Congrats to Mark for another great read! A good friend of Yoe Books, Mark Frauenfelder has a new book out, Made by Hand. You’ll see Mark’s affable photo on the cover below.

The publisher, Porfolio/Penguin describes the pro-Do It Yourself manifesto as such:

“DIY is a direct reflection of our basic human desire to invent and improve, long suppressed by the availability of cheap, mass-produced products that have drowned us in bland convenience and cultivated our most wasteful habits. Frauenfelder spent a year trying a variety of offbeat projects such as keeping chickens and bees, tricking out his espresso machine, whittling wooden spoons, making guitars out of cigar boxes, and doing citizen science with his daughters in the garage. His whole family found that DIY helped them take control of their lives, offering a path that was simple, direct, and clear. Working with their hands and minds helped them feel more engaged with the world around them.

“Frauenfelder also reveals how DIY is changing our culture for the better. He profiles fascinating ‘alpha makers’ leading various DIY movements and grills them for their best tips and insights.”

Reviewers are calling this a “must-read book” and “an absolutely fascinating read.” Order Marks’ book here now.

Mark is a multi-talented “alpha maker” himself, besides editing magazines, writing books, and being a co-editor for boingboing, he’s a brilliant illustrator and provided a terrific pinup for my new book Dan DeCarlo’s Jetta-he did it himself!

This Memorial Day, check out a website devoted to illustrator Gregor Duncan, killed in World War II in 1944. Duncan will be featured in the upcoming issue of Hogan’s Alley and the site offers an abridged version of his bio from that piece along with many splendid examples of his work. Bill Mauldin, the one cartoonist most associated with that era stated the following:

When we remember those we’ve lost to war, we do tend to recall what they did in life but the humbling thing is to think about what they could have done. Think of all the potential that is lost for every single casualty of war. Looking back at the work of Gregor Duncan, that potential shines through just a bit and fosters a quiet sadness. His style of illustration was his alone, his thoughts and opinions his alone. His potential…we’ll never know. War is Hell.

So lift a toast today to the veterans in your own life…and then, if you will, a toast to what might have been had all those many others survived.

First, for Memorial Day itself, we have If the Living and the Dead Were to March Together by Harrison Cady, from a 1916 issue of Life magazine, during World War I.

Click on any cartoon, to see an enlarged version.

During Great Depression I, unemployed WW I veterans sold pamphlets, to raise small amounts of cash. Similar in concept to the modern Street News sold by the homeless in New York City, this activity lent these veterans more dignity, than outright begging. Some of the pamphlets had prices on them, but many simply asked people to pay what they pleased.

The remaining cartoons are from such pamphlets. The immediately below page is by Doc Rankin, while the artist of the next page is unidentified.

Below left, the cover from one such pamphlet, with cover art by Winsor McCay. The below right photo is from when, in 1932, President Herbert Hoover had unemployed WW I veterans driven out of Washington, D.C. using troops, bayonets, and tear gas.

Click on the photograph, to watch Part 3 of March of the Bonus Army

Click here to find the prior Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons entries, and related I.T.C.H. posts.

Doug Wheeler

financial reform WWIcartoons

We start today with something near brilliant-Bolero-a violent, telling and sadly accurate NSFW multi-strip historical pageant from Italy’s MIlo Manara, apparently done as a lead up to the turn of the century a decade ago.

http://grantbridgestreet.blogspot.com/2010/05/milo-manaras-bolero.html

Speaking of brilliant, few deny that the term applies to the late Alex Toth. Toth did only a few stories for EC Comics and here we have his “F-86 Sabre Jet” written by Harvey Kurtzman and featuring fascinating annotations from Toth years later.

http://cloud-109.blogspot.com/2010/05/two-for-show-kurtzman-and-toth.html

Spectergirl shares a couple of Charlton ghost stories by Joe Gill, the always underrated Rocke Mastroserio and the ever-popular Steve Ditko.

http://spectergirlscryptofpostcodehorror.blogspot.com/2010/05/promise-is-promise-and-grave-mistake.html

Finally today, here’s one of my all-time favorite Silver Age Marvel issues for Memorial Day featuring Captain America and Bucky teaming up in World War II with Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos from issue 13 of that title by Lee , Kirby and Ayers.

http://mailittoteamup.blogspot.com/2010/05/sgt-fury-and-his-howling-commandos-13.html

During Great Depression I, unemployed WW I veterans sold pamphlets, to raise small amounts of cash. Similar in concept to the modern Street News sold by the homeless in New York City, this activity lent these veterans more dignity, than outright begging. Some of the pamphlets had prices on them, while others simply asked people to pay what they pleased.

Click on either cartoon, to see an enlarged version.

The below right photo is at an encampment of unemployed WW I veterans (labelled “Hoovervilles”), just outside Washington, D.C., in 1932. These veterans, known as the Bonus Army, were seeking early payment of a promised service bonus. President Hoover had them forcibly driven out of Washington, D.C., using troops and tear gas — an action which sealed Hoover’s fate that election year.

Click on the photograph below right, to watch Part 2 of the PBS documentary March of the Bonus Army, produced by Glenn Marcus & director Robert Uth, and narrated by Gary Sinise.

