Covering TC Artists

I've expressed my fondness for seeing Creators in their comics previously.
Let us expand that to include seeing Creators ON their comics...

How many of these folks can you identify?

Oh, sure - it's an old cover, but there are a few fairly famous names in the crowd. And, of course, it hasn't been very long since you had a look at Frank Borth, so that one should be fairly easy - right?

And, you might not know his name, but i'm willing to bet you can make a fair guess which one is the Editor.

Other famous names include one of DC's most prominent Editors (though an artist here), one of Jack Kirby's most beloved collaborators, a classic pulp artist of renown, and some familiar names from this blog (like the guy who draws The Bear).

And, Yes - if you're wondering...

I am rambling to stall and create spoiler space, because the answers are down
below.
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         . right here...

The cover was drawn by Reed Crandall, the guy who was playing the comb before getting the trash can lids slammed over his head.

Incidentally - this was the cover to the first issue of the Draw-Along With Frank Borth series. Kind of an unfair spotting advantage, eh?

cover art by Reed Crandall from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #11 (1963)

Frank Borth's Mistakes

From the way i've featured and talked about him, one might come to think that i view Frank Borth as some sort of Perfect Artist or something. But, i assure you, that's far from the truth. In fact, he's not only made mistakes - he's made hundreds of them!

Think i'm exaggerating? 
Not at all, and i can prove it.

Here are over 335 Mistakes from Borth -

Before you ask - No. We won't be running a guide to all the mistakes. You'll have to count them yourself.

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v17 #s 1, 5, & 13 and v18 #s 4 & 12 (1961-1963)

And End To Frank Talk On Drawing

 We come to the conclusion of the excellent Draw-along With Frank Borth series. If you came in late, here are the previous 1, 2, 3, 4 installments.

Having walked us through the basics, now Frank shows us how to put it together and what to do with it...

This series was collected back in the '60s and released as a stand-alone how-to-draw book, available for only one shiny quarter.
Of course, like the source comics, it was only available to parochial school students who ordered it through the school. (Think of it as something like a Catholic version of the old Scholastic Books program)

BTW - the Enchanted Flivver story to which he refers at the end is The Return Of The Enchanted Flivver (posted in 1, 2 parts)

Bonus!
Now that you know what Frank Borth looks like, you can spot when he uses himself as a character in his comics.

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #s 19 & 20 (1963)

Ayup, Even More Frank Talk On Drawing

Well, huzzah!

I found my good scans instead of the semi-crappy archive scans i'd been using. You may note an upgrade in image quality with this installments of Draw-Along With Frank Borth. If so, and there's an interest, i'll probably go back and upgrade the previous lesson pics.

We finally get to #7 - Animals! - the cover we saw when we started this series. This morning is part 4 of 5, and if you missed 'em and are too lazy to go hunting (like most of us) here are links to parts 2 and 3, too.

Now, let's listen to Frank instead of my ramblings -

For the final lessons tomorrow morning, Borth gets into practical territory with How To Make A Picture Out Of A Drawing and Using Art for more than just decorating your school notebook.

I wound up working through the night and just barely getting this into the queue in time. So no telling if i'll be here with a post this afternoon or not.

Enjoy the suspense!

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #s 17 & 18 (1963)

Still MORE Frank Talk On Drawing

We reach the midpoint of the Draw-Along With Frank Borth strips - this time with an important lesson that some modern artists (Yeah - you know who you are) missed when they were learning to draw - FEET!

If you're just joining us, here are parts One and Two of the series.

Three down, two to go. But let's jump back a bit to that Sketch-It of Ben Franklin we showed at the start of this series. It was numbered 6 - here are the previous 5...
 

With Ben Franklin, they saved the best for last, eh?

Ben Franklin is one of those people i think of when i think of Great Americans.
It's a shame our Fake President hates him so much, and is trying to destroy Franklin's works, isn't it?

But, i digress. (sorry, Peter)

If things go according to plan, we'll be back this afternoon with another little post for those who don't care for Art Lessons.

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #s 15 & 16 (1963)

Civilizations More Advanced Than Our Own

One of the many terrific artists who worked for Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact whom we have yet to see here is Fran Matera. Unfortunately, Fran's most notable work, Chuck White (and his Friends), simply doesn't lend itself to to short form coverage like blog posts. It needs omnibus editions covering decades of evolving story.

We'll see Matera on some other series sometime, hopefully sometime soon, but while we're waiting we've got a little one-shot history comic written by D.H. Johnson. This feature is descended from earlier series like The What-If Fairy and The Story Of ________, at which we looked previously. Long after they dropped the formalized structure, they continued with strips that covered the story behind things in the world around their readers. In this strip, we look at the history that lead to Our Curious Calendar -

I realize that some may be confused by the assertation that this story covered civilizations more advanced than our own. That's likely a cognitive dissonance caused by confusing Technology and Civilization/Society.

When these societies encountered contradiction between their systems and objective reality, they labored to correct their systems to match reality. 
In our society, we work to correct (or at least re-label) reality to match our system.

Obviously, their civilizations were more Advanced.

page art by Fran Matera from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #9 (1963)

More Frank Talk On Drawing

Draw-Along With Frank Borth Part Two, or Parts Three & Four, depending on how you're counting, continuing from yesterday morning's post...

I realize that not everybody is interested in such things, nor likely to appreciate Frank's approach here. So while we continue this for the next few days, i'll try to do an unrelated post in the afternoons. (In theory at 3:33pm, Pacific Hermit Time)

Well - not exactly unrelated. All comics are 'related' - comics and movies are 'related' - and so on. I'll likely get even closer than that - i'm thinking we'll probably stick around in Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact since we're here already.
Maybe we'll finally check back in with The Bear, eh?

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #s 13 & 14 (1963)