Tag Archives: krazy kat

Tea and Spinach! Politics of Popeye, King Features Comics Strips to Memes

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The comic strips you grew up with, and your great-grandma grew up with, are probably from King Features Syndicate: a comics syndicate over 100 years old! Tea Fougner is the Editorial Director for Comics at King Features Syndicate and joins us to talk about comics strips past and present.

As Tea says, “Comics is a format, not a genre.”

Find out:

  • Which vintage adventure strips will modern readers enjoy?
  • Popeye: Origins
  • The kweerness of Krazy Kat
  • The 1970s splenders of Apartment 3G
  • The Lockhorns are someone’s hip meme
  • Popeye on socialism and economic policy
  • “Mandrake the Magician was Doctor Strange before Doctor Strange”
  • How to read King Features comics. Literally.
  • Popeye is compassionate

Tea tweets as https://twitter.com/teaberryblue.

Preview: LOAC Essentials Presents King Features Vol. 1: Krazy Kat 1934

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LOAC Essentials Presents King Features Vol. 1: Krazy Kat 1934

George Herriman (w & a & c)

Much attention has been paid to Herrriman’s Sunday full-page comics, yet it is in the daily Krazy Kat strips that the cartoonist most frankly illustrates many of his major themes, especially the shifting nature of social identity.

The 1934 strips reprinted in this book fit anyone’s definition of “essential.” They show Krazy Kat at top speed, ever-changing, endlessly inventive, with language that sparkles with double meanings and more in lines such as “his malady drills me to my sole.”

The year includes homages to old jokes and bricks, followed by playful references to sex, drink, and even drugs. The daily Krazy Kat strips are often Herriman’s most personal works and standouts in this year include Krazy Kat’s attempt to write a memoir and the Kat’s quietly waiting for the last leaf of “ottim” to fall (a tender scene that finds echoes in Charles Schulz’s drawing Linus admiring the last autumn’s leaf stubborn spirit). It could also be argued that the daily is more accessible to the new reader. Herriman biographer Michael Tisserand provides an insightful introduction.

HC • B&W • $29.99 • 328 pages • 12” x 4.25” • ISBN: 978-1-63140-408-5

KrazyKat-Cover

Films at SPX 2012 include Spotlight on Old Cartoonists and the Center for Cartoon Studies

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Small Press ExpoThe Small Press Expo (SPX), the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels, and alternative political cartoons, is pleased to offer a small film festival at this years show.

Mark Newgarden will show a series of shorts from the 1920’s to 1960’s about the old time comic strips and their cartoonist creators. You’ll be able to see rare film footage from Newgarden’s personal collection with Rube Goldberg, Otto Soglow, Al Capp and Fontaine Fox and others, as well as cartoons based on the comics strips Nancy, Krazy Kat and Popeye. This will be a once in a lifetime chance to see this series of extraordinary films that are not otherwise available, with half the shorts to be shown Saturday September 15, and the other half Sunday September 16.

Cartoon College is a documentary by Tara Wray and Josh Melrod about a dozen students working their way through the MFA program at the Center for Cartoon Studies, one of the top schools in the country focusing on creating comics and cartoons. Besides following the students through their academic paces, the film features cameos by such comic creator luminaries as Lynda Barry, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Jules Feiffer and Charles Burns. The film will be shown once on Saturday, September 15.

For details about showtimes and additional information, go to the SPX 2012 Programming page at http://www.spxpo.com/programming.