Cartooning

Produced and Directed by Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna.Credits: Animation – Paul Sommer; Layout – Tony Rivera; Backgrounds – Dick Thomas; Written by Mike Maltese; Story Director – Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.Voice Cast: – Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Candy Store Clerk, Billy the Kidder, Horsie, Wild Bill Hiccup, Sheriff, Townsmen – Daws Butler; Narrator, Townsmen, Man With Hat – Doug Young; Texas Tillie, Ma McGraw – Jean Vander Pyl.Music: Phil Green, Jack Shaindlin, Geordie Hormel, Emil Cadkin-Harry Bluestone, unknown.First Aired: 1960?, week of March 6, 1961.Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-038, Production J-100.Plot: Quick Draw tries to bring in Texas Tillie. I’ve always liked the ending of this cartoon. Here you have a bunch of men completely in fear and helpless against the evil badwoman, but a little old lady can take care of her just by walking in, grabbing her ear and pulling her off to jail. And the capper is she takes care of the fibbing Quick Draw McGraw, too. About the only confusing thing about the cartoon is its title. Who’s the “Gun Shy Gal”? Texas Tillie isn’t shy of guns. It doesn’t appear Ma McGraw is either. Writer Mike Maltese takes a bit of time to set up the main action in the cartoon, and he turns it into a running gag. “Many stories have been written about the colourful characters of the old West,” our narrator tells us to open the cartoon. Quick Draw keeps butting in, thinking he’s the one the narrator is talking about. And, no, it’s not Baba Looey, who eventually butts in, too. This gives Maltese a chance to fit in puns about some of the colourful characters, such as Billy the Kidder (a jellybean-stealing boy on a stick-horse that inexplicably neighs) and Wild Bill Hiccup (you know the joke). Note that Wild Bill has little pipe-stem legs; Tony Rivera has been designing characters again. Finally, the narrator gets around to introducing Texas Tillie, who has Jean Vander Pyl’s Mae West voice. She shoots the hat off a man in a saloon because “a gentleman always removes his hat in the presence of a lady.” Cut to the sheriff complaining Tillie got away with all the town’s money. The dialogue lacks Maltese’s real outrageousness in his Warners Bros. dialogue.Narrator: Well, you’re the sheriff. Why don’t you go after her?Sheriff: Well, I need a haircut and shave, and I’m married, and besides—she’s dangerous. With that, the sheriff supposedly zips away. Paul Sommer is the animator. While Carlo Vinci would stretch the character in a bunch of different shapes between the pose and the exit, and Ken Muse would simply eliminate the stretch drawing, Sommer provide a weak in-between, a far too solid drawing. This, by the way, was the only cartoon Sommer seems to have animated upon his arrival at Hanna-Barbera; he was moved into layout and then story direction a year or so later. Sommer had come from the east in 1937 with Fred Quimby’s first hirings at the new MGM studio. He worked at Columbia in the 1940s until the studio closed and then moved back across the country to Terrytoons (thanks to Howard Beckerman for the information). He spent some time with former Columbia director Howard Swift at Swift-Chaplin Productions in Hollywood before taking over at Song Ads in mid-1957. About the same time, he headed a unit at TV Spots run by Sam Nicholson. The narrator then talks to the townsfolk. In unison, they repeat how dangerous Tillie is. That brings about a “Hold on thar!” and a pan over to Quick Draw who declares he’s “not afraid of a mere frail sensitive female-type bandit.” So now we get some routines of various lengths (like Maltese’s gag-writing for Wile E. Coyote) as Quick Draw fails to arrest her. First, he pretends to be Cane Clobber bearing jewelled brace-e-lets for her. She locks his legs in the handcuffs (off camera, of course). Next, Quick Draw (wearing a sombrero with pom-poms) parks himself outside her window to serenade her to jail in a stupid, off-key song, accompanied b

Daily Cartoon - Saturday May 25th, 2013Like today's cartoon? Forward it to a friend, share it on Facebook, or tweet it on Twitter!Thanks!Andertoons.com | Browse Cartoons | Subscriptions | Custom Cartoons | Blog

