Here’s a memorable story from an early issue of Vampirella that teams the famed DC collaborators Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams and throws in the unexpected bonus of writer Steve Englehart during his forgotten early days as an artist.

http://grantbridgestreet.blogspot.com/2010/07/soft-sweet-lips-of-hell-by-denny-oneil.html

Marvel’s comic book adaptation of the phenomenally popular seventies pulp revival hero Doc Savage was just so-so but their second attempt, tying in with the later Ron Ely movie, was a much better black and white magazine version spearheaded by the prolific Doug Moench.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/07/black-and-white-wednesday-earth.html

Here’s a less than traditional sword and sorcery tale written and drawn by the great Gil Kane (with inks by the great Wallace Wood) and featuring one of the coolest dragons you’ll ever see.

http://www.kingdomkane.com/2010/07/comes-warrior.html

Finally today, speaking of great inkers, here’s Joe Sinnott on full art chores for two stories from the 1950′s Atlas title Arrowhead.

http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2010/07/number-776-point-of-arrowhead-arrowhead.html

The variety of methods for keeping cool before the age of air-conditioning, could be an endless source of inspiration for early cartoonists (who, due to the nature of deadlines, may have been producing these in the winter!)

Below, from 1883, a series of trade cards by one of our eternal favorites, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, who is forever immortalized as the creator of the great American painting, Dogs Playing Poker.

Another favorite here, is cartoonist Livingston Hopkins, known best as the creator of the 1870s to 1880s comic strip character, Professor Tigwissel. Below, on the front page of the July 17, 2025 issue of the (New York) Daily Graphic, Hopkins shows the Daily Graphic’s staff attempting to cope with the Terrible Effects of the Hot Weather at the Graphic Office.

Click on below picture, to open a version large enough to read.

The above includes in its depiction (which I’ve extracted below to hilight it) a gathering of the Daily Graphic’s contributing cartoonists, inundating the Graphic’s editor with their versions of Hot Summer Weather cartoons (prompting him to bring out a rifle and a club). The central tall figure weariung a stove pipe hat, is Frank Bellew, Sr., identifiable not only via the large triangle on the side of the portfolio he is carrying (Bellew’s signature often was just a triangle), but by the fact that Hopkins previously depicted Bellew in the now extremely rare New York comic weekly, Wild Oats. According to comics historian William Murrell, in Volume 2 of his A History of American Graphic Humor(MacMillan Company, 1938, page 26), Hopkins created a series of caricatures of his fellow Wild Oats cartoonists, each accompanied by parody biographies. Murrell reproduces two of these caricatures, one being a cartoon of Frank Bellew which somewhat mirrors Hopkins’ drawing of Bellew shown here, down to the portfolio with a triangle on it.

Murrell also reproduces Hopkins’ Wild Oats depiction of walrus-mustached cartoonist Edward Jump, shown in our Daily Graphic cartoon as the shortest person of those immediately behind Bellew. Jump’s face here so closely matches that of Hopkins’ drawing of him in Wild Oats, that it could have been traced. In Wild Oats, however, Jump is shown wearing winter hat, jacket and boots, to play upon his walrus-like mustache. Here, his clothes have of course changed for the hot summer weather theme. The entire problem here though, is, Jump never worked for the Daily Graphic. Which raises the question of just which of the artists here depicted, actually were Daily Graphic cartoonists, versus how many simply involve Hopkins making use of his prior Wild Oats caricatures. As I’ve been unable to identify any of the other cartoonists shown (anyone out there know recognize some of them?), it’s an open question.

Prior postings of Victorian Age Summer Cartoons can be found by clicking on the hyperlink. Starting in two weeks, we’ll begin serialization of the 1847 graphic novel of a family’s Summer Vacation, London Out of Town.

Doug Wheeler

NYDailyGraphic BellewSr SummerVacation

Hey kids, what time is it? It’s Speed Racer time!

If you follow the comics and animation world at all you’ve probably heard that Peter Fernandez died.

Speed really made a career out of that pose!

Not only was Peter the voice of Speed Racer but he also produced the show and wrote the English lyrics to the theme song! (The music was by Nobuyoshi Koshibe, but you knew that.)

