Bobby London: An Air Pirates Convention Sketch

A convention sketch by underground comix artist Bobby London was signed and inscribed to one John Taylor on July 6, 1975. At the time, London's Dirty Duck and Weevil characters were appearing monthly in National Lampoon. Here they are shown encountering a genie in a bottle who appears as a sinister Mickey Mouse. This is an Air Pirates reference. The copyright-infringing underground collective was still involved in the ongoing Disney lawsuit. Dirty Duck had also made an appearance in Air Pirates #1.

Bobby London
Hake's Auction listing of March 22, 2023

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/price-result/dirty-duck-and-weevil-color-original-art-by-bobby-london/

Although Hake's Auctions gave the sketch a $700 to $1,000 presale estimate, it sold at auction for $155 ($183.02 with the premium).

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Charles Addams: A Pair of Frog Drawings

Two drawings of frogs by Charles Addams came up for sale at Christie's last year. The London branch of the auction house had surprisingly little to say about these American drawings, not even that the previous owners were, to all appearances, frog fanciers.

Charles Addams, 1969
"I may be running on this platform quite soon myself    CA"

Charles Addams
Christie's London June 4, 2019

https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/charles-addams-1912-1988-but-how-do-i-6206673-details.aspx

That's it from Christie's. Now it's my turn. The first question to ask is whether the finished Addams cartoon was published and, if so, did it appear in The New Yorker. Yes on both counts, in 1959. Note how much more vivid Addams original is compared with the scan of the cartoon from the magazine's website.

Cartoons by Otto Soglow and Charles Addams

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1959-12-19/flipbook/034/

The second thing to note is the accompanying Addams drawing hastily colored with felt-tip pen. It is dated 1969 and depicts an unfortunate frog outside a restaurant with a sign boasting "Frog's Legs Our Specialty." It seems glaringly obvious that the concept of the unpublished Addams sketch bears a decided resemblance to that of Sam Gross's classic cartoon published in National Lampoon in 1970.

Charles Addams, 1969
"I may be running on this platform quite soon myself    CA"

https://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2010/12/sam-gross-frog-legs-original-cartoon.html

Note:  Who doesn't love original Charles Addams art? You're invited to share what you've got right here on Attempted Bloggery. Send me an image of something good. I'm in the book.

Sure, I'll accept original Sam Gross art too.

By the way, don't skip the Xmas charity appeal cartoon by Otto Soglow on the New Yorker page opposite Addams's frog drawing. How long will it be until we aging cartoon bloggers need to explain to the next generation of readers what a telephone booth is?

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Linda's Copy of I Am Blind and My Dog is Dead by Sam Gross

"What's so funny about red?"

—Harold Ross, founding editor of the New Yorker, on why the magazine published only black and white cartoons  

Ink Spill

Cartoonist Sam Gross for one thinks the color red is funny. He's made bold use of the color rather singularly if sparingly in a series of cartoons about tampons—yes, tampons—that appeared in National Lampoon; it goes without saying that these cartoons were by their nature unsuitable for the New Yorker and therefore unable to pretend to answer Ross's famous query, at least on his own turf.

Just listed on AbeBooks is a copy of Gross's signature 1977 collection I Am Blind and My Dog is Dead personalized to one Linda and including—you guessed it— "..an original tampon drawing." It's priced somewhat dearly at $300 but then how many times does one get the chance to purchase such an object at any price?

Sam Gross
AbeBooks Listing Retrieved July 19, 2019

https://www.abebooks.com/Blind-Dog-Dead-GROSS-Sam-Dodd/30373316166/bd?cm_ven=nl&cm_cat=trg&cm_pla=want_CM&cm_ite=viewbook

Not that you asked, but I would be remiss if I didn't give an example of a classic Sam Gross tampon cartoon (again, definitely not from the New Yorker):

Sam Gross
National Lampoon, August 1976

http://www.marksverylarge.com/page/7/

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Gahan Wilson's Nuts: Memories of Summer Camp

Remember when seemingly everyone had a sugar-coated impression of what childhood had been like, but only Gahan Wilson recalled it in all its anxiety-ridden horror? He created the comic strip Nuts for the National Lampoon, and it was later collected in book form. Sometimes that stroll down memory lane can be quite harrowing...

