Ron Goulart's back with another entry in his series of columns on Connecticut cartoonists. This time, the profiled artists include Klaus Nordling, Harry Sahle, Tony DiPreta and, in Connecticut for a brief stay, Alex Kotzky.
Once Everett “Busy” Arnold had moved Quality Comics from Manhattan to Stamford, CT, a small cadre of cartoonists began migrating to the Nutmeg State.
In a previous installment of this series we talked about two of the best known, Jack Cole and Gill Fox. This time our crew consists of Klaus Nordling, Harry Sahle, Tony DiPretta, and, in Connecticut for a brief stay, Alex Kotzky.
Although a cartoonist for most of his adult life, Nordling was only active in newsstand comic books for little more than a decade. He is best remembered as the artist of the definitive version of Lady Luck that he drew from 1942 until 1950. The sexy green-masked crime fighter began life in the weekly 16-page The Spirit comic book insert that appeared in a select list of Sunday newspapers, starting on June 2nd of 1940. Chuck Mazoujian, one of the Eisner shop artists, was the first to draw the feature, and when he left, Nick Cardy (alias Nick Viscardi) got the job. He also wrote it and his continuities were a bit lighter. He handled the feature from June of 1941 until February of 1942 and then went into the service. Arnold, by the way, also produced The Spirit booklets.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—Interviews & Profiles. The headline to this Chicagoist interview with Gina Wynbrandt is admirably straightforward.
Women who are gross or aren’t conventionally attractive are not often featured as main characters. Female protagonists, even if they’re just normal or average, have to also be objects of desire. I enjoy subverting that by characterizing myself as unfuckable in various ways.
Michael Maslin talks to gag cartoon writer Helene Parsons.
For me, the idea/words come first. Absolutely. I spend a lot of time reading articles, books, magazines and jotting down phrases. Let’s say I want to write gags about cooking. I’ll go through cookbooks and write down words like, coffee cake, assemble my ingredients, light the oven, stir frequently, throw something together. I’m very accident-prone in the kitchen so I can easily write about culinary disasters. I can see the humor in trying to put a meal together. The idea always comes first. The drawing is secondary.
I just caught up with this excellent episode of Theory of Everything from a few months ago, in which Benjamen Walker talks to biographer Jim Elledge about new information that's come to light about comics-adjacent artist Henry Darger.
The latest guest on RIYL is Punk Magazine's John Holmstrom.
—News. The estimable tiny publisher 2dcloud is holding a Kickstarter to help fund their spring lineup, which includes books by the aforementioned Wynbrandt, plus MariNaomi, Will Dinski, and Powerpaola.
Frank Santoro has launched the annual Comics Workbook Composition Competition.