Speed Racer had a popular TV show, comic books, trading cards, and so on. For a while, he even appeared on US currency, replacing George Washington.

So, in honor of Mr. Fernandez and the immortal words he added to the pop culture lexicon, “Go, Speed Racer, Go!,” we present two versions of the theme song: Peter’s English-language version and a recent cover by a band called Sponge.

Let’s sing along, shall we?

Here he comes, here comes Speedracer
He’s a demon on wheels
He’s a demon and he’s gonna be chasing after someone

He’s gaining on you so you better look alive
He’s busy revving up the powerful Mach-5
And when the odds are against him and there’s dangerous work to do
You bet your life, Speedracer, see it through

Go Speedracer!
Go Speedracer!
Go Speedracer, go!

He’s off and flying as he guns his car around the track
He’s jamming down the pedal like he’s never coming back
Adventure’s waiting just ahead!

Go Speedracer!
Go Speedracer!
Go Speedracer, go!

Rev up your speakers and click the link below:

Speed Racer

Go, Speed Racer, Go!

Cartoonist and animator Dean Yeagle brings a feeling of high spirits to everything he does, and leaves heaps behind for anyone who enjoys a healthy dose of them. His colorful characters are cheerful even when they’re not, witty with super-sized grins or absurd pomposity. Above all, his creations are personable — they reach off the page to shake your hand or sell you something, seduce you or make you sigh. Yeagle’s got a giant talent, and he’s not afraid to use it.

With funny animals and funny people (and the characters that fall somewhere in between), Yeagle has been entertaining delighted fans for a couple of decades now, with comic strips, books, cartoons and some of the sexiest pinups ever to feature a wide-eyed innocent with pigtails as big as her boobs. In fact, according to his bio, Yeagle has been around so long that he’s nearly a living artifact! But I suspect there’s still a lot of art in this man’s tank. If you’re in San Diego for the Comic-Con, you must stop by booth 1129 to get a good look at this Playboy artist and indulge in some joyfully uninhibited nonsense.

Before departing for San Diego, Yeagle took a few moments to send some awesome answers to our silly questions.

What was your first comic book?

Not quite sure what the very first was, except that it was a Disney one. Which led to my favorite comic book artist, Carl Barks, although virtually no one knew his name then. He was, of course, ‘the good duck artist’, who did the best Donald Duck stories and invented Scrooge McDuck. He managed, without actually leaving his town (ever, apparently), to depict and take his readers all over the world; both the real and mythical world. Atlantis, the Seven Cities of Cibola, the Himilayas (to meet the Abominable Snowman), the Flying Dutchman, the Golden Fleece…all introduced to me for the first time by Barks and the Duck Family. Made me look them up for further reading. And the Ducks were wonderful characters in his stories, too. Still my favorites.

What are you reading right now?

Well, I don’t actually read comic books these days, but there are certain artists whose work I very much admire - J. Scott Campbell, Adam Hughes, Frank Cho, a few others. And the work of recent (but retired) comic strip artists such as Bill Watterson and Gary Larson. But if you don’t mean comic books, then I’m reading Agent Zigag by Ben MacIntire - non-fiction, about an English double agent in WW2. But I suspect you mean comics.

What is your guilty pleasure? At least, the comics-related one!

Aren’t ALL comics ‘guilty pleasures’? Isn’t what I do for a living (drawing scantily or un-clad girls like Mandy or my Playboy cartoons) a guilty pleasure? Would be to some (I’ve never told my elderly aunts and uncles what I do), anyway.

Who was the first cartoonist you met?

John Liney, who lived very near to my family in suburban Philadelphia. He took over the comic strip Henry from its creator, Carl Anderson. A purely pantomime strip, which is hard to maintain over the decades, but he managed it, and that’s very impressive. Never one of my favorite strips, to be frank, but impressive nonetheless. He gave a talk at a local library, and my mother took me to see him. I was, maybe, 11 or 12, I guess. He held a drawing contest for the audience. I won first prize, and my mother won second. We both got original strips as prizes. Very nice man.

Which dead cartoonist would you most like to meet?