Ones that come to mind. 1. Have a regular cartoon in a publication. 2. Submit cartoons to publications in the hope that they will buy/publish them. 3. Be commissioned by individuals, companies, publications, book publishers, etc. 4. Post cartoons on the internet and sell merchandise. 5. Post cartoons on the internet and find sponsorship. I am sure that this is not an exhaustive list. I have tried to do no 1, mainly. I have never really done very much of no 2, though a lot of cartoonists do. I have done no 3, but am not usually very good at it. I probably shouldn’t say that, but, well, there you go. I have never succeeded with number 4 because I am not good enough at the technical aspects and so give up. I like the idea of no 5. I don’t really know anyone who does it, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible as that is the way a lot of websites fund themselves. How about you? (If you’re a cartoonist, but I’m sure wisdom can be gained from other disciplines.) Ideas, thoughts and suggestions welcomed. I am particularly thinking about the best way to fund cyclingcartoons.com. Yes, I know, I should have worked that out by now.

You could say that this is a bit early, but now is approximately the time when church magazine editors need a summer cartoon. You can find the high resolution version here: Summer holidays. It is taken from book 3, The Exciting World of Churchgoing, and originally appeared in the Church Times in August 2009.

Bernharda Xilko made the drawings above. So Meathaus, meet Krekhaus, the spot where you can see more work by Bernharda Xilko and more also super work by Ugruv Smek. Also Turbo Comix.

Daily Cartoon - Friday May 24th, 2013Like today's cartoon? Forward it to a friend, share it on Facebook, or tweet it on Twitter!Thanks!Andertoons.com | Browse Cartoons | Subscriptions | Custom Cartoons | Blog

Daily Cartoon - Thursday May 23rd, 2013Like today's cartoon? Forward it to a friend, share it on Facebook, or tweet it on Twitter!Thanks!Andertoons.com | Browse Cartoons | Subscriptions | Custom Cartoons | Blog

Comic books and comic strips have, on occasion, gone off in different directions than the animated series which gave birth to them. The Roadrunner comics had the Roadrunner talking… and in rhyme. Mickey Mouse had marvellous adventures in Floyd Gottfredson’s comic pages while the on-screen Mickey became fairly lacklustre. And Gene Hazelton, or whoever came up with stories for the Flintstones comics, thought it’d be a great idea for Dino and Pebbles to talk. Well, they talk to themselves. The concept of thought balloons greatly increases the opportunities for observational humour but the purist in me just isn’t comfortable with it (and don’t ask me about the several lame post-Flintstones cartoon series). So it is we get to hear Dino’s innermost thoughts beginning this month 50 years ago in the weekend colour comics (whether it happened in the daily strips by this time, I don’t know). Dino and Pebbles actually appear in all four comics in May 1963, though they don’t drive the plot in all of them. As a fan of Baby Puss, I regret to point out the cat doesn’t appear in any of them again this month. The final panel of the May 5th comic has an imaginative, slightly-overhead layout. I like Dino peeking around the back of the house, with a question mark over his head. Dino’s pretty comical; look at him covering his head in the opener. We get a silhouette panel, and snow-capped volcanoes in the end panel. Ouch! Bad pun in the May 12th comic. Like the mole drawing though. The exterior of the hospital is nice, too. Nice shape to the title in the opening panel; very ‘60s. Dr. Rockwell has a half cocoanut shell ashtray. I wonder if 100 years from now, people won’t be able to understand there was a time no one gave a second thought about smoking and there was virtually no anti-tobacco lobby. Say, is that hospital receptionist writing on a stone . . . with a pencil? A great gizmo highlights the comic from May 19th. A dinosaur is overtop of a mountain in the second panel of the second row. Looks like a different artist from the week before. Dino’s wonderfully expressive in the May 26th comic. Check out the last row. Nice expression on Fred, too. The triceratops toy shows up for a second time in the opening panel. And Wilma comes down with a case of Instant Watch Syndrome, where a cartoon character wears a watch whenever required to by the plot, before and after which it mysteriously disappears. As usual, you can click on each comic to enlarge it for better viewing.

Here is MURRAY THE BIRD to keep you company!I'll be away for the annual Reubens weekend, so I will have to leave you with this insufferable bird for a short time. Please consider ordering a book of MURRAY! It's 72 pages of funny cartoons at an affordable rate. Plus, you're supporting the arts (me). End of preview!See you soon!There is, of course, much more MURRAY! Order a copy of MURRAY THE BIRD here!

Look at Molly Mendoza’s art on her blog here.