CARE FOR A MERGER? Cartoons from WSJ

This 1958 hardcover collection of Wall Street Journal cartoons, CARE FOR A MERGER, was found in the used book section of a huge Barnes and Noble in Paramus, NJ. I bought it for the Interlandi drawing on the cover. Love that guy's lines!

Copyrights retained by the copyright holder.


Above: The sad selling price history of this secondhand book, from the inside page, unsold until it got down to $1. The original 1958 cover price was $2.75.

Here's a cartoon by Joseph Farris, who is still drawing cartoons today. I occasionally see him at the New Yorker offices. Love that iconic see-gar in the boss's mouth. Whatta nasty boss! I like the juxtaposition of the vertical and horizontal lines in the background to suggest the curtains and blinds. Snappily done.



Lee Lorenz! And the drawing looks like it was done in scratchy pen style. He uses a brush now -- or rather, has for many decades! This is the only time I've seen a cartoon of his outside of the New Yorker. He became a contract cartoonist to the NYer this same year, and was the mag's cartoon editor from 1973-1997


The cartoon above shows Al Kaufman's mastery of depth and layout. It wasn't until I'd looked at this drawing, scanned it, and then looked at it again that I noticed that the chairs were too darn big. I still like the drawing, but I wonder why I didn't notice that right away.



Cartoonist Doris Matthews is the only female cartoonist in this WSJ collection. You can find more of her work in Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons, edited by Liza Donnelly. I like her sketchy style, but know nothing about her.



Chon Day, the master of line, has a couple of cartoons in the collection. The lines, the placement of blacks, all done so deftly and frugally. A prolific cartoonist who, like so many of the pros, kept producing until the end. He created cartoons for many major mags and was a featured regular at The Saturday Evening Post from 1948 until Mr. Day's passing in 2000. He's another cartoonist that deserves a large "Best of" collection.



Mort Temes gives us this very inappropriate (for 2013) cartoon that tells us all that anatomy is destiny! I do admire how Mr. Temes is able to squeeze in the boss's face in the interior office. Of course, you notice how all the angles lead to that office. Nicely done. Another archaic touch: the pedestal ash tray. There was one in the shoe store cartoon above as well. You can see a photo of Mr. Temes and other cartoonists from around this time in a previous entry about Look Day.



Bernard Wiseman chimes in with this IRS joke. I liked it because of the brush work. How just the suggestion of a few people and desks in the background gives us the feel of a busy office. I like how the guy who is speaking is leaning in to the old guy while speaking.



Dan Danglo, who I am glad to say is a friend and fellow Berndt Toast Gang member, brings us this beautifully drawn cartoon. Looks like an animation kinda style of the 1950s, huh? Well, Dan was working in animation in the 1950s. He still cartoons today, and you can see more at his site.

-- This is an edited version of a blog entry from May 17, 2007.

"Twinkle The Star That Came Down From Heaven" by Jay Williams and Mazin

"Twinkle The Star That Came Down From Heaven" by Jay Williams (and always with the name "Mazin" on the art), from Humpty Dumpty's Magazine for Little Children, November, 1957. Copyright its respective copyright holders.

My grandmother would bring up to a dozen of these magazines when she visited during Christmas in the 1960s. She worked for my great uncle, a doctor, in California. I believe these were pulled from the waiting room. 

Anyway, I had not seen them before or since -- until I ran into a copy at a thrift shop a few weeks ago. There were a couple of different magazines: Humpty Dumpty's and Children's Digest. The Digest had Tintin reprints. That I remember. 

Everyone knows about Tintin.

But Twinkle -- Twinkle has been forgotten. A six page Twinkle story was in most issues of HD, back in the day. Here's my earliest copy, from 1957, that I got from eBay this week. The feature alternately intrigued me and terrified me when I was a tot. I mean, look at those trees: leafless, bare of most branches. The woodcut approach was none too cuddly in my little kid eyes. 

And the star of the strip was literally an anthropomorphic fallen star. So weird. 

There is little on the web about this feature, which ran from the 1950s to the 1960s I believe. The table of contents would sometimes (sometimes not) credit Twinkle as by Jay Williams, a prolific children's book illustrator. I don't know if Mazin and Mr. Williams were one and the same. 

Now that I'm older, I like the style ... but I still think it's weird that a star is friends with forest animals.
 

Cool Graphics I Saw At Antique Shops

Some great graphics seen at antique shops in North Woodstock, NH, Bridgton, ME, Freedom, NH and Cornish, ME. I didn't buy these -- just took some pics while in the store.