Attempted Bloggery: Look

Showing posts with label Look. Show all posts

Friday, September 12, 2025

Bill Hand's Copy of Brother Sebastian At Large by Chon Day

Brother Sebastian At Large (1961) is the third and final book collecting Chon Day's Brother Sebastian cartoons. The panels originally ran in Look magazine between 1954 and 1971.

Front Cover

Back Cover

A copy inscribed to one Bill Hand is embellished with a drawing of the monk holding up a model sailing ship. Hand's hobby may have been sailing—or model shipbuilding?

The bookplate indicates the library of another Hand:

Title page

Chon Day
eBay listing accessed September 10, 2025

https://www.ebay.com/itm/304832913498?_skw=signed+chon+day&itmmeta=01K4TWS2Z0TFYGTTX89C84EDXD&hash=item46f975205a:g:0QcAAOSwgFZkCgLr&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAA8FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1eiBT5YS9uwIxLaE%2FbkfFN3%2Fti%2BE56mP2MsXZUo8zRDTBihdvcCrF1sjM1%2FoUcSNM3ru IHf3a1WfP9Ug5KsvAh%2B

B xI1E4c713YbSgDzSSULqwtFrODD8iqDJ89S2mPozKooA4wSc0qYA0u%2BNSmUmhW6SmnOJOkasfWfdj7tcrQAgOiCOjv%2BVNdpPmkO1hm7WrXm8c9OK8TeAmGGfTVrfCE31Bjyn2aNnzBk3BYmS1yrlki6jaX3a9MFW8nLX7TzMOASFfYddGec%2BXL2lSUvoh5zZrjoD1MYrt0Jwmv0OVdpdg%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR86v5NymZg&pfm=1

Chon Day

eBay item description

05061

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Leonard Dove: Hyperbole at the Internal Revenue Service

To commemorate tax season, Dick Buchanan writes with another superb scan from his cartoon clip files. Who among us hasn't been tempted to resort to a little hyperbole when dealing with the Internal Revenue Service? To anyone who may have been audited or otherwise pestered by the IRS, Leonard Dove's beleaguered taxpayer from a 1961 Look magazine cartoon surely evokes empathy. The man's language is understandably hyperbolic, but whether he is aware of his own exaggerated rhetoric is not clear from the drawing, which depicts him as simply earnest and overwhelmed.

"Which stake do I get burned at?"

Leonard Dove

Look, April 11, 1961, page 122

Scan by Dick Buchanan

Dove, of course, was a New Yorker regular, which means this cartoon may very well have been rejected by the venerable magazine before it was shopped around and picked up by Look. Four years later, though, The New Yorker too would have its chance to play around with hyberbole in the setting of an IRS office. Amazingly, cartoonist James Stevenson manages to pull it off with a simple, wordless gag. The wry smile shown by Stevenson's taxpayer, in contrast to Dove's, indicates this man is very well aware of his own clowning around. Stevenson's cartoon appeared almost four years after Dove's and is memorable, a New Yorker classic.

James Stevenson

The New Yorker, December 19, 1964, page 66

Is there room for another great cartoon on this topic? (Would I ask if there weren't?) You might think James Stevenson gets the last word, wordlessly, on the subject of exaggerated reactions to the tax collector, but his character's mimicking of a holdup victim does not quite end our story. In a cartoon dating from the 1972 tax season, cartoonist George Booth takes the taxpayer's overreaction up a notch into the realm of pure slapstick. As with Stevenson, the hyperbole is physical, not verbal; it is the flustered taxman who is left to refute the taxpayer's antics with some commonsense talk.

"Other folks have to pay taxes, too, Mr. Herndon, so would you please spare us the dramatics!"

George Booth

The New Yorker, March 18, 1972, page 45

Cartoon by James Stevenson. Ad by Chanel.

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1964-12-19/flipbook/066/

Spot drawing by P and cartoon by George Booth

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1972-03-18/flipbook/044/

Note: My thanks to Dick Buchanan for his beautiful scan of the Leonard Dove gag from his matchless cartoon clip files. Dick, you may recall, contributes regularly to Mike Lynch Cartoons, most recently a post entitled "From the Dick Buchanan Files: Certified Vintage Gag Cartoons 1940 - 1961." Dick is the only one I trust to certify gag cartoons as vintage. He also represents me at audits. This is Dick's 61st contribution to Attempted Bloggery, a record unlikely to be broken ever, or at least until tomorrow.