Gahan Wilson, Nuts, 1976
Original art
Sometimes the art is too big for the scanner. Hint:  you can make a second scan.

The page from the Nuts—ahem!—graphic novel

Gahan Wilson
eBay Listing Ended August 12, 2015

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gahan-Wilson-original-National-Lampoon-cartoon-NUTS-/281769690304?hash=item419ac844c0%3Ag%3AWzwAAOSwT6pVx-a6&nma=true&si=YQGb25QThn5Fxe78BW8tTy6VzZY%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Gahan Wilson
eBay Item Description

Gahan Wilson
eBay Bid History

This is curious. The winning bidder here demonstrates the know-how to electronically place three simultaneous bids four seconds before the auction's close, but to what end? There is no practical reason for this redundant triple-snipe other than perhaps to safeguard the placement of bids against possible rare technical errors. Only the highest bid should be necessary. (Of course, one account does not bid against itself.)

Note:  In what issue of National Lampoon did this 1976 strip first appear? Surely someone must recall it...

Remember when you could take your original art by Gahan Wilson or other New Yorker artists and make scans or photographs of it, email it in to your friendly blogger, and wait to see it appear on the internet in all its glory? Those were the days, my friend...and they still are.

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Gahan Wilson

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Resplendent Subtlety

Welcome to the world's most popular cultural blog! Please, there's no need to thank me.

You know, if there's one complaint I get more than any other—and I get plenty, believe me—it's that I have a tendency here on the old blog to overindulge in what might be called gross-out humor. Too often, my numerous critics tell me, I emphasize only the obvious, the offensive, the scatological, eschewing the nuanced and the refined—qualities wrongly thought not to be in my wheelhouse—in favor of the tasteless, the crass, or the frankly disgusting. In short, I am accused of pandering to the lowbrow tastes of my audience for the mere sake of maintaining what I concede is an already wildly-lucrative blog. While I am not totally blameless in all this, I have to admit I'm a little hurt by the constant criticism of my crudeness. Well, friends, that ends today.

Why today? Because, having duly checked my calendar, I see that today is the first day of the 2017 MoCCA Arts Festival, a two-day comics extravaganza held on the West Side of New York City not too far from the Intrepid. Last year I attended the 2016 Festival, if only for a couple of hours, and photographed a rather refined piece of original illustration art by the great Rick Meyerowitz, "O Tempore! O Sophomore!"—a classy Latin title if ever there was one. Now, one full year later, I am finally posting this bounteously-overflowing work to help promote the new 2017 MoCCA Arts Fest and to usher in a new, more genteel phase of my blogging. Can you scent the change? At last I can indulge my true predilection—too often suppressed in the past—for the subtle, for the serene, for the sublime. No longer will anyone be able to say that urbane sophistication and refinement are simply not to be found in my Milhouse.

Rick Meyerowitz
"O Tempore! O Sophomore!"
Original art
National Lampoon, August 1972

I don't know if I'm going to make it over to MoCCA Fest this year—I'm trying to keep a low profile in the face of so much public opprobrium—but if I do manage it on Sunday, the day they let in the riff-raff, please say hello and do try to be a little forgiving. I'll be the one not wearing a white carnation.

Becky Cloonan, MoCCA Fest 2017

April 2, 2017 Update: Well, I never made it over there, but if you said hi to me anyway, thanks.


Note:  Rick Meyerowitz has never appeared on this blog before, but, as I've said, I'm turning over a new leaf as of today.

Richard M. Nixon was the 37th President of the United States. Respect.


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Jack Ziegler (1942-2017)

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