Hi, Gang!
The WolfieToon at "DISCIPLINE & DESIRE" this week is a comic cover!
I did this mainly to show off the spiffy seal of approval that Larken made after SuperToonMan, but it's also an homage to one of my cartoonist heroes, the late Dan DeCarlo, who. at the start of his career, did books for Timely/Atlas (later called Marvel) like "Sherry the Showgirl," "Millie the Model," "Nellie the Nurse," "Bettie the Botanist," and "Harriet the Homewrecker."
OK, I just made up "Bettie the Botanist."
Dan and writer/editor Stan Lee went on to have a short-run newspaper strip about mailman Willie Lumpkin! (Hope it's legible with a click!)
(Just to tie up loose ends, Stan moved Willie to the big city, where he became the Fantastic Four's mailman and lived happily ever after.)
After that, Dan DeCarlo began a very long association with Archie Comics-- which, you may have heard, did not end well. He did spectacular work there, though!
So, while working on all these other comics in the late fifties and early sixties, Dan earned some extra cash doing pin-up cartoons for publisher Martin Goodman's line of Men's Humor Mags.
In the book Innocence and Seduction The Art of Dan DeCarlo, Bill Morrison reports that Dan did five to ten of these a month, but to compensate for the low pay rate, editor Arthur Goodman (Martin's brother) told Dan he could just turn in the drawings and Arthur would write the gags himself.
Which explains to me why such brilliant cartoons so often had remarkably weak or just plain awful captions. Well, this first one's not so bad...
Wow, those are great cartoon buns!! The joke's pretty fair, too.
But this one-- this one's gotta be the worst caption. Ever.
What?? That doesn't even make sense with the 'toon. Dan deserves better. Here, lemme prime the pump with a couple of throw-away lines:
"Well, that's show biz!"
"It's 'Life Drawing!' Take a crack at it!"
"And now, in other Nudes..."
Yeah, lame, but a lot better than "scaredy-cat!!" Chee. I invite better submissions!!
Anyway, every now and then, probably when Dan actually suggested the caption himself, they'd hit a homer. This is my favorite of the spanking cartoons, and sure, you've seen it before, but you just can't beat the Classics..
Let us hope her disappointment was short-lived. Perhaps she hooked up with Popeye.
Say, Judy the Jewel Thief also reminds me of another Funnies Femme Fatale with a penchant for purloining pretties...
Ah, but she, and artwork by animator / producer Bruce Timm are subjects for another entry, or two!
If those two dresses are identical then the girl on the right would be pretty embarrassed. One of them has it on backwards. The one is backless which means the other is frontless!
ReplyDeleteOh! my.
ROFL
DeleteHey that's pretty good!
Wouldja believe, Kaki, that I've never understood that cartoon until you 'splained it just now?? Cheee...
FACE PALM!!
Thank you!!
And since that caption's handwritten across the top, I'm going to give Dan credit. Maybe I'm doing Arthur Martin a disservice, but I think it was from Dan.
"And now, in other Nudes..." Lol! That's a much better caption! Thanks for sharing and love Judy the Jewel thief too. How convenient that her catsuit is 2 pieces instead of 1, for spanking purposes. ;-)
ReplyDeleteBy Gum, you're right, Lea! Most catsuits aren't two-piece affairs-- it's almost as if Judy had expected something like this! What an Imp!!
DeleteGlad you enjoyed this! Even with only half a cup of coffee I can come up with, "This is the only job I can bare!" They must have been REALLY rushed to send that 'toon to press with "scaredy cat!" Oh. Em. Gee.
If this is "Sunday Funnies: Part Two", where's Part One"? I looked but couldn't find it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing these. I'm a fan of the classics, too.
bob
Hiya, Bob!
DeletePerhaps my modification in the title was unclear-- this is the second time I've talked about Dan DeCarlo on the WolfieBlog.
And Blogger doesn't really make it eaasy to find older stuff! You can see t'other entry by clicking on these capital blue letters to go HERE!
Thanks, always good to share with a fellow fan!
Great retrospective on the great Dan DeCarlo. By an interesting coincidence, I just did a retrospective on DeCarlo and five other Humorama artists who did the most spanking cartoons, Ward, Wenzel, Stiles, Homer, and Morrice. DeCarlo had some help from his Timely inker Rudy Lapick with his gags in his early Humorama cartoons, but after that Goodman did the captions as you state, allowing DeCarlo to pocket a hefty $15.00 fee per cartoon!
ReplyDeleteA worhty endeavor, Web-Ed!
ReplyDeleteYep, Rudy's wonderful work was part of the appeal of Dan's art! Later, Dan made his brother Vince DCarlo his full-time inker, feeling that Vince was more faithful to his pencils, but first he made sure studio-mate Rudy had plenty of work from Richard Goldwater's other "Archie" artists! Dan's two sons also followed Pop into the comic field!
Of course the caption makes sense. All the other artists in the studio are sitting in front of her. She's teasing the only scaredy cat who's looking at her from the back.
ReplyDeleteAh, I see!
DeleteWell, thanks for putting some sense to that, Bob! I wouldn't have thought of that, because, being particularly fond of the back view, Student Wolfie would have chosen it on purpose!
Hope you're enjoying the stuff on the blog!