Thanks, West. Suffice it to say, I've had it a long while, before a person needed a second mortgage to get these pages.

I totally agree. I really believe that these books represented as close to the height of the potential that existed in the Lee-Kirby partnership. I've always thought that the general coherence of the overall arcs were thanks to their banter, where the more grounded Lee and the more fanstical Kirby hit a sweet spot. I think the book probably had their hearts, as the flagship and initiator to the success of the new Marvel of the 1960s. Nothing is perfect, and I also think this page reveals as much of the disconnect in their method as the collaboration. The dialog on this page is nearly meaningless in the context of the action, and it really looks like Lee creating a script based on what he is reading in the panels (as opposed to the coherence you get from a script). I'm a little surprised that no one has tried to take some of these stories with the script stripped out and seeing how many different stories might be told with the exact same panels. 

Well, except for the last 3 months, being in my 60s has not been a problem.

Agreed. You could generate a few thesis projects, I think, just pulling this series apart. I've got another 14 to post, and so among the ca. 50 of these, there is no one pictured who is a not a classic 1940s-50s middle- or upper-class white person, constrained to their Ward and June Cleaver roles. 

I wonder if the word "naive" is the right one in your question. 

I just love, love, love the "googly eyes" on Adolph.

I think a person could easily pick up a Masters degree deconstructing a selected group of these illustrations by Hill. 

I am SUCH a boy scout! Twice a year to my dentist, twice to my opthamologist, and once to my PCP. 

Amen to that. Exactly what I was thinking about when I saw this one, too. And she'd be a lot more worried about little Tommy coming home with two dirty words. He'd have 20 GB of internet porn on his phone and he'd be sashaying mindlessly across the living room with his wireless ear-pods.

Me, too. I'm not sure why this series is not more generally well known. The artwork is large AND astounding.

Thanks! A lot of my students cannot abide the 60s style, but it'll always ring my nostalgia bell... heading to a local newsstand on my Schwinn with a whole dollar in my pocket.

As the calendar turns 2020, 1950 is sure getting to be more yesteryear than ever. Jeez.

Putting these drawings side by side with the more cartoon-style (oh, look, I did) and I can see why "The Hill Page" was so compelling. These are portraits of every-people. You are sure you know them, by sight and by character. And Hill's captions are usually deliciously tart but not sour. 

The linework in these pieces blows me away. The originals are huge, and you can see the level of detail in the close-ups. You look at a bled-ink on newsprint copy of how people saw these and the difference is boggling. It surely looked good in print, in a relative sense, because losing 30% of something that was done at 150% performance is still great.

Thanks. It's a blast to uncover these stories. The artwork provides a puzzle. Happy New Year.

It's likely from Issue 14 (Sept 1942). It's Greenwood art. It involves Hu-See, who was a character during that run. Issue 13 is the first issue that Spark Man ditched some of the spandex and wore civvies over part of the costume, so this page fits right there. Unfortunately, it's a conclusion from negative evidence. Comicbookplus.com has full scans of issues 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, and the start of 15 has a plane leaving the scene, and it looks like your page has them heading to the airfield. If someone has an un-slabbed #14 for sale, you might get them to take some phone pix of the story for you. I needed to do that for the pages that I was sure were from 19 (and there was no scan of that one, either). Brian

Agreed! By the way... I decided to start to move this WW2 collection over to its own gallery, and I am hoping the labels will work to put the art in chronological order. It's going to take a little while. Meanwhile, I think you will particularly appreciate the gallery description I wrote for it. 

Hi Rob. Well, that gives me a birth year (1911). So, when and in what context was he drawing stuff? 

Thanks for the note about that book. There was a $4 copy on eBay.

Brian

Alternative history is a tricky, tricky beast. As many times as I wish Hitler had just been accepted to that art academy, you have all of the forces that enabled him that would still be in place - the post-WW1 resentment in Germany, the economic depression, and so on. They say Stalin was responsible for more genocide than the Nazis were - he was an equal-opportunity murderer and an oppotunist. The US would likely not have developed Atomic Bombs without the indispensible help of the scientists who escaped from Europe, and I subscribe to the concept of Oppenheimer's Dharma: someone was inevitably going to do it - the only option not available is that it would never happen. At that point: Better US than them. A world where Russia stayed in its alliance with Germany because someone other than Hitler is in charge probably leaves us all starring in an extended episode of "The Man in the High Castle."

