Octopus

Octopus
The Ominous Octopus

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from Jolly Old St. Nick.











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Flash Gordon By Alex Raymond Part V

The original adventures of Flash Gordon continue.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  
 
The character of Flash Gordon and the Flash Gordon comic strips are all the property of King Features Syndicate.  
 
 


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Saturday, March 30, 2013

The Black Cat's Judo Tricks

Later issues of Black Cat comics had a page where the Black Cat demonstrated judo tricks.






Reblogged from http://datajunkie.blogspot.com/2006/03/original-black-cat.html













 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 












 
 
 
 
 






 
 
 
 


The Black Cat was also known to use a "cannonball" attack.


 
 
 







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The Black Cat

The Black Cat is something like Wonder Woman, was involved in World War II like Wonder Woman, and even has a boyfriend who is similar to Steve Trevor. I like the Black Cat, but I don't think I've read very many of the comics.







 Here's one that I reblogged from "Pappy's Golden Age Blog".

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 


It seems they had the Black Cat scratching the bad guys' faces in the older comics, but in the ones I'm more familiar with, she used judo. We'll take a look at that next time.



Black Cat Website:
http://blackcatcomics.com/

More Black Cat sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cat_(Harvey_Comics)

http://www.toonopedia.com/blackcat.htm

http://themagicrobot.wordpress.com/category/harvey-comics/

http://datajunkie.blogspot.com/2006/03/original-black-cat.html


Black Cat Comics:
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=574









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Bad Dog Blog

Some pretty good pictures turn up on facebook. Usually cats, but sometimes dogs. Here's a picture of a dog from facebook, along with my brother Dale's comment.



 
"You are the bad dog.
 
You create piles of poop on the carpet."
 
 
 
 
Sort of reassuring to know that the universe is in good hands after all.













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Happy Easter From The Octopus

Happy Easter from the Bunny Rabbit, too.














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Three's A Crowd





I took what's-his-name out of this picture. He wasn't necessary. Everybody watched that show for the girls anyway.




Joyce DeWitt's got an old hand-me-down that was left over from something or another that wasn't important. You needn't worry about it as nobody else ever did anyway.



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Friday, March 29, 2013

Happy Easter

Here comes Peter Cottontail, hoppin' down the bunny trail.

Oh-oh.





Just when you thought it was safe to celebrate Easter, you find out they've gone and ruined everything again.






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Happy Easter

That thing's got long ears, but I still don't think it's supposed to be the one that brings the Easter Eggs.












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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

PENCIL MANIA

PENCIL MANIA is a Van Buren cartoon with characters similar to Fanny Zilch and her friends. But it actually predates Fanny Zilch.






Pencil Mania


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
Pencil Mania is a 1932 animated cartoon in the Van Beuren Studios Tom and Jerry series that breaks the fourth wall of theatre and film. The two main characters become animators in the film, and draw various cartoon scenarios against the blank background, and interact with them. The short was created by John Foster and Vernon Stallings (credited as Geo. Stallings), with synchronization by Gene Rodemich, released through Library Films. The opening credits are played over the song "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover". Run time is 6:54. It is believed to be in the public domain.

 

 External links





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Watching this cartoon, my immediate reaction was that they were making another Fanny Zilch cartoon. But it actually predates the Fanny Zilch cartoons. The characters in this cartoon





 are pretty much stock characters anyway: this was intended as a spoof of old melodramas, something which had already been done in the silent movie era and in comic strips such as Desperate Desmond and Hairbreadth Harry.






The girl in this cartoon was also similar to Betty Boop

 
 
and was in fact voiced by Margie Hines,
 
 

who was also the original voice for Betty Boop.




Betty Boop would later have a boyfriend named "Fearless Fred" who looked a great deal like either the stalwart hero in this cartoon or the comic strip character "Hairbreadth Harry", and had about the same villian as in the other two versions as well. And of course the supporting cast in the Fanny Zilch cartoons was about the same, which led to about the same characters being used all over again in the Mighty Mouse cartoons.