Above left, a cartoon by Vaughn Shoemaker, from before the veterans were chased out of D.C., when some were hoping the bonus would be paid early, and stimulate the economy.

Click here to find the prior Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons entries, and related I.T.C.H. posts.

Doug Wheeler

financial reform WWIcartoons

During the seventies and eighties there were a number of fanzine characters that ended up getting a chance in “real” comic books. Far and away my favorite was John Byrne’s rubbery-looking, irascible robot, Rog-2000. Here’s a Nick Cuti-scripted tale from Charlton’s E-Man.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/05/sci-fi-week-byrne-ing-to-read-rog-2000.html

Here’s another of John Buscema’s wonderful pre-Marvel movie adaptations for Dell, this one a well done version of the 1958 Kirk Douglas epic, The Vikings (even though the artist doesn’t make any attempt to capture the likenesses of any of the actors).

http://hairygreeneyeball2.blogspot.com/2010/05/john-buscemas-vikings.html

From the forties through the early sixties, there were sure an awful lot of comic books about horses-cowboy’s horses, movie horses, TV horses and sometimes just plain horses! Talk about a comics genre that tends to be ignored! Rip offers just a tiny selection of covers here:

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2010/05/horseplay.html

Finally today, here’s a side-by-side comparison of the odd connection between DC’s early sixties licensed title The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and its late sixties unlicensed title Windy and Willy. Hmmmm….

http://bullyscomics.blogspot.com/2010/05/separated-at-birth.html

Seriously now… Have a good Memorial Day and solemn remembrance for those that have lost their lives to war.

During Great Depression I, unemployed WW I veterans sold pamphlets, to raise small amounts of cash. Similar in concept to the modern Street News sold by the homeless in New York City, this activity lent these veterans more dignity, than outright begging. Some of the pamphlets had prices on them, but many simply asked people to pay what they pleased.

All this Memorial Day week, we will be presenting some of the cartoons from these pamphlets.

Click on any picture, to see an enlarged version.

The below right photo is of unemployed WW I veterans at the Capitol Steps in Washington, D.C., in 1932. Known as the Bonus Army, they were seeking early payment of a promised service bonus. President Hoover had them forcibly driven out of Washington, D.C., using troops and tear gas — an action which sealed Hoover’s fate that election year.

Click on the photograph below right, to watch Part 1 of the PBS documentary March of the Bonus Army, produced by Glenn Marcus & director Robert Uth, and narrated by Gary Sinise.

Click here to find the prior Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons entries, and related I.T.C.H. posts.

Doug Wheeler

financial reform

Below, one of several cartoons appearing in a layout labelled Some Topics of the Times, from the front cover of the September 26, 2025 issue of the (New York) Daily Graphic, by Livingston Hopkins. The “D - D” was the understood nineteenth century method (in cartoons) of printing the word ”Damned”. A common practice which Hopkins played with in the below cartoon (see the list at bottom).

Click on picture to see an enlarged version.

Click here to find both the prior Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons entries, and related I.T.C.H. posts. This series will continue, while the debate on financial reforms continues in Congress (except Mondays and holidays, on which I already had other material planned).

Series Refrain: Bank frauds and Wall Street swindles, resulting in economic ruin for everyone else, were regular and frequent occurrences prior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s institution of laws designed to prevent further Great Depressions. These regulations worked until, starting in the 1980s, conservatives began dismantling those protections, stating that we’d be better off with an unfettered and unregulated market, free to do whatever it wants. Wall Street firms swore at that time, that they’d learned the lessons of the Great Depression, and could be trusted to not engage in dangerous practices.

Bull****!

If there is one lesson from the various economic collapses throughout history, it’s that human greed is eternal. There will always be selfish fools, who grab for themselves without care for the damage they inflict on others.

Doug Wheeler

financial reform

NYDailyGraphic

We start out our 200th Makin’ Links column with a little-seen but very well-drawn for the time fan story from three early seventies issues of the venerable RBCC fanzine. Channeling Kirby, Eisner and others, Brad Caslor’s “The Massacre of the Innocents” offers up both Marvel and DC heroes chasing down a killer who’s gunning them down.

http://goldenagecomicbookstories.blogspot.com/2010/05/massacre-of-innocents-by-brad-caslor.html

From the year of my birth, 1959, here’s a long and pleasingly drawn run of continuity from the classic sci-fi newspaper strip Buck Rogers by future Marvel utility artist George Tuska, also later the artist on DC’s World’s Greatest Super Heroes strip in the seventies.

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2010/05/by-george-he-got-it-thursday-story.html

Smokey Stover never ran in my local papers but I would see it from time to time in out of town newspapers as I was growing up in the seventies and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before or since. At age 9, I even based my own first comic strip on Smokey! Foo! Notary Sojac! If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, here’s a bunch of silly Sundays!

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2010/05/by-george-he-got-it-thursday-story.html

Finally, Smokey was featured occasionally in Dell’s Four Color series which offered different features every issue from the thirties through the sixties. Waffyjon’s “By the 10′s” feature offers up part one of a multi-part series presenting the wonderfully varied covers of that legendary series…or at least every tenth one.

http://waffyjon.blogspot.com/2010/05/by-10s-four-color-comics-part-1.html