wolf, then Quickdraw McGraw might have been on Tuesday nights and he had his adventure and then showed Auggie Doggie and Doggie Daddy and Snooper and Blabber.
The Flintstones were on in prime time, so were the Jetsons and also Top Cat, I remember.
I remember watching the Wacky Races on Saturday mornings with one of my brothers. We would watch each week, cheering on our favorite character. I don’t think the show was on very long, maybe two years, but we watched the reruns over and over again.
Here’s a list of all the Hanna-Barbera shows.
Good grief, Snoopy is fired
After 31 years, Snoopy has been dropped as the face/mascot of MetLife Insurance. I sort of like this since I never liked the idea of him being exploited to sell insurance, but I guess Peanuts is probably the most exploited comic strip out there so MetLife was just one of the group of entities tied to Peanuts.
MetLife is re-branding in some way, but some how, I don’t think Snoopy will be affected. But maybe he will, it’s said that MetLife paid between $10 million and $15 million per year to use the Peanuts characters! Nice work if you can get it.
But I will miss seeing his smiling face on the blimp. Here’s the whole story in Wall Street Journal.
But I wouldn’t mind seeing the Peanuts music and references disappear from that All detergent ad. It creeps me out when I see that kid walking as if he was Pigpen, with all the dust coming off of him and the other kid in the Charlie Brown shirt. It’s sacrilege in some way. If you haven’t seen the commercial, you can see it here.
Sometimes I think Bill Watterson, of Calvin & Hobbes fame had it right, he was against exploiting the characters for commercial reasons. But then again, if someone offered me millions of dollars anything for the use of my own comic characters, I would be all over that.
Dusting off ‘Paws’
I am focusing on my Paws comic now. People seem to like Tombo the Rabbit and Jacomo the Mole and they are constantly asking for them. So I will put a bunch of comics together and submit them to the syndicates.
I am using the Surface Pro 3 now, rather than the Wacom Cintiq, which I used in the past. While I like the Cintiq better, I like the all-in-one aspect of the Surface Pro, being able to use it as a computer and a drawing tablet and also, it’s portable and easier to manage.
I transported all my files and I use Manga Studio 4 EX and Photoshop to create on the Surface Pro, just like I did with the Cintiq. I have Manga Studio 5 EX, but I don’t like it for some reason, I think there is just too much on the screen and the brushes confuse me. I’m more comfortable with the 4 EX.
So that’s where I stand on the comics front now. Getting Paws ready for some sort of revival. I had done something or not done something regarding the trademark, so I had to resubmit some files this week. They were accepted and Paws is fully trademarked as a comic strip.
Why he’s voting for Trump
Thanks to my friend Harry Gottlieb for this clever idea.
Trumpkins
Have you seen the Trumpkins popping up this year? They are jack-o-lanterns made out to be Donald Trump.
The Huffington Post has a great how-to here. But it seems easy, it’s all in the hair. Just put something on top of the pumpkin and call it Trump!
Treasures I found at NY Comic Con
There’s so much to see and do at Comic Con, but as you walk around, you’ll see quite a few booths that sell original cartoon art. Most is comic book characters and pages, but in between if you take the time, you’ll see this. Here is an original Peanuts strip from 1964. Look at the size of it. (Click on the image for large view).
It’s amazing to see this original work. I’ve seen Peanuts strips in museums, too, but this was special, I don’t know why. Maybe because if I had $10,000, I could have had it. But that might be the starting price at auction, and it will probably jump up many thousands more.
I love looking at the line work. I think these are such great pieces of art, up there with Van Goghs and Picassos.
Hiding behind the counter at one booth was this original Krazy Kat Sunday strip. Incredible. I think this one is from the 1930s – an original George Herriman Krazy Kat! It’s marked at $21,000, but at auction will go up much higher.
There were original Hanna-Barbera comic cells and original drawings, too, and so many cool things if you looked around. You had to look past all the noise and activities at Comic Con to find these treasures.
My first visit to the Guggenheim
I visited the Guggenheim Museum for the first time in my life yesterday. I think because it was raining and I wanted to get out of the rain. I loved the structure, the architecture, I didn’t care so much for the art. It was mostly blank canvases with a few lines drawn, very abstract. I did enjoy the few Degas, Picassos and Rembrants and of course Van Gogh, but it’s no MOMA.
I loved that Mr. Softee was right outside when I arrived, the perfect thing to start my visit, ice cream from my favorite ice cream truck.
Here are a few more pics of my trip inside.
Two favs at NY Comic Con
I saw two favorites at New York Comic Con yesterday – Nichelle Nichols from Star Trek and Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine cartoonist. Stephan was signing books at the GoComics booth and Ms. Nichols downstairs at the autograph section.
I admire Stephan a lot. I interviewed him for my 10 With Tom column once. You can see that here.
If it’s October, it’s Comic Con in NY
It’s ComicCon time again in New York. The Jacob Javits Center was full of pop culture and comics fans. I look forward to it every year. The event runs Thursday through Sunday, always at Columbus Day Weekend.
The event is sold out, but around the convention center you’ll see people selling scalped tickets. I’m not sure if they are legit, so I wouldn’t recommend buying the tickets because the seller could disappear into the city so easily.
One great thing this year is that the #7 subway line now goes as far as the convention center, so it’s easy to get around.
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