Funnybooks is the story of the most popular American comic books of the 1940s and 1950s, those published under the Dell label. For a time, ‘Dell Comics Are Good Comics’ was more than a slogan—it was a simple statement of fact. Many of the stories written and drawn by people like Carl Barks
(Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge), John Stanley
(Little Lulu), and Walt Kelly
(Pogo) repay reading and rereading by educated adults even today, decades after they were published as disposable entertainment for children. Such triumphs were improbable, to say the least, because midcentury comics were so widely dismissed as trash by angry parents, indignant librarians, and even many of the people who published them. It was all but miraculous that a few great cartoonists were able to look past that nearly universal scorn and grasp the artistic potential of their medium. With clarity and enthusiasm, Barrier explains what made the best stories in the Dell comic books so special. He deftly turns a complex and detailed history into an expressive narrative sure to appeal to an audience beyond scholars and historians.
Tabela de Conteúdo
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: ‘The Very Good Ones’
1. Mickey in a Magazine
2. Oskar Lebeck Meets Walt Kelly
3. Whitman, K.K., and Dell
4. Learning on the Job in L.A.
5. A Feel for Walt Kelly’s Stuff
6. Animal Magnetism
7. Cartoon Conundrums
8. Carl Barks Makes His Break
9. Barks Becomes the Duck Man
10. The Workman: Gaylord Du Bois
11. The Observer: John Stanley
12. ‘I Am a Backwoods Bumpkin’
13. ‘Pure Corn’ at Disney’s
14. Special Talents
15. Barks Masters His Medium
16. An Arena for All the Passions
17. Animal Kingdoms
18. Walt Kelly Branches Out
19. Strong-Handed Friends
20. Carl Barks: The Virtuoso
21. Walt Kelly Escapes
22. Oskar Lebeck in Exile
23. Manifest Destiny
24. Uncle Scrooge: Play Money
25. Carl Barks in Purgatory
26. The Slow Fade
27. Disasters
Epilogue: Can These Bones Live?
Abbreviations
Notes
Index
Sobre o autor
Michael Barrier is the author of Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age and The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. He is also coeditor (with Martin Williams) of A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics and coauthor (with Harvey Kurtzman) of From Aargh! to Zap! Harvey Kurtzman’s Visual History of the Comics.
Mais ebooks do mesmo autor(es) / Editor
11.220 Ebooks nesta categoria
