Sunday, February 7, 2010

THE GREEN MEN (1935)


In this post, I present select images (uploaded last month to the outducks archive by user Mankkop) from a great-looking Italian comics set in Atlantis: 'Gli uomini verdi [The Green Men'], which had started to be serialized in the back cover of Topolino no. 139 (dated Aug. 25th, 1935); the above installement is from no. 142 and the two below ones are from no. 146 and no. 148:


After no. 150, 'Gli uomini verdi', unfortunately was shifted to the interior b&w pages till it ended at no. 155 (dated Dec. 12d, 1935); the below installement is from no. 153:
'Gli uomini verdi' was the work of Yambo (Enrico Novelli, 1876-1943). Apart from his comics work, he was also apparently a prolific writer of adventure books. Soon after his retirement, he died of a heart attack during an air raid in the 2d World War.

Friday, February 5, 2010

FILM FUN


I give a break to my coverage of the pre-history of comics in Turkey to post scans from two pre-war issues of the British film comics magazine Film Fun which I recently acquired. Film Fun was published by Amalgamated Press, pioneer of platinium (pre-golden) age comics boom in Britain, between 1920-1962. The two issues I acquired contain comics featuring comedy film stars of the era, as well as text stories.
No. 446, dated Aug. 4th, 1928 (which became the earliest comic in my collection [costing me 12.5 pounds]) has 10 of its 24 pages (including covers) reserved for comics. A 2-page Harold Lloyd gag comics starts at the front cover [above scan] and ends at the back cover:

Other comics in this issue are Lupino Lane (1 pg), Grock (2 pgs, which appears to be part of a continuity), Jackie Coogan (2 pgs), Ben Turpin & Charlie Conklin (1 pg), Buster Keaton (1 pg) and Charlie Murray (1 pg)

British artists known to be working in Film Fun in its first decade include George Wakefield and Tom Radford.

For no. 730, dated Jan. 13th, 1934, Harold Lloyd's place had been reduced to a single page...

... while Laurel and Hardy take up the two centre pages:


Other comics in this issue are Joe E. Brown (2 pgs: front and back covers), Sydney Howard (1 pg), Tim McCoy (2ps, part of continuity), Wheeler & Woolsey (2 pgs), Lupino Lane (1 pg) and Schnozzle (1 pg).
Some of the comics from Film Fun were reprinted in Turkey in the children's magazine Afacan (1932-34). See my post dated Dec 22nd, 2007 for a coverage of film comics in general, including the Turkish reprints. For a nice round-up of the evolution of Film Fun itself over the decades, see the post dated Jan 14th, 2010 at http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/