I'll jump at any excuse to highlight the work of Leonard Dove, James Stevenson, George Booth, and the like. Feel free to send such excuses in my direction.

Surely there must be other cartoon examples out there of hyperbolic reactions to a tax audit. I mean, is there really any other kind of reaction? Please let me know if you are aware of similar taxing cartoons that fit the bill.

By the way, who might be P, the spot artist from 1972? Anybody?

03603

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Ringing in the New Year with George Booth, Gahan Wilson, and Robert Weber

Scans of three vintage New Year cartoons come to us courtesy of Dick Buchanan's Cartoon Clip Files. Each of the three cartoonists represented here was eventually to become a major New Yorker contributor, but at the time these were published George Booth and Gahan Wilson were still years away from having their first cartoons accepted by the magazine. Robert Weber, though, had been in the New Yorker for a couple of years at the time the cartoon of his shown here was published.

Dick writes that George Booth's silhouette art was published as a "spot drawing which appeared on the last page of the magazine. This page included jokes, humorous verse (what ever happened to that?) and two cartoons. Booth did these spots for, I think, 3 years—1953 to 1955. Long ago I posted all 12 from 1953 [at] Mike Lynch [Cartoons]. Have yet to uncover enough from 1954 & 1955."

George Booth

The American Legion Magazine

January 1954, page 64

Scan by Dick Buchanan

Dick has posted the following Gahan Wilson cartoon to Mike Lynch Cartoons not once but twice now. Still, it's worth a third look to point out just how unconventional Wilson's approach was. The key here is to take special note of the date of publication and then the year of the calendars. Who else would even think of this?

Gahan Wilson
Collier's, January 7, 1955

Scan by Dick Buchanan

Finally, Robert Weber's cartoon has the look of a gag created specifically for the New Yorker but very likely rejected by the magazine, perhaps because the gag is just a little bit forced. Anyway, in this era cartoons were published in a great many venues and cartoonists could peddle their rejects to other downstream magazines and those magazines that were selective enough and paid enough could give their readers humor very nearly on a par with that in the New Yorker. It was what we today would call a win-win for both the cartoonists and for the magazines. To quote the nostalgic Dick Buchanan, "Whatever happened to that?"

Robert Weber
Look, December 31, 1963, page 41

Scan by Dick Buchanan

Note: Boy, that Dick Buchanan sure knows his way around a scanner! This is Dick's fifty-first contribution to Attempted Bloggery. One more and I'll finally be playing with a full deck. Dick, of course, maintains the matchless Dick Buchanan Cartoon Clip Files. He also regularly contributes to Mike Lynch Cartoons, most recently a post entitled "From the Dick Buchanan Files: All In Fun: Gag Cartoons 1949 - 1968." Me, I just can't double up on colons in a post title like that.

By the way, you can find George Booth's aforementioned 1953 silhouette gags at "1953 George Booth Drawings for American Legion Magazine." It's all there in black and white.

As mentioned above, the Gahan Wilson calendar cartoon appeared twice, both in "Dick Buchanan's Cartoon Files: Gahan Wilson: Early Gag Cartoons 1954 - 1964" and in "Gahan WIlson 1930 - 2019."

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Happy New Year!

George Booth

Gahan Wilson

Robert Weber

Collier's

Look Magazine

Dick Buchanan

Attempted Bloggery's Auld Index

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Saturday, February 16, 2019

Addams Family Scarf

Charles Addams was one of several New Yorker cartoonists who designed vintage scarves for Richard Farrar. Addams collector Joel Jacobus has contributed three photographs of the full scarf (and one of a sketch which will appear here soon). He writes:

I don't know the date it was first available for sale, but I do know that it was pictured in an October 1951 issue of Quick Magazine and again in May 1953 issue of Look magazine. I also know that there was an Otto Soglow Farrar scarf and an Anatol Kovarsky Farrar Scarf produced at roughly the same time. I've heard that there was a Helen Hokinson Farrar scarf but I've never seen it.

The Addams scarf came in at least the following four color combinations (and possibly more):

gold & black & brown,

blue & gold & white,

red & black & gray & white,

black & white.

Here then is the scarf in red and dark gray plus black and white: