The news broke on August 26th, in Daryl Cagle’s blog.  The headline read, New Syndicated Editorial Cartoonist: Randall Enos!

This sleepy journalist, who dozes through nearly every development and deadline, sat up and noticed.  Randall Enos, illustrator extraordinaire whose work has been featured by all the old grey ladies (The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest) and their black sheep sisters (Playboy, National Lampoon), has joined Cagle’s syndicate.  This is extremely welcome news, because we all know Enos will bring his own unique sense of style to political cartooning, that wonderful exercise of free speech out at the blunt, brazen, and blasphemous limits.

‘Tis the season for campaigns and other types of egregious politicking, and that means ’tis the season for political cartoonists, the best friends of democracy, those who don’t mind poking at the soft belly of the political machine with the sharpest stick they can find.  I’m proud to say Randall Enos has joined ITCH for the first in our series of interviews with political cartoonists.

What was your first comic strip/cartoon/comic?

I started my career teaching at the Famous Artists School in their newly formed Cartoon Course (I was the first one hired). While I was there for eight years, I started my free-lance career doing not strips or panels but magazine and newspaper illustrations for places like Playboy and Harper’s Magazine. My actual first free-lance job was for a magazine called Cavalcade. I later also did some animation.

My first comic strip was Chicken Gutz for The National Lampoon, years later. Eventually I also did two strips which alternated in Playboy on their Funny Pages.

Is political cartooning a recent creative turn for you? And if so, why get into political cartooning now?

I’ve never “officially” been a political cartoonist before. But I have done quite a few for a group called INX…and throughout my 54 years in the business, I’ve done other political cartoons. I got interested because my regular markets — the newspaper and magazine illustration markets — are drying up on me and I’m looking for new things to do. I met Daryl Cagle at a National Cartoonists Reuben weekend where I had been nominated for my Broadway show poster. He knew and loved my work from way back and asked me if I might like to join his syndicate…so I did. It’s a little different for me. I think I’ll get the hang of it soon and then WATCH OUT!

Here’s a site where you can see up-to-date tons of my work. Take a look at the caricatures.

What are you reading right now?

I am Azorean Portuguese by heritage and I have a strong interest in studying whaling history so the book I am currently reading is And So Ends This Day which is about the Azorean Portuguese and their involvement in the whaling industry.

I would love to go whaling with you sometime. I have an excellent stomach for the ocean. But not much stomach for killing, so I might go below deck when that part happens.

Hey…I don’t kill animals either. Mocha Dick that I’m writing about was a hero whale. He protected his species from the whale hunters. I’ve already done one limited edition (36 copies) about this whale, hand bound, hand stitched, and beautifully printed on an old Vandercook printing press.  It’s called The Life and Death of Mocha Dick. We sell it for $300.

What is your guilty pleasure?  At least, the one that really answers an ITCH!

I’d have to say movies. I’m a terrible film addict and even watch while I’m working sometimes but I’m trying (after 54 years of doing it) to rid myself of the habit.

Who was the first cartoonist/animator you met?

My boss at the Famous Artists School, Bud Sagendorf who drew Popeye. He also gave me week-end work helping him on the Popeye comic books.

Which dead cartoonist/animator would you most like to meet?

George Herriman of course.

What would you say?

I’d say, “Mr. Herriman, sir, what were you thinking…a Kat with an ambiguous sexual identification?”

What has been the highlight of your career to date?

I think getting to do a Broadway theater poster (and ad graphics and web-site illustrations). It was off-beat with all my crazy linocut lettering etc.

Please tell us a little about your latest project.

My latest project is a children’s book that I am writing and illustrating for Creative Editions. It’s also about the huge white whale Mocha Dick — who was the REAL Moby Dick.

Which old-time cartoon character do you most identify with?

What a crazy question. Do most cartoonists identify with old-time cartoon characters?

If I had to pick one, I guess I’d say Jiggs from Bringing Up Father. I like his style. He’s impressed me from when I was a kid and now that I am also a hen-pecked husband who yearns to escape to the guilty pleasures of corned beef & cabbage in the company of low-lifes at the local tavern (even though I don’t drink… anymore), I guess I identify even more.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

I guess to be able to cloud men’s minds so they couldn’t see me… the way The Shadow did.

Check out Randall Enos’s new page at Daryl Cagle’s Political Cartoonists Index. It’s election season, which for fans of comics can mean only one thing: an avalanche of sharp wit, irreverence, and laffs galore!

And as always: Thanks, Randy!

