My Favorite Booby Bear (Not Bare)

Before The Bear came to stay at Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact, there was Booby Bear hanging out with Perky Penguin. For extra Fun - the strip was drawn (and written?) by Jim Mooney. Mooney is one of those guys who seemed "fresh" enough to my friends and i back in the '60s & '70s that we never realized just how long he'd been around in comics. These come to us from 1946 and he'd already been drawing comics for a half dozen years by then.

Perky Penguin And Booby Bear was a short feature, only two pages per. It started running in the second year (the first full year) of TCoF&F, and had 9 episodes that year. (#6 is my fave) Here are the first year's worth of the strip -

As noted above, my fave for this year is watching Jim Mooney getting meta and having fun with 'reality' almost 75 years ago...

Over the next few years, Perky & Booby returned for another 9 or 10 strips (plus one more a decade later, but that was a reprint). Booby Bear may have been there before The Bear, but he wasn't there nearly as long. Perhaps because Mooney was doing a lot of work for DC and proto-Marvel at the time. He was drawing Captain America and Batman & Robin, among others - so he did get pretty busy. Or maybe they just found out what else Jim liked to draw, and figured he wasn't a good fit. (Probably not that last one)

Or maybe somebody realized that Perky Booby wasn't a great combo for a Catholic comic? (And Jim walked off laughing at how long he got away with it?)

The World may never know...

page art by Jim Mooney from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v2 #s 1-4, 6, 8, 16, 17, & 19 (1946, 1947)

Hermit Ramblings

Some of you may likely have noticed what i didn't when i headed out on my monthly supply run: 
It was Labor Day.

So i traveled down the hill, into the city, and found that Costco was closed. And grocery stores hadn't received deliveries leading to many items not available. In general, a terrible supply run.

Mercifully, i was able to make another run yesterday to actually gather supplies.
Horrifyingly, i was out in the world with human things everywhere two days in a row. My hermit brain skitters to the back of the cave to withdraw into shadows. Combine that with the terrible bit on Saturday, and i'm feeling rather incapable of safely communicating with people at the moment.

But, i don't want to let the Hermit pull back too far, so a quick non-post post to keep the flow.

I've been doing a lot of work on The Third Colony, but not a lot good to show. Either it's very 'back room' work, or it's very boring work. Insane amounts of boring work.

For example - you may recall the the main UI for the game has a character display window which didn't seem to do much of anything other than show what the PC was wearing...

As you can see in the screen above, in addition to Outfit and Hairstyle, it now shows that Kelly is annoyed in this scene. There are currently about a dozen Status Poses that show Emotional State or Status Effect. Here are half of the ones currently in service to show a bit of what they cover -

Now that might not seem like an insane amount of artwork at first glance, but take a single Status Pose and multiply it by just the Outfit and Hairstyle combos available to Kelly in the first four days of the game -
 

Um, No - she can't get pregnant in the first four days - certainly not visibly so. And the Containment Suit might not look like it needs 3 different versions, but it does in other poses. The Registry Trainee uniform on the right only has two hairstyles - Kelly needs to get her hair taken care of before the Uniform is issued, and she can't change back to the base style until after Training is completed. So i at least managed to chop 1/3 off the needs for that outfit.

And, again - that's just what's available in the first four days. And there's also no outfit, so another full set of everything. After Day Four, swim suits become available, and the week following she'll start playing with amateur superhero outfits, undercover disguises, etc.,. Throughout the game she's got a few dozen outfits.

And then there's Eileen and Ben and Gene. 
Bless that Gene - he's got a severely limited wardrobe in the early stages. But Eileen's a nightmare. If she's been dosed with Lactacid or encountered some other effects, she has six potential breast sizes. Good thing she can't change her hair unless she encouters the Scissor Ghost. Then we have to add a set for Bald and 3 Growth Stages.

Insane enough? 
If not, remember that i'm also rendering walk animations in four directions for all these combinations, too. Then add on time for processing the renders and putting them into the format the game needs.

It's a real good thing that i work on this to keep the brain working, not to meet any sort of deadline or anything, eh? I'd have to fire me for making all these crazy decisions that add insane amounts to the work load.

stuff by -3- (2020)

Bears In Space?

Sleep still savagely fragmented, and now breathing getting in on the fun. Or lack of breathing, to be more accurate - bad sinuses; allergic to the planet sort of thing. So brain extra scattered, and it's time for my monthly foraging run down the hill. Not going to do a lot of writing at this point. 

Fortunately, we've already got another tale featuring Eric St. Clair's familiar Bear already prepped and ready to go. Here's No Peace For Bears -

That place sure looks better than Jellystone, doesn't it?

page art from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v10 #s 1-4 (1957)

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)

Early Comics - 1891's Facetious Serpent

EDIT: Being the deranged Alien creature that i am, i did not even notice that the shapes that the snake is taking here are letters, much less see that they formed a word. I in no way meant to disparage Gordie with a slur i didn't perceive.
Any IDIOT involved here is the damn fool who couldn't see the actual joke of the strip. 
Carry on.

This post is actually just a reply to Kid, so it's Very short. But, i figured it was worth making it into a post simply because it's a comic strip from a time before a lot of us think of their having been comic strips - back in January of 1891.

From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, artist Caran d'Ache brings us The Facetious Serpent -

Now i need cuppa to wake up the rest of the way...

page art by Caran d'Ache from Harper's New Monthly Magazine #488 (1891)

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)