Beef With Cards

Since we're cut off from everything on which i had been working, let's go poke at some things that i hadn't gotten around to talking about. Like, Trading Cards. Say you like collecting trading cards, but you live in the later years of the 19th century and "Bubble Gum Cards" won't get started until the 1930s. What's a fanboy to do?

There's hope! Collector's cards were sometimes available with other candies. And, of course, you could get them with cigarettes (helps keep the pack from crushing to have that nice stiff cardboard in there, y'know). But some of my favorites came from ... meat extracts? Yup - the father/mother of modern bullion and the famous OXO tower in London. Beginning in 1872, Liebig started to distribute collector card series, and did so for over a century. (3 years over, i'm obsessed to report)

They were small series - typically only a half dozen cards, occasionally the full dozen. The subject matter was wide ranging, limited only by the editor's imagination and whim. Nature made for a common theme, as did travel and views of far-away lands. And history, famous landmarks, local culture, folklore...

As introduction, here are the art sides of three series. On later looks, we'll go to the text sides, but not today.

The Rodent Family (1954):

Naval Maneuvers (1901):

Modes Of Transportation In Japan (1905):

artists unknown (1901, 1905, 1954)

Blue Monday Calendar 2018 Week 27

Some readers may have noticed that yesterday was the 1st of July, yet no calendar pages were offered for this month. Alas, the files are all inaccessible with the current computer situation. Thankfully, the source archives for the Blue Monday Calendar are old enough to be located on an external drive small enough to be read by this ancient beast upon which the blog is maintained.

This week's Gil Elvgren painting comes from 1952, entitled Surprising Catch -

art by Gil Elvgren (1952)

Sunday Odd Funny

With the main system violently dead, the scanner inoperable and the archives inaccessible, we're operating in minimal mode currently. So just one Sunday Morning Funny, though morning is over here by the time this post goes live.
Only one comic, but, it is an Odd one.

One odd bit is the appearance of the artist. I've expressed a fondness for seeing artists appear in their comics before. This time, the artist features prominently, but the identity of the creator is lost to time and management's egos. I kind of want to hunt down photos of all the artists who worked for Harvey in the mid-40s to see if he can be identified.

Yeah. It would probably be easier to find an old pay stub.

Anyway - here's Nappie-Kin!

So...
I've been doing some digging since writing the bit above, and we may have an identity for our mystery artist. Can anyone find a photograph of Leon Jason, circa 1946? Original storyboards for this tale are marked with a Jason Comic Art Studios tag. Jason provided humour comics to a handful of publishers at the time. Beyond that, i know virtually nothing about them, or him.

But that would seem to be the answer to our query.

page art from Nutty Comics #5 (1946)

Saturday Solutions, Once Again

Quick answers to yesterday's Quick Quiz -

1>

From Larry Elmore, a name all old school D&D fans should recognize, comes Gidget Meets The Squirrel Dogs From Outer Space.

2>

The man tormented by the whispers is Doc Mason from John Findley's tolerably awesome Tex Arcana, a tale of which i've been a fan long enough that back in the '80s, before going full time into the artwork the electronics technicians with which i worked were called the Techs Arcana ("We're so good, we're magic").

3>

The might of Marveldom assembled was gathered to end the threat of...  the F.F.'s mailman...?

I told you there was something odd about Willie Lumpkin.

page art from Heavy Metal (April 1979, March 1981) and The Fantastic Four Roast (1982)

Friday Fun & Games Quickie

As you may already know, we currently suffering from major computer death and most of our archives and material are currently inaccessible. So, for our late edition of FF&G today we've just a quickie Whozit Quiz with three questions.

1> Who is the girl featured in this painting? (Bonus points for full title)

2> Who is is hearing the dreadful whispers on this page? (and from what tale?)
 

3> Whose butt has this assemblage of heroes gathered to kick? (again, bonus for source)

As usual, despite the current circumstances, answers in tomorrow's Saturday Solutions post.

you know i'm not going to tell you today!

A Day Adrift

As mentioned this morning, there was another Caza tale already prepped and ready to run, so let's use that for a bit more substantial post today. Last time we looked at Philippe Cazaumayou's work, we saw Marcel, his recurring Everyman character.
The other primary character appearing in his tales is his Artistic Self, who is featured in this story. (Though he can be seen in the previous tales, too)

With my main computer having sunk and finding myself adrift today, Shipwreck actually seems like a quite appropriately chosen strip -

Have i mentioned how much i love Caza's use of colour?

Alas, my lovely lady of the sea dwells nearly 3000 miles away, so i won't be following his course while adrift.

pages by Caza, from Heavy Metal (June 1980), translated from the original in Pilote Mensuel # 37 bis (1977)

And How Was YOUR Day?

Because mine...?

That sound, with the accompanying flash of light, erupted from the main computer system this morning. (Yesterday morning, at the time this post goes live.)
Either it had an origin and is in some embryonic hibernation state, or the poor critter died a hard death.
And no telling if it took the data on the drive with it.

That was just the morning...

My standard medical monitoring was so badly out of specs that i've gone from every six weeks to now being tested every fortnight. (Which is going to create a huge spike in my shoe wearing hours per month!)
We won't even get into how badly the government has screwed things up for my upcoming procedures. And that's before the current screw-the-populace rampage.

The day did not dramatically improve from there.

But none of that affects you, except for the death of the computer. All my archives of material gathered for the blog are there. Much of it has been backed up on external drives, but they're too big for this ancient beast to fathom what it's looking at. So none of it can currently be accessed. The technology gap also prohibits use of the scanner. This old beast doesn't speak the modern lingo, and can't communicate with it.
(Let's not get into how ancient this machine is. Let's just leave it at the fact that it has a single core processor.)

But, i do keep an ancient version of Photoshop on hand, so it can at least do some basic prep work. And i'm hoping that a couple of the old external drives are small enough for this machine to read them. That will enable access to some older back ups. And there are a few bits hanging around on this system and some of the transfer sticks. (The main sys was a secure system - only sneaker net connections) So, we'll still be getting some posts of some sort. But certainly no insane sprees like two days ago. (On the other hand, that did leave at least one more Caza story prepped & ready) Best guess is perhaps two weeks before a replacement system is up and running. In the meantime, we carry on.

Okay. Enough explanation and ramble. This post goes off to the queue, and i go crawl to the back of the cave.

We'll see how badly the computer explosion burned my brain and psyche when i wake.

oh, come on! You know who that page is from, right? Simonson & Workman ... you know that already, sure you do! from Thor # 337 (1983)

Widow, Black & White

A lot of us are waiting for Marvel to catch up to DC in one of the very rare areas in which it leads in the cinema. Ant-Man & The Wasp will finally give us a female hero headliner, and Captain Marvel will at last deliver a female solo superhero, but the one many have been eager to see is, of course, the Black Widow.

While we're waiting...

Back in 1981, Ralph Macchio and Paul Gulacy showed us what a Black Widow film of the time might have looked like in the first issue of Bizarre Adventures magazine - in glorious Noir (et blanc) -

I hope that helped.
If not, maybe try that Black Widow/Punisher animated movie team-up for a temporary fix. (Avengers Confidential - 2014)

pages by Ralph Macchio & Paul Gulacy for Bizarre Adventures #25 (1981)