JM???
http://cgi.ebay.com/Topps-70s-Hippy-Hippie-Joke-comic-book-original-art-7pg_W0QQitemZ330197933901QQihZ014QQcategoryZ219QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
The first thought that comes to mind is Jim Mitchell, of "Smile" fame? The style could be similar.
The jokes all SUCK.
Terminly LAME.:binkybaby:
Certanly not written by anyone in the counter-culture.
The writer thinks that just word "hippy" or the idea of a beard itself is funny.
:laughing7: :badgrin: :lol: Look honey, I grew a beard, just like a hippy. :rofl2: :icon_lol:
This is from a l968 series that Topps did called Funny Little Joke Books. The whole series was written by Art Spiegelman and me in 2 weeks. Topps flew me in to NY...and for 2 weeks Art and I did color roughs for the series at Topps, I did some finished art on some of the titles. Art did some finished art on some of them. Ralph Reece and Wally Wood did finished art on some of them. Rick Varesi did finished art on some of them. But the Hippy book finished art was done by Tom Sutton, who did a bunch of finished art on these things too.
I did one called Sports jokes...and on the roughs, I decided to integrate the book. I made some black characterrs on the color rough. Reece did the finished art. Somewhere along the line, somebody at Topps told Reece to make everyone in the book white. Reece did the art...and it is all white guys. But they used my color rough for color indications. And Topps didn't consider that. So when the book was colored, these white guys were colored different shades of brown, and that's how it was printed. Chalk one up for integration!
What we did on the hippy book...because we didn't have much time to intellectualize on the project...was that we took old l930s bum jokes that we remembered, and transposed the bum characters with hippie characters. Bums would ask you for a nickle for a cup of coffee. They were replaced with hippies who would ask if you had any "spare change". Bums didn't bathe...hippies didn't bathe. In popular culture, hippies were the new bums. So all we had to do was transpose hippies with bums and recycle old bum jokes...for which we got paid very tiny amounts of money, forcing us to ask people on the subway for spare change for cups of coffee on our way home from working at Topps. If anyone gave us a clever comeback, we could recycle it into another hippie joke and get 3 or 4 bucks.
So this was written by you and Art, but who did the art for this one (JM or is that Jay and it's your art)?
Tom Sutton drew the Hippie book. "JM" are the initials of the executive who approved it.
Oh... Bums.
OK, now it's funny.
(sarcasm)
I remember seeing some pictures of these little books in Rebel Visions.
Jason
I actually have 3 or 4 of them. I remember in the days that the person who I got them from thought that they were a super rare prize.
Not sure how rare they are, I don't own any myself but I have seen them on eBay before.
Jason
Same Tom Sutton that did Vampirella and Creepy?
Yeah, and if I remember correctly, Tom Sutton also drew at least one series of Wacky Packages for Topps.
Sutton did the Wacky Billboards thing that came out in '68...It was a very early incarnation of Wacky Packages...and most of the products that were on the billboards that Sutton painted were then repainted by Norm Saunders for the first series of Wacky Packages which came a few years later.
Bhob Stewart, who did some early underground comix stuff (he is the guy who came up with the term "underground comix" in '66 or so) worked full-time in the creative Dept. at Topps in '68. At one time, Bhob was one of Wally Wood's assistants. Sutton also had assisted Wood on lots of projects, as did Ralph Reece. Wood did lots of Topps work...and so did his assistants. Anyway...Sutton did all that Creepy and Eerie stuff...and Bode and Jeff Jones were doing stuff for Jim Warren's mags then...And JayKinney was doing stuff for Amazing Science Fiction, which was edited by Ted White (who came up with me and Bhob and Skip and Spiegelman in the old fanzines). And Bode was doing covers for Amazing Science Fiction...It's all this long line of associations that started with the mags Kurtzman edited in the '50s and '60s. Crumb at one point assisted Jack Davis...It just goes on and on.
In later life, Sutton did Star Wars comic books for Topps...and he did these BUFFY comics for Eros...
In '63 I was writing for Cracked magazine...and so my name is on the masthead of that mag for most of the year '63. I also wrote for Sick mag between '63 and '66. Bob Sproul, the publisher of Cracked back then came out with an imitation of the Warren mags that lasted 3 or 4 issues. It had stories written by Len Brown (who worked at the Topps Creative Dept then), Bhob Stuart..all those guys from our circle. And it had art by Reece, Wrightson, probably Sutton...It was a nifty mag. I have copies somewhere. I forget the title.
Al Hewetson (who came up with us in the fanzines) was editing Psycho and Nightmare for a company run by Sol Brodsky (Skywald)....Brodsky edited Cracked in the early days. Paul Laikin edited Cracked at one point. Laikin wrote some of the early Wacky Packages gags. Later Paul's son Aaron Laikin edited Cracked for a while. When we started doing the new Wackys and Garbage Pail Kids in 2001 or so, I called Paul Laikin and he put me in touch with Aaron...and Aaron painted a few of the new Garbage Pail Kids...It's just one constant saga of all these projects and people who are linked together.... Where did it all begin?
Last week I got a biography of H.P. Lovecraft from the library. It's the one written by L. Sprague DeCamp. This is a pretty interesting book. It shows the early origins of what evolved into this thing...the early comic books...the early fanzines. It goes back to l919...but when Skip and I got involved in the fanzines in the early '60s, lots of the same personnel were still around... Anyway...The Lovecraft bio is a pretty interesting book. It was published in '75.
That's all freakin' amazing.
Gold Age comics publishers, I had learned were amazingly and intricately intertwined as far as staff, like in your post. Since quite a few pulp publishers also tried comics, you know it's been going on since mid-late thirties. If you toss in all the science fiction writers, artists, fans, publishers you might reach back to the Dime Novel era. Since I only studied those dynamics from that historical view I somehow I lost sight of that being a continual process. When indeed, did it begin?
I have been a fan of Western Swing for a few years now. Keeping up with the personnel of those bands is every bit as intertwined as musicians moved, melded, formed new or disbanded for dozens of years. Then, is this dynamic exhibited in other fields or professions besides music and art? And professional team sports.
Anyone?
I think the whole chain of publishing contacts began with Hugo Gernsback, Nicole Tesla and ultimately Lovecraft. It then crossed over into music...Doodles Weaver (who was with Spike Jones' band) was a member of the Weird Tales club as a youth...Johnny Legend was a high school chum of Glenn Bray. Len Brown who worked at Topps now has a deejay show in Austin, Texas where he is known as the Rockabilly Rebel...Jean Shepherd, who was in the early MAD mags hung out with Shel Silverstein. Silverstein often visited Woody Gelman,who worked at Topps...Silverstein wrote a number of popular c&W songs...
There is a scinece connection, as the early fanzines were about electronics and radio. Sci Fi writer L. Sprague De Camp wrote a Lovecraft bio and collaborated with Willy Ley on science books... But there is no sports connection at all that I am aware of. Generally, everyone I've ever known in comix and publishing always hated professional sports.
The late John Petrie and I once wrote an article for Blab that begins to scratch the surface of all these connnections. It was printed in one of the early Blabs.
The whole comics thing comes from Heinrich Kley. Before Kley there wasn't the kind of art that we associate with the EC comics...and the good comics. The weird thing is that Kley did these two sketchbooks (known as sketchbook one and sketchbook two) Before that...he was just a unmemorable commercial artist...but overnight something seems to have come over him, and he produced these two sketchbooks that changed the course of cartooning forever. Meatball?