Lots of ‘em, mostly animators, but first has to be Walt Kelly, who did POGO, the best, funniest, most literate and imaginative comic strip ever. He died just as I got into the animation business in New York, where he lived. I later became friends with his widow, Selby, but never met him. I find that when I mention POGO to students these days, many have never heard of him. Tragic, but the whole run of his strips is being produced by Fantagraphics - volume one is finally set to come out in October. I hope. I’ve collected all the books that came out of his strips during his lifetime, and I still read them. I swear to you, they are hilarious. But some of the references may take a little time on Wikipedia. Politics, puns, wordplay, dialects, vaudeville, baseball, caricature, poetry, song parodies and a huge cast of characters - animals of all types, living in the Okefenokee Swamp. He’d worked as an animator at Disney on Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon. In the ‘fifties, he satirized Joe McCarthy (as ‘Simple J. Malarkey) at some risk to his career - papers dropped his strip from fear of reprisal. A good man, a great artist, a terrific animator, a fabulous humorist, a real character in his own right…all things any of us in the cartooning biz should aspire to.

What would you say?

If I met Kelly? Probably ‘homina homina homina…’ If you don’t know what this means, you’re too young. It’s Jackie Gleason’s stuttering inability to talk when embarrassed or terrified. Jackie Gleason? Look him up, too. But what DO you say to your greatest professional hero? “You’re my greatest professional hero”? Not much of a conversation. I’m sure we could work up a dialogue eventually, but he’d probably have to start. In a way, though, I’ve been talking to him all my career, every time I touch my pencil to paper…WWKD? (What Would Kelly Do?)

What has been the highlight of your career to date?

Oh, that’s difficult - in animation, working with some of the great old animators, now passed…Jack Zander, Preston Blair, Emery Hawkins…or suddenly getting work as a Playboy cartoonist…or starting my own series of books with my own character, Mandy. But let’s say the best recent highlight was having my own solo gallery show at the Galerie Arludik in Paris in 2008.

Please tell us a little about your latest project.

Well, at the moment I’m gearing up for the San Diego Comic Con. I have a booth there every year, and do a new book to debut there. And this year I’ve got two new sculptures of my characters to show as well - ‘Suzette’, produced by Attakus/Comix Buro in Paris, and ‘Mandy’s Bust’, by Electric Tiki. And since the Paris gallery show I’ve been doing large original Mandy drawings for sale, and that’s what I’ve been working on for the past month or so. Come see me - booth 1129!

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

Hmmm. I’d hope to be Pogo…a good-hearted character with a strong sense of justice and decency. Kelly said that of himself, but also that he knew he was an amalgam of all the characters in his strip - the stupid, lazy, incompetent, thoughtless and venal as well as the humorous, heroic and decent. And when you develop your own character, there is necessarily a lot of your personality in that character…so odd as it may seem, there’s a lot of me in Mandy, despite our extremely obvious differences; at least, she seems to have my world-view in general, although with a lot more sweetness and generosity than I can muster. And a complete lack of cynicism, which I really can’t claim, either. Well, she’s female, and they’re generally better than we guys are, anyway.

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

I’ve often dreamed that I could fly…just sort of break into a run, then dive towards the sidewalk and before I hit, swoop upward into the air. High up in the sky, floating, soaring, swooping, doing loops and Immelmanns…Lovely. Now I’d just be satisfied with being able to break into a run.

But then, being able to make a living all my life by drawing cartoons…that’s super enough for me.

Thanks, Dean!

As I write this, the blown out deep ocean BP Oil well in the Gulf has currently been capped. But, the apocalyptic destruction caused by the oil already sent into the ocean, hasn’t even begun to show its full face. With the majority of the released oil floating beneath the ocean surface, it won’t be until next year, when we find how many species have disappeared or are decimated, for the full effect to be appreciated. The destruction will last for decades.

I’ve held back the below (New York) Daily Graphic front page until today, its 130th anniversary. By cartoonist Hooper, its full title is: A Horrible Monster, whose tentacles spread poverty, disease and death, and which is the primary cause of the nuisances at Hunter’s Point. It depicts the sickness and death, brought to the residents of Hunter’s Point, Brooklyn, by their proximity to an oil refinery built and operated by the Standard Oil Company. Published July 19, 1880, it appeared nearly a year-and-a-half after another Daily Graphic cartoon on the Hunter’s Point Refinery — The Standard Oil Octopus - showing that its effects upon the environment and nearby residents, was continuing and pervasive.

