news paper

← The Twain Has Left the Station →  by Rick Marschall  I intend to write more about the great Lucca Comics Festival in Tuscany, as I did a few weeks ago with photos and sketches. Especially after the death this week of its manager for many years, Rinaldo Traini. I am gathering photos, drawings, and memories; and will share them soon. When I lived in Weston CT my home was 15 minutes

Good Sports by Rick Marschall [TOP] Pap Depicted is the dean of all sports columnists, Grantland Rice. Trivia: I own (or my son does, now) Rice’s golf clubs. Bequeathed to his friend, syndicate pioneer John Wheeler, and passed on to me. Sports cartooning is, or was, a category of cartooning that arguably can be considered an incubator once on a par with political cartoons

Cartoonists’ Love Notes, Good-Byes, and Get-Wells Rick Marschall May 24 was the anniversary of me and my late wife Nancy. She died six and a half years ago, a great wife and mother to our three children. She endured a lifetime of ailments – diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, celiac disease, amputations, dialysis, heart and kidney transplants, and, at the end, creeping

The World’s Greatest Comics Festival, Lucca   [1] Sergio Aragones prepares his morning cappuccino by Rick Marschall I have been to Europe more than 60 times, a good percentage of those trips centered around comics festivals, salons, and symposiums. That I often planned trips to coincide, or, more often, I was an invited guest as speaker, juror, or exhibitor (not exhibitionist) made

Art from Crowded Sketchbooks  by Rick Marschall I have been text-heavy in this space over the past several installments, so I will be merciful and be art-heavy today; or whatever its polar opposite is. In a “crowded life” in the comics and cartoon worlds, I have been blessed to meet many cartoonists beginning in second grade of school (mine, not theirs). Some blossomed into lifelong

 Al Capp’s Own Crowded Life and Family   by Rick Marschall  I knew Al Capp better through the conservative movement, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, than through cartooning. Nevertheless this Crowded Life I chronicle led me to interact in several ways and various times with him. I also knew his brother Elliot Caplin, about whom not enough has been written in comics histories.

Paris Is Burning by Rick Marschall Caran d'Ache I will take a little detour this week. These columns are largely personal – the running title gives me away – but I intend to present a fairly comprehensive, and behind-the-scenes, history of comics of the past 50 years or so. This week, as Easter might distract us, properly so; and with the images of Notre Dame still seared in

It All Started with Alice – My Friendship with Virginia Davis by Rick Marschall Brochure cover page of the original Alice cartoons of Walt Disney “It All Started with a Mouse” is a legend, logo, saying that is marketed at Disney theme parks and elsewhere – this colossal enterprise all around you, all around the world, really the Disney behemoth, all commenced with a simple

The Reserved Mastery of Gluyas Williams by Rick Marschall Williams is a fairly common surname, in comics and cartoon history no less than in other areas of life. An immediate detour before this week’s “journey” – about the name Williams. I cannot help think of the Bob McDill song “Good Old Boy Like Me” (HERE) with the line Those William Boys, they still mean a lot me: Hank and

Lyonel: Cartoons and Fein Art  by Rick Marschall [1] “The White Man” Bad pun. This is a story about Lyonel Feininger, the German artist born (and died) in America. The son of a prominent musician, Lyonel was born in 1871 and initially studied music himself. In 1887 he moved to Germany, land of his parents’ birth, and only returned to America about 50 years later. He died in New

The Power of Cartoons  by Rick Marschall Short and sweet this week. I came across this drawing when I was a young kid. I was hooked on cartoons and comics from an early age… and I mean cartoons and comics from THEIR early ages too. I relished being able to meet, or correspond with, Rube Goldberg, Harry Hershfield, Rudolph Dirks, Jimmy Swinnerton, Russell Patterson, Otto Mesmer,

Ketcham If You Can by Rick Marschall This week is the birthday of Hank Ketcham (March 14, 1920, in Seattle), and we will light a few candles here for the creator of Dennis the Menace. He was attracted to cartooning early, as goes the story of many greats. He was an animator, first for Walter Lantz, then on famous features with Walt Disney. In the Navy during World War II he

More About Google (Barney, That Is) by Rick Marschall We got good response from last week’s essay on Barney Google, from our Yesterday’s Papers Editor John Adcock who remembered his mother’s fondness for the eponymous song; from John Rose who directs the course of Snuffy Smith’s adventures today; and from… Google, or Facebook, or whichever member of the Big Brother League put a hold on

With the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes (Barney and Snuffy; DeBeck and Lasswell)   Christmas Sketch - DeBeck Barney and Bunky, 1930s by Rick Marschall One of my collecting specialties is the Sketch. There is as much charm, and insouciant skill, in a lightning sketch as there is, or can be, in a finished work of art. As an artist I am often happier with my preliminary work than my finishes; I

The Origin of the Collecting Bug Cartoon by Orlando Busino about the Marschall Move from Connecticut. by Rick Marschall … or at least my variation of the bacilli. This is not ancient history, but for the fact that I am ancient. The “origin tale” of how I fast-forwarded to a collection of comics, art, magazines, newspapers, and comics ephemera that fills a house, eight storage

The Other Crime-Strip Cartoonist Gould   ( Red Barry’s Creator ) IDW Publishing, 2016 by Rick Marschall I have elsewhere told the story of Will Gould and Red Barry. In the first incarnation of Nemo magazine I ran a full daily episode of the hard-boiled detective strip. For Fantagraphics Books in 1989 I expanded the look back in a paperback compilation of four Sunday stories.

The Cat Who Walked ( Otto Messmer ) A sketch that Otto drew for me. So many coincidences in my Crowded Life in Cartooning – I later visited Joe Oriolo, who managed Felix after Otto’s retirement. A high-school crush of mine, Janet Ralston, later a TV news anchor, had dated Joe’s son. IT WAS SERENDIPITY, for a young fan of comics and cartoons, to grow up in the New York City area, as I

Precious Jules (Jules Feiffer) These memoirs will sometimes coincide with other remembrances, so I was reminded that the day I write this, January 26, is the birthday of Jules Feiffer. He was born in 1929. It has been one of the honors of my life to know Jules, to call him a friend, to have worked with him. Knowing Jules is a cheap way of feeling like a whole room-full of people

Chance Browne, son of our beloved friends Dik and Joan Browne, recruited Hagar, Hi & Lois and company, to call out a cheery greeting.  I Heart Comics (Cartoonists’ Get-Well Wishes) by Rick Marschall This column is devoted to my life in comics (so far!) and readers generally expect, as do I, interaction with moldy strips, vintage collectibles, and half-forgotten masters of the art

An Afternoon in June (William Overgard) by Rick Marschall  A Crowded Life in Cartooning owes a lot to serendipity. June, 1967, a sunny, gorgeous Spring day. I was a high school senior at Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan, NJ. School let out early for seniors, because the senior prom was that night. I started to drive home, thinking this was too beautiful a day to