Blue Monday Calendar 2018 Week 32

Shell Game (Shell-Shocked) is this week's delightful painting by Gil Elvgren from 1959 -

art by Gil Elvgren (1959)

Blue Monday Calendar 2018 Week 21

Okay... I missed Friday and the weekend, but at least i finally noticed that today was Monday.

This week's Gil Elvgren painting is Plenty Sharp (Get The Point) from 1959 -

Saturday Funky Solutions (019)

Let's jump straight into the answers to yesterday's Friday Fun & Games:

While scoring, remember to note how many points correct answers are worth in each section.

*(Whiteman's was the first to popularize jazz in 1924; but that was at the Aeolian Hall. Maybe Dad remembers!)
**(Kenny was an MJQ'er; Conneie succeeded him on the skins ... Who's Tony Jackson? A noted 88'er of the New Orleans school. (No relation to MJQ vibist Milt))
***(Louie took some highly publicized blasts at bop, but the distinguished author of this one was Condon ... and, tis said (why disbelieve it), he immediately proved his point!)
****(now, you do get it, don't you?)
*****(no, not Father O'Connor!)

The footnotes above are a part of the original answers in the magazine. The (1959) by the answer to #4 in the first section reflects their own acknowledgement that the answer was "as of this date, that is" and the number might be higher for them now.

Have you totaled your points?
Let's see how much better you scored than i did:

I cannot even claim to be Oblong. (Maybe oblong with an equatorial bulge)
So tragically eligible for hermitage.

This quiz comes from the same place as the final ad (for the Gartier Watch) in yesterday's Ad-On Post, the May '59 issue of The Dude. Almost 60 years ago, but they had a fair lock on modern life today for their cover image:

Sure, the tech isn't timely, but if they're on the phone to each other (ages before even radio-telephones were a thing in cars) as it seems, it really is a fairly prescient cover.

Funky? from The Dude v.03 #05 (1959)

Friday Funky Games

Since yesterday's post was on a loss of Groovy, today we'll check your Funk. While the real bloggers are off fighting Friday Night Fights, we'll chill with a bit of mid-20th Century music today on

Our quiz today comes from 1959, back around the dawn of the Hermit age. Groovy was on the horizon, but we're checking on your Jazz levels today - Are You

A reminder, these questions are from 1959:

I'd say that Jazz music comprises about 1/3 of my listening these days. That said...
This quiz kicked my ass. (I'll blame the nature of Jazz radio in the 20th Century for keeping me ignorant. It wasn't until internet that i was finally able to learn what i liked)

Hopefully, you can do better.

quiz source tomorrow with the answers

Saturday the 14th Solutions

Dig, you curious cats. Here're the answers you seek!

BELOW
Meanwhile, back on #46...
Readers of the comments may have noticed that the Martian Mindbender (arguably the greatest encyclopedic mind on comics in the midwest) declared the answer to be "Esmeralda".
Our quizmasters, John Stanley & Mal Whyte, proclaim the answer to be "Desi"
Let's check with Legal for our definitive answer:

I'm calling it as Desdemona. Never argue with money bearing lawyers.

BTW - Did you know that George Herriman was an assistant on early Mutt & Jeff, home of Cicero's Cat? So if you see any similarities to Krazy Kat in design, now you know why.
Of course, Herriman took things to his own glorious heights, far removed these beginnings. But the echoes are there.
Meanwhile, if you'd like to check out more of Cicero's Cat from Al Smith (despite the Bud Fisher credit, Smith worked for decades under Fisher's name) visit John Glen Taylor's Easily Mused post featuring 25 old Cicero's Cat toppers.

quiz from The Great Comics Game by John Stanley & Mal Whyte (1966), Cicero's Cat from Cicero's Cat #s 1 & 2 (1959)

Sunday Afternoon WTFunnies? (King Kirby 092)

In an earlier edition of Sunday Morning Funnies during the King Kirby 100 we featured a story entitled Spider-Man Tickles The Torch!
Let's look at another related story-

One might ask just how this is related to the previous story, beyond both having Jack Kirby riding pencils.
We've seen how gifted Kirby was with his comic stylings when called upon, and yet there's absolutely no sign of it in either story. The same holds true for Wally Wood's tone in the inks. There's a very simple reason for that. In both cases, Jack wasn't drawing comedy.
In the tradition of Fractured Flickers, the folks at Crazy magazine took old stories and "re-dubbed" them with new dialogue tracks. Of course, "the folks at Crazy magazine" was Marvel Comics, so they had a vault of old tales to use.
Here's the original version of the story above, from Journey Into Mystery #51-

And here's the original version of Spider-Man Tickles The Torch! Kirby & Steve Ditko from Amazing Spider-Man #8:

I like to think that Jack actually got paid for the re-use of his work, and that - unlike some other times - approved of the changes.
But somehow i doubt it.

pages from Journey Into Mystery #51 (1955) and Crazy #s 66 & 82 (1980, 1982)

Modern Living (King Kirby 085)

We've seen how rough justice could be in some of those old crime comics. It's a good thing for us that we live in the 21st Century with our modern criminal system...

Of course, back in the '90s someone convinced people they'd be made into batteries if this happened, so the system was abandoned. Odds are that they were a bit more accurate in their predictions for robotics and artificial intelligence:

Yeah, that's more believable to anyone who watches modern corporate CEOs.

These two stories were drawn for World Of Fantasy by Jack Kirby and Christopher Rule. Rule seems mostly forgotten now - it's been over 50 years since he retired. But he was one of Kirby's primary Inkers back in the Atlas era, starting with the returning Kirby's first cover & story for Strange Worlds #1 in 1958. Rule inked most of Kirby's earlier works at Atlas, and was later joined by Dick Ayers. Ayers continued working into the Marvel superhero years and was better remembered for the earlier work because of it. Both artists had a fluid ink line that well suited Kirby's pencils, and in those uncredited days it's often hard to know who's work you're admiring. In the beginning, it was almost exclusively Rule.
Besides these two tales, the Kirby & Rule duo also produced four covers for World Of Fantasy:

stories & covers drawn by Jack Kirby & Christopher Rule for World Of Fantasy #s 15 - 19 (1958-59)