Today we have Ron Goulart on the Connecticut clan of Mort Walker and co. Here's a bit on the great Dik Browne:
As hinted at earlier, Browne was a colorful fellow and Richard Marschall says, “The stories about Dik Browne are so many that the books of the world could not hold them….Heywood Broun was described as looking like an unmade bed; Browne has been compared as an unmade bed with Heywood Broun sleeping in it….Browne was dressed in a typical unkempt and absent-minded way one morning and his wife, Joan, said good-bye with0: ‘I hope you get lost; I’d love to describe you to the police!’”
Stan Drake, friend and fellow golfer, said, “Dik Browne stories have become part of the passing parade. Entire golf tournament dinners have been taken over by Dik Browne stories….The night he was held up in an alley and fumblingly produced so much junk from his pockets that the robber walked away cursing... The night he was accosted by a prostitute and thought she was an old friend’s wife… it could go on for hours…and has.” Browne now and then joined the group of cartoonists and writers I sat in on. I was impressed by the way he was always discovering some new fact or idea that most everybody else had already discovered. And how he could discourse and speculate on it.
His magnum opus and greatest success was Hagar the Horrible and that will be dealt with in the next part of this essay. Along with such Walker enterprises as Boner’s Ark, Mrs. Fritsz’s Flats and Gamin and Patches. Plus artists and writers like The Walker Boys, Bob Gustafson and Frank Johnson.
Elsewhere:
Go read Peggy Burns' wonderful speeches from the Eisner Awards. Congrats to all of D&Q.
So this is my new favorite comics web site: the BD collection in Angouleme. So many images, so much new information for me.
A rare thing: Arnold Roth process post, for Humbug no less!
Comics by great cartoonists occurring online is awesome. I could read Vanessa Davis comics all day long. Confident, funny, outward looking work. And Gabrielle Bell is our very own internal astronaut of the nervous system. Here's her latest.