Dan Flagg was a newspaper strip set during the Vietnam War era and created by Don Sherwood, an artist with a most impressive signature but who seemed to use a bit too much photo reference. I never realized the character was used in backup stories at Charlton, though.

http://www.thecharltonstory.com/2010/08/don-sherwoods-dan-flagg.html

Here’s an interesting essay about some controversy and bad blood between artists Howard Nostrand and Bob Powell, illustrated with a whole bunch of samples from the Bat Masterson newspaper strip.

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2010/09/badmouths-of-west-thursday-story-strip.html

Here’s the second (of three) parts of a beautiful Carl Barks storyboarded penciled “script” for one of his final actual comics works, for Gold Key’s Junior Woodchucks title in the 1970’s.

http://sekvenskonst.blogspot.com/2010/09/where-theres-smoke-part-ii.html

Speaking of Gold Key, around that same time they had an adaptation of the popular horror soap opera, Dark Shadows. While it wasn’t the most faithful adaptation ever, Joe Certa’s art gave it a style all its own and the series outlasted its TV version by several years.

http://www.goldkeystories.com/2010/09/dark-shadows-creatures-in-torment.html

In 1906, Latonia, Kentucky–a smallish area of Northern Kentucky even now, just South of Cincinnati, Ohio–was apparently quite the hotbed of drinking and gambling and Sunday carousing! Here we have a trio of editorial cartoons from the local newspaper, the Kentucky Post. Although quite stylish and lovely and even signed, I’m afraid I don’t know who the artist was. Based on context, however, as well as the fact that he throws in a little book censorship, I believe the point of these is that, in his opinion, the bluenoses in power were overreacting juuuuuuuust a tad.

These were reprinted in NORTHERN KENTUCKY HERITAGE in 1994.

Exciting news, Felix fans! Right here in this very space we will be announcing a very exciting announcement in the days ahead. Exciting, isn’t it?

The cover of Felix the Cat #55 from Toby Press, as seen below, is a clue.

Here’s another hint: It’s a tie-in with the recent release of Felix the Cat: The Great Comic Book Tails which is available NOW on Amazon with a mere click of the mouse.

Watch this blog for details, coming soon!

And to celebrate everything Felix, please enjoy this song by the Warsaw Poland Bros. entitled “Felix The Cat” (what else?)

Click the link below to listen!

Felix the Cat – Warsaw Poland Bros

For our second week of comics published by college students — in honor of the Back-to-School Season — we present the circa 1850 sequential comic book, The College Experiences of Ichabod Academicus, by Yale University student William T. Peters.

Peters structured Ichabod Academicus into four chapters, covering his four years of college. This being our first presentation of Ichabod, the below is his Freshman Year. Ichabod’s format & layout is patterned after that of Swiss graphic novelist Rodolphe Töpffer, while Peter’s art style appears influenced by French cartoonists such as Cham (who got his start copying Töpffer comics) and Daumier. Enjoy!

Click on any picture, to open an enlarged version.

Chapter Two (Sophomore Year) of The College Experiences of Ichabod Academicus, will be presented next year at this time! Slightly sooner – next week — we’ll present some of Billy Ireland’s Teck cartoons, published while he was at OSU. Click on Sidney Wells’ “Life at College”, 1922-24 to view last week’s Back-to-School entry.

Doug Wheeler

CollegeComics

We start today with a typically surreal silver age Superboy story. In this one, with art by the feature’s longtime artist George Papp, young Clark acts out his jealousy issues of his alter ego with a life-sized puppet!

http://johnglenntaylor.blogspot.com/2010/08/schizophrenic-superboy.html

After I was lucky enough to appear opposite the original radio Henry Aldrich (Ezra Stone) in an episode re-creation in the early 1990’s (as Homer Brown), I started collecting the Henry Aldrich comics from Dell and found the work of Bill Williams to be delightful. Here, Stanley Stories detects the possible input of John Stanley in an Aldrich story!

http://stanleystories.blogspot.com/2010/08/i-think-this-is-stanleys-work-from.html

Back to DC for part one of a 1970’s Batgirl back-up story written by Frank Robbins and showcasing some slambang layouts by Gil Kane given a particularly polished finish by Murphy Anderson.

http://www.kingdomkane.com/2010/08/clue-seven-foot-tall.html

I’ve long had a soft spot for the Mad imitations of the 1950’s and here we have the first one I ever actually saw, Riot # 4 from Atlas (Marvel) featuring the art of Joe Maneely and Archie legend Dan DeCarlo.

http://themagicwhistle.blogspot.com/2010/08/riot-4-1-of-3.html

Remember when Marvel and DC combined heroes to create the Amalgam Age of Comics? Well this enterprising blogger thought it wasn’t enough so he’s making his own combinations—and quite well, too!

http://amalgamage.blogspot.com/

Some of Mirthful Marie Severin’s best mirth was found in the pages of Marvel’s Not Brand Echh in the sixties. Here, for instance she handles the art on Gary Friedrich’s Mad-style version of the Hulk’s origin.

http://comicrazys.com/2010/08/27/the-origin-of-brucie-banter-…and-friend-not-brand-echh-3-1967-marie-severin/

Hey, the great Ten Cent Dreams blog is back after a months-long hiatus and  starts out celebrating Jack Kirby’s Saturday birthday with some reprints from Simon and Kirby’s Boys’ Ranch.

http://tencentdreams.blogspot.com/2010/08/jack-kirbys-birthday-boys-ranch-2.html

Not only Chic Young’s Blondie but also Chic Young’s Dagwood had long runs in comic book form both reprinting newspaper strips and offering all-new stories ghosted in the classic style. Here’s a fun issue of Dagwood.

http://www.bigblogcomics.com/2010/08/dagwood-comics-no-47-november-1954-and.html

One of my favorite all-time favorite Golden Age publishers was Quality, one which more than lived up to it’s name, and though I waiver I believe my favorite of their many high quality anthologies was SMASH.  SMASH, now there was a name for a comic book.

And while Midnight was cover featured (and,  do check out that cover; here professional Spirit imitator Midnight actually looks more like The Spirit than the Spirit often did at the hands of Eisner’s many WWII era ghosts) my favorite story in SMASH #51 is this little gem featuring The Jester.

It’s a slight thing, I grant you, but it expertly  plays out like a perfect little period B-movie.

You could make the argument that it has a fairly trivial take on the subject of suicide, but me, I prefer to think of it as a prime example of how back in their heyday ALL super-heroes were “street-level”.  You could count on the local guy or gal in the domino mask to pause in their never-ending battle against the forces of evil to help out an average Joe with a problem or deliver a sack of toys to an orphanage.

Found some link-worthy items for a change–

We start with FOOM, the Marvel fan club magazine from the 1970’s. Here’s a full collection of the often nicely designed covers featuring Kirby, Steranko, Colan, Buscema and Smilin’ Stan Lee himself.

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2010/08/foom-friends-of-old-marvel.html

Over at Hairy Green Eyeball II, they have a repost from Hairy Green Eyeball I that shows a  collection of all of the Alfred E. Neuman-themed cards from the amazing Jack Davis in a Mad card game.

http://hairygreeneyeball2.blogspot.com/2010/08/jack-davis-mad-card-game.html

I’m on record as saying that Doug Moench’s Master of Kung-Fu was the best title published by Marvel in the mid to late seventies. Here’s an early issue drawn by Paul Gulacy and Dan Adkins.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/08/random-reads-fortune-of-death-by-moench.html

Finally, if you haven’t heard, Craig has a wonderful Felix the Cat book out! Here’s a Felix story to whet your appetite from the Big Blog of Kids’ Comics. Read it, then come back here and order Craig’s nifty book!

http://www.bigblogcomics.com/2010/08/felix-cat-in-cat-weather-profit.html

Sometime in early August, I devoured the entire Oh, Brother! collection to date in about 20 minutes. Then I played all the games. And now I am hooked. Oh, Brother! is sweet and charming. The strip offers a daily peek into the funnier side of sibling relationships, featuring Lily and her little brother Bud. Always funny and never mean, it’s one of the smartest strips I’ve seen in a long while. It really works for all ages. Older siblings can relate to Lily, and younger siblings can relate to Bud. Parents can smile over their own children all over again.

Oh, Brother! is the result of one of the most welcome collaborations since Parker and Hart brought us The Wizard of Id. The talents of Bob Weber Jr. (Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids) and Jay Stephens (Tutenstein and The Secret Saturdays) have combined to create a loving homage to Charles Schulz and all the comics featuring kids that he inspired. There is not one trace of snark or cynicism here.  Oh, Brother! is pure.

Not only is it the best kid’s strip I’ve seen in forever, it’s perfect for pocket computers. Kids can use their Nintendos or iPods or PS3s or etc. to read the daily strip, play the games, learn to draw, and interact with other readers by uploading photos of their pets and samples of their art.

