Frank Talk On Drawing

We were going to go flying again with the Franks (Moss & Borth), but as i was pulling pages i realized the we still had a major bit of Borth dangling. Quite a while back, i dropped this page into the mix of a scattered post -

Note that the Sketch-It is numbered - #6, implying a series.

In another post focused on covers from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact, i teased this cover -

Draw-Along With Frank Borth - #7, it says! 

Back in 1963, Borth serialized how-to-draw lessons, and they were quite good. He touched on things that i usually don't see - though, to be honest, i haven't read a lot of How To Draw books. I already had my own approach by the time i found them. So, i could be making ign'ant statements here.

But, for example, in the first lesson he talks about the usual bit of how everything is made from squares, circles, and triangles. But then, before going further, he has the students actually practice drawing the geometric shapes, getting comfortable with them before moving forward. Quite practical and solid foundation work. And you even get a sense of what Scott McCloud would elaborate upon decades later regarding the nature and history of art & storytelling. (Did McCloud refer to sign language as "drawing on air"?)

And, of course, it's Frank Borth! It's not hard to figure out i'm fond of his artwork - we're passing a score of posts featuring it. TCoF&F published 20 issues each school year. The first half of volume 18 featured another serial from the Capt. Frank T. Moss & Frank Borth team (One of their Ferdy tales. We'll get to him), and when that completed Draw-Along filled the space for the next 10 issues.

You know where this is going, right? Of course we're going to run them all. They're generally five pages each, so we'll do two at a time. That way i won't have to fight too hard with Blogger's defective image upload. (I get tired of waiting for over half an hour for them to not frell up the transfer and leave it hanging.)

Observe the footnote at the bottom of panel one below. 16 years at TCoF&F at that point. And most of those years, he and Capt. Moss did a serialized tale together. We've seen The Enchanted Flivver series, but there was also The Champ (no - get that picture out of your head) and Ferdy, both of whom have pages pulled to run here eventually, and many others including one-shot stories. Since Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact wasn't available to the general public, and i don't believe any of these have been collected and reprinted as they should be, we'll be coming back repeatedly for more. (Along with a bunch of other hidden treasures from artists like Joe Sinnott and Reed Crandall, for whom words like Great and Legendary are often used.)
For now, let's get to that "panel one below" -

For the second lesson, the inside front & back covers were utilized to provide an artist's aid -

I liked the old styrofoam head i used (an cheap wig stand) cosiderably better since this thing is really only good for front & side views. But i like the concept. And the X shape does make a Funny Face of sorts.

On to the lesson!

You're going to have to practice fast since the lessons continue tomorrow (i hope). 
Better get to it!

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact V18 #s 11 & 12 (1963)

A Quick Quirk Answer

In answer to yesterday's question, the couple's name is -

Ayup. Mr. and Mrs J. Evil Scientist.
Kind of makes me want to know the origin of that name, y'know?

They existed somewhere between the Addams Family and Boris & Natasha. They spent time hanging out with Top Cat, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and others while launching their own title. That lasted only four issues, the cover designs of which we ran last time.

Here's their first tale in their own book -

While they obviously lived in their own little world, they were not isolated. Beyond visits in other titles, familiar faces might show up in their book, too -
 

And now i've got Touché Turtle sounds stuck in my head.
Oops.

page art by Pete Alvarado and ??? from Mr. And Mrs. J. Evil Scientist #s 1 & 3 (1963)

The Grass Cat

If i've managed to get through the week without losing complete track of time (again), then we've reached Saturday. This weekend, let's return to an old favorite once more - This Guy:

You may recall Grass Green's early work in fandom on strips like the Bestest League of America, the Frantic Four, and the Scavengers. Or perhaps from those Far-Out Fairy Tales he drew for Charlton. Or maybe from The Shape, Superella, or his Super Soul Comix with Eric Private, The Black Eye and Soul Brother American. Not to mention his library of Blue Works.

Somehow along the way, i don't believe we've talked about arguably his greatest creation - Xal-Kor, The Human Cat. Like the photo above, Xal-Kor comes out of a semi-mythical fan publication from Texas - Star Studded Comics. Between 1963 and 1972, the Texas Trio published 18 issues (the final three under the truncated Star Studded title). The semi-mythical status derives from some of the people who worked on it and the low distribution. 

Contributors included folks like Dave Cockrum, Jim Starlin, Ronn Foss, Rich Buckler, Biljo White, George R.R. Martin, Al Milgrom, Bill Dubay, Alan Weiss, D. Bruce Berry, and Dennis Fujitake. (How have we not looked at Fujitake's lovely works yet?)

Originally only 250 copies were printed. By the end of the run, circulation had doubled. But that's still not a lot of copies out there, so the book was rarely seen even among collectors.

Add to the scarcity the fact that the early issues were mimeographed...

...and that's what it looks like after major clean-ups & restoration on the scan of the severely faded original. Even when copies survive, reprinting from faded mimeos is not often contemplated. Some are so faded that text cannot be read - it must be laboriously deciphered. Large areas of some pages are faded to pure white. Some pages, however, are still quite readable. 

I thought about doing a black&white conversion for this story, but let's stick with the original purple mimeo. Note that the other colours were usually added by hand - another reason for those low copy counts per issue.

Fortunately for us, with issue #4 they upgraded to offset printing and black ink. Later Grass Green stories are much easier to read -

And the switch to better printing was just in time. With issue #5, Green's Xal-Kor crashed onto the scene -

Here's his debut tale from that issue -

Xal-Kor appeared in another half dozen issues of Star Studded Comics. Fortunately, they're all sitting here, so we'll be diving in deeper this weekend.

page art by Richard 'Grass' Green from Star Studded Comics #s 1, 2, 5, & 15 (1963, 1964, 1969)