Watch PENCIL MANIA






Betty Boop:
http://bettyboop.com/


Desperate Desmond ( comic strip ):
http://toonopedia.com/desmond.htm

Hairbreadth Harry:
http://www.toonopedia.com/hairbr.htm

http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2009/12/charles-w-kahles-1878-1931.html

PENCIL MANIA at the internet movie database:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151935/

Watch PENCIL MANIA:
http://archive.org/details/pencilmania

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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Editorial Cartoon

You might call this one man's solution, if it hadn't been a cat that came up with this one.













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Monday, March 25, 2013

Shazam! By Chip Kidd



Chip Kidd's SHAZAM! is a sort of Captain Marvel scrapbook,




 
 
with comics, pictures from the Republic serial, and photos of rare memorabilia such as Captain Marvel watches, paper dolls, pins, and paper planes. Related characters such as Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny are also examined and there are glimpses of some other Fawcett comics characters such as Nyoka, Ibis the Invincible, and Spy Smasher.
And there's a little about the DC comics lawsuit that eventually brought an end to the original series, including a few pages of trial transcripts
 
 
 But I've spotted a few errors in this book. And there are a few points upon which this author and I do not see eye to eye.
 
 
 
The caption for a picture of the Captain Marvel costume from the serial tells us that, "Ironically enough, the costume was repurposed a year later for a scene in a Columbia Pictures serial featuring... Superman." 
 
SUPERMAN, the Columbia serial, was not made until 1948. The Captain Marvel costume was not used in any scene in that serial.
 
Chip Kidd is correct where he says the costume was worn by one of Jor-El's accusers on the planet Krypton on the first episode of  THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, although that was filmed in 1951, not 1952.
 
 
Notice the lightning bolt visible on the chest and the bands on the sleeves visible on the man on the right. 
 
 
Text says Superman "would NEVER be depicted with firearms, unless he was crushing them."
 
 
 
Text states that Superman "would NEVER so much as consider using a gun against his enemy."
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 This time Superman let Batman handle the gun, but somehow the whole thing still manages to be somewhat awfuller than the Captain Marvel covers.

 
 
 
 
When it came to using guns, Lois Lane was not left out of the festivities. 

 
Of course, Lois Lane, being one of the good guys, only uses a gun on the side of right. Same as Superman, Batman, Captain America, and any number of other good guys in comic books*.  The things like Jimmy Olsen and Robin being made to dig their own graves turn out to either be imaginary stories or have some other explanation. At least, that was what they used to do in the comic books that I used to read when I was a kid. I'm not as familiar with what they have any more.




Text comments that Everett M. Arnold testified that he believed that the cover of WHIZ COMICS #1

 
 
 
was a copy of ACTION COMICS#1

 
because both characters were throwing cars. But, "Which they are, but other than that technical fact, the accusation appears totally baseless."
 
 
  
Both appear to be throwing the same car. Even the color is unchanged. There are enough variations in the two covers that it wouldn't be an exact duplication, but there are also still enough similarities that it seemed reasonable at the time to make a point of it in the plaigerism case.
 
 
From what has been said in other accounts, DC comics eventually compiled a long list of similarities between specific Superman and Captain Marvel stories, enough that these similarities seemed to be convincing evidence that Fawcett had copied from DC's character. This book makes it sound as if the problem was only that one artist working on one Captain Marvel story had traced something from a Superman story. That may have happened, but there was more to the story than that.
 
Superman and Captain Marvel comics were both very popular and I've read both. There's not really much point in worrying about the legal aspect now. But we might as well go by the ruling of the court in this case. It's what we would ordinarily do with anything else.
 
 
 
*There are a couple of covers that show Captain Marvel shooting a machine gun ( or guns ), but I don't know if any of the comic book stories actually showed him using a gun. The Republic serial did have Captain Marvel using a machine gun, and also had him killing people in other ways. Which isn't really what Captain Marvel is supposed to do. He's like a kid character that happens to be a superhero, and the comic books were supposed to be kid stuff.







Captain Marvel costume on first episode of THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN:
http://thecaveboard.yuku.com/topic/7352/SOE-Kryptonian-Costumes-George-s-pinky-ring



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