Yet even though Oh, Brother! takes optimal advantage of new media resources, it honors old traditions, too. While web comics can be in color seven days a week, the Sunday strip is larger in scope and benefits from landscape orientation. It makes a big splash on the screen. All’s right with the world!

Bob and Jay kindly gave us a few moments of their time, so that you can get to know the creators of this delightful and intelligent new strip.

ITCH: What was your first comic strip/cartoon/comic?

Jay: I have a crappy memory, so I’m not sure if I’m recalling this correctly. Plus all those emotionally scarring Marvel comics I had in the 70’s like Son of Satan, Tomb of Dracula, Ghost Rider, and Morbius, the Living Vampire (care of Spider-Man) are messing with my memories by creating a traumatic mind-block of horror. I know I had, and loved, a bunch of those little Peanuts and Family Circus paperbacks. And I remember being enchanted with the early history of animation that Walt would occasionally cover on The Wonderful World Of Disney. I became obsessed with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Felix the Cat and Betty Boop.

Bob: At age 21 I sold my first gag cartoon to American Machinist magazine ($15). I was also inking and writing gags for my father’s comic strip Moose and Molly.

What are you reading right now?

Jay: The IDW Family Circus collections. Hellboy. And Hayao Miyazaki’s Starting Point 1979-1996. Obviously my growth is stunted.

Bob: I’m reading volume 1 of John Stanley’s Nancy comics, published by Drawn and Quarterly. Before that I read Stanley’s Little Lulu collections by Darkhorse Books. Stanley is ‘the man’ right now.

What is your guilty pleasure?  At least, the one that really answers an ITCH!

Jay: I almost hate to admit I heart Harvey Comics. Casper, Hot Stuff, and especially Spooky. The writing is absolutely terrible, but I can’t seem to get enough!

Bob: My guilty pleasure is sitting down for lunch with my wife and watching the daytime soap The Bold and The Beautiful for the last 20 years.

Who was the first cartoonist/animator you met?

Jay: Genius Canadian underground cartoonist Chester Brown, I think. Don’t Google that if you’re under 14! Other indelible impressions were made early on by meeting John Kricfalusi (Ren & Stimpy) and Will Eisner (The Spirit).

Bob: The first cartoonist I remember meeting was um… my father. The second cartoonist I remember meeting was the wonderfully talented Orlando Busino. Living in Connecticut gave me the opportunity to meet some of the greatest cartoonists in the country. Within a few miles there was Stan Drake, Mort Walker, Jerry Dumas, Bill Yates, Dik Browne, Gill Fox, Hal Foster, Tony DiPreta, John Prentice, Dick Cavalli, Jerry Marcus, Dick Wingert, Kurt Swan, Whitney Darrow Jr. and more! Every one of them a gentleman and an inspiration!

Which dead cartoonist/animator would you most like to meet?

Jay: Ub Iwerks. Oh! And Winsor McCay.

Bob: Bob Clampett

What would you say?

Jay: Thank you.

Bob: Thank you!

What has been the highlight of your career to date?

Jay: Tied for biggest highlight is: 1) Seeing the float based on my cartoon character Tutenstein go by in the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and 2) Seeing the Mattel toy line based on my animated series The Secret Saturdays at Toys ‘R Us for the first time.

Bob: There have been three highlights in my career. 1) My first magazine sale. 2) The successful syndication of my Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids comic. 3) The launch of Oh, Brother!

Please tell us a little about your latest project.

Jay: Oh, Brother! is a dream come true for me. I’ve wanted to do an old-school daily strip forever! Three of my own pitches were rejected over the years, so I’m glad Bob could make my dream a reality by writing such instantly classic material. We both have older daughters and younger sons and can readily identify with the characters and situations. And we are both passionate about the history of comics and the need for more great all-ages comics in the current scene.

Bob: I am having a blast writing Oh, Brother! and my co-creator Jay Stephens impresses me every day with his beautiful and funny art!

Which old-time cartoon character do you most identify with?

Jay: Happy Hooligan. Or Sleepy from the Seven Dwarfs.

Bob: Mr. Peabody’s boy Sherman, from Jay Ward’s Peabody’s Improbable History segments on Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Jay: The power to shift around my base elements a la Metamorpho. Nerd alert!!!

Bob: Flying would be awesome, x-ray vision could be interesting … but I’d settle for being the greatest guitar player in the universe.

Beth here: Sometimes I think if I could have any superpower, it would be the ability to survive without food, water, and shelter, so that I could spend my life doing nothing but reading comics from creators like Bob and Jay!  I know they’re not dead, but thanks, guys!  Thank you!