Feel like another earworm that is worth knowing about? I am not sure why I know this shit, but I do. The parody of a German drinking song by a Senator during the Watergate investigation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oQMtCFEa54

"come, come, come and play spy with me, down at the old Watergate... come and hear the German band: Halderman and Erlichman..."

the brilliant muscian-satarist Mark Russell did a fantastic rendition of this song on one of his PBS specials in the 1970s, but I cannot locate it online

comparable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK8Iowe83-A

Hi GH. Thanks. Actually, I just noticed that CAF cut me off! Here is the rest:

So, if the notations are contemporaneous, I would guess this “Charlie Horse” comic page dates to early 1942, after Pearl Harbor (Dec 1941), given the subject matter, and before Kraus heads to Texas, and (complete speculation) that it was a pitch for the Fawcett Funny Animals book.  Charley Horse had appeared twice with Loco Luke, in the 1938 Popular Comics stories, so hearing about a funny animal book might have inspired Warren to revive the horse character.  It would be the first page of the pitch, with Charley approaching the soldiers to sign up.

Why did it go unfinished? Did anyone even review it?

Who knows? The topic of the war might not have fit in with Fawcett’s plans for a light-humor book. So early in the US military effort, Warren references a few things from WW1 that would not be true during WW2: there was extremely limited use of cavalry, horses did not draw cannons the way they had 20 years earlier, so the premise might have been deemed as dated. 

I have taken the scan of the page, as it exists, into Photoshop, and finished the lettering using copies of Warren’s work on the page. 

Thanks to Michael Lancaster (Dirt Road Pictures, LLC., and Calliope), who has contributed a lot of biographical information about his maternal grandfather, Jack Warren, to various internet sites, and for his kind responsiveness to my inquiries.

Well, 70 years later, we have a third option: build a f'ing wall. 

What's continually astounding to me is that she pulls these off (a) in a few hours and (b) at what is effectively post-card sized (this one is 4 x 5 in). She is moving to the point of working larger, with more complex compositions, and taking directed commissions. I worked with her (so to speak) on her two largest works to date - 22 x 26, and two very classic and symbolic still life compositions. I'll post them eventually. 

Interesting, pastor, I did not see it as that specific, and more representative of the destruction of civilization, arts, and culture being as "driven to to edge" as democracy. I really like this piece a lot.

Thanks. I really have fun trying to contextualize these things. This one had so many little allusions in those eggs, but just enough to find the relevant events.

Thanks, Rob. i generally don't favor WW1 era stuff, but no sense to turn down something nice for that reason.

Hi Todd. Thanks. And sorry about that. I was originally interested in how early it was in the run, and then I dug into the history of the Binkley character and that strip took on an added appeal. If it gives you any cold comfort, it was not a "near" miss. I had $780 on the hidden bid. 

I like your story about being frustrated as a kid, seeing this art. I saw ads for this stuff in "The Antique Trader" during high school (mid-70s), and it was not until my first job out of grad school, in '82, when I started buying.

Thanks, Rob. Agreed! So, do you know if am I reading this Bangs thing correctly? Did he see a cartoon he liked somewhere, clipped it, and had Kemble re-do it? 

Thanks, Carl! The loose linework is great, but I just love the joke.

It took all of a second to track this one down, too. When they scanned Harper's, they did it with OCR, so I only needed to enter the line about "Tompkins. I ain't your brother Jim" and the dang page popped right up on a simple Google search, extracting the text from the cartoon itself.

aussi: notre bête noire...

bwah hah hah - good point! oh, wait...

I think it is a story worth knowing. Reading between the lines, I'd be really curious to exhume the remains and look for evidence of heavy metal poisoning. Mercury compounds were used so liberally, and most if not all of these symptoms (as inferred from the reporting) are consistent.

For a modern take on that same topic, see the critically acclaimed and under-watched 2015 "Eye in the Sky." The tension is incredible, and the commentary on modern warfare is noteworthy.