Click on picture to enlarge it.

To view prior Oil Industry-related SuperI.T.C.H postings, click here.

Doug Wheeler

NYDailyGraphic BigOil

Today’s episode — A Disinterested Friend of the Public, from the front page of the May 2nd, 1882 issue of the (New York) Daily Graphic — I’ve labeled Episode 8.5 (rather than “9″) of Charles Jay Taylor’s series of sequential comic strips starring William H. Vanderbilt, because it’s a single panel cartoon. But being produced by Taylor within the same period as his Vanderbilt strips, I don’t think we should skip over it.

William Vanderbilt is shown leading a group of investors/suckers from the Wall Street Stock Exchange, to an entrance/trap labeled “Lake Shore” (one of Vanderbilt’s railroads). Inside the doorway, is a “Bunko Thermometer”, with “Harlem” (another Vanderbilt-owned railroad), “24 cents” (perhaps a stock price???), and “Lake Shore”, all near the top (Bunko) range. Also in the doorway, is a sign reading:

“GAMES: — ALL GENTLEMANLY. The interview dodge. Taking care of the widows and orphans.”

Looking out upon the scene from a background window, is stock market manipulator Russell Sage. A sign outside his window reads “R. Sage. Puts. Calls. Spreads. Straddles.” (all Stock Market terms). Sage is shown in prayer, thanking God for the abundant crops (i.e., the sucker investors he is watching) and so few reapers (i.e., so few who will get out of the trap with a profit). This continues the targeting of Sage for public piousness and philanthropy, while his business actions seemed anything but moral.

Click on the below picture, to open a version large enough to read.

Click here to view previous episodes in C.J. Taylor’s 1881-82 William Vanderbilt Comic Strips. Episode 9, plus Vanderbilt cartoons by Frost and Kemble, will appear this coming week.

Doug Wheeler

financial reform NYDailyGraphic

To start out your Sunday on a positive note, here’s a bunch of lovely original artwork from John Stanley, mostly Little Lulu stuff, found on the Net in various auctions and shared with fans today over at Stanley Stories.

http://stanleystories.blogspot.com/2010/07/art-gallery-john-stanley-paintings.html

Was it really nearly 25 years ago when Mike Barr and Alan Davis teamed for a brief but wonderful run on Batman in Detective Comics? Here’s the a prime example of their excellent, nostalgic and yet cutting edge, storytelling featuring Catwoman and a rather effeminate Joker.

http://grantbridgestreet.blogspot.com/2010/07/batman-in-last-laugh-by-mike-w-barr-and.html

Ol’ Rip posts the three sequential covers of Duck artist (and fellow Kentuckian) Don Rosa’s scarce Captain Kentucky compilations as published way back in the 1980′s before Don became like unto a god in Finland.

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2010/07/captain-kentucky.html

Finally today, here’s a selection of strips featuring Nancy’s aunt, Fritzi Ritz, subject of a soon-to-be-released volume from…wait for it…Craig Yoe! Pappy even manages a plug for same as well as some funny out of context Nancy panels (such as the one seen above).

http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2010/07/number-774-ritzy-fritzi-august-10-is.html

Today’s episode:

Krazy Kat – Honor Among Thieves. by George Herriman

The Nashville Tennessean, August 8, 2025

The Tiger Tea series was George Herriman’s longest-running Krazy Kat saga. Over the course of a year, the residents of Coconino County wrestled with the comical repercussions of a mysterious tea with hallucinogenic powers. As far as I know, this series has never been reprinted in its entirety.

Nearly 100 large reproductions of Tiger Tea daily strips are available in George Herriman’s Krazy + Ignatz in "Tiger Tea," a beautifully designed collection by Yoe Books. It’s available through Amazon.com and fine bookstores everywhere.

in an effort to make more of these classics available, this Unauthorized Semi-Authorized Addendum presents some of the comic strips from the Tiger Tea series that didn’t make it into the printed collection. Click here to see more posts in this series.

David Donihue, GreatCaricatures.com