We could use a little gentle sanity in 2019.

Seconded!

Maybe this little posting will stir a little interest in a few young people not even aware of the series?

I highly recommend it, and I think all the collected volumes are still in print. Strange Armor is actually a nice one to start with. It's hard to believe it came out over 20 years ago. 

In the words of the amazing Ant-Man "It's America's ass."

And it's a two-for-one deal. Given where his head is planted, you also get to poke him in the eye at the same time.

And I am pretty sure I know where I would like that big hand to stick its big thumb.

Hi. Yeah. See my reply to Steve. It is interesting how this can be interpreted from two different viewpoints. It would be neat (and a lot of work) to find its intended published context and see what was around it on its main editorial page.

Thanks. I had to make a few assumptions thanks to the inherit ambiguity. Is this the threat that Hitler seeks to continue, as he waits for his harbinger of spring and his threat against the Allies... or is it the threat to Hitler, as his fear of the spring is the further press by Russia, after the Winter, against the Wehrmacht? 

I have another take on the exact same theme by Crawford ("Invasion Plans") that I'll post on Sept 10, 2019.

I think it is a really great story. I never heard it before and I am glad to give it a little life, here. I have not sought out the films. My guess or fear is that they smell of Hollywood sensibilities, when the straight story is just so compelling. 

True. It's most unfortunate that being compared with a Nazi has become a broad and nearly cliche'd insult without its specific political context (e.g., "Soup Nazi"). The overlap with standard authoritarianism is pretty much absolute, including the adoration of other authoritarians, and that's a price the GOP had been willing to pay to win... but the monkey ended up not as easy to control as the organ grinder's plan laid out. 

Our current political situation is arguably worse, as the actual ring-leaders have been operating behind the scenes for decades, and this guy up front was a gift opportunity to make a move. Cutting off the heads of the Nazis was effective because they were known and visible, and a true coalition had formed against them. Today, the putative "leader of the free world" does not amount to much more than the organ grinder's monkey. The real organ grinders are in the shadows. Take a look at what has happened to the state laws concerning consealed and open-carry since 1999. The wikipedia entry is telling (as is the graphic). There has been as systemic a movement towards changing state law as there was for same-sex marriage, and about at the same rate. We do not hear about this movement, and despite the uptick in shootings, why should we expect to see regulation against this backdrop? I fully anticipate an appeal to create Federal legislation - under the doctrine of the will of the states - for open and consealed carry, sometime in the next decade.

Absolutely.

[Good Ol'] Boys will be [Good Ol'] Boys

Thanks. For sure. I like tracking down the context of these editorial pieces and telling the story (admittedly, this one was easy). I try to grab things with interesting stories. I do not have that much from after WW2, but some. The JFK/JFK-era has maybe 10 examples. As of this writing (Aug 17, 2019), I am talking with the JFK Library/Museum about donating that set, which is I think the best fate for historical stuff - even if it takes it out of circulation. :)

Nixon was a flawed person - worse than some, better than others - but he also understood classic statesperson behavior. I tend to side with Deng Xiaopeng, Mao's successor, who generously stated that the genuine goods cannot be ignored at the expense of the bads. "His accomplishments must be considered before his mistakes," Deng said of Mao. The mistakes he made were whoppers, esp. the Cultural Revolution. On the other hand, he pulled China out of what was perhaps its worst political period since the first Qin Emperor (250 BCE, at the founding of China). The post-Imperial era was a collapse into fuedalism, civil war, two Sino-Japanese wars, and WW2... all in about 40 years. By Deng's calculus, Mao was "seven parts good, three parts bad." And while you can argue with the math, it's not a bad principle, and I think it applies to Nixon.

I have 4 pp from this series. It'll never happen, but "Hulk:Gray" would be just fantastic to see get the IDW large-format original art reproduction treatment. The loss between the original art and the printed page is more stunning than usual.

Agreed! I was negligent to miss commenting on how well composed the page is, too. The placement of the title, credits, dialogue, and captions is all so intentional and thoughtful. 

And now it is intentionally a circus.

"It's out duty to the (news) organization to get more clicks... how do you think this all gets paid for?"

There are some stunning interviews that have been done between death camp survivors and the former guards.