Panel Cartoon Cornucopia

Hallowe’en Countdown, Day 20

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On a damp and chilly night, is there a finer way to keep warm than huddling with your beloved?

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From The New Yorker 1955-1965 Album, published by Harper & Row.

Richard Decker, (b. Philadelphia, PA, May 6, 1907, d. November 1, 1988) fruitfully spent four decades as a contract cartoonist for the New Yorker. His association with the magazine began in 1929.

Along the same ordre d’idées, here’s a bonus piece about the evocative magic of old time radio, by long-time Gasoline Alley cartoonist (and bluegrass fiddler) Jim Scancarelli (b. 1941), from the April, 1979 issue of Child Life Magazine.

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Care to fully capture and bask in this delicious melancholy? Go ahead, pour yourself a snifter of your favourite poison, hunker down in your coziest chair, and enjoy an episode or three of the classic The Shadow radio show, starring Orson Welles.

– RG

Life is too short to be living somebody else’s dream.

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A quick post in salute of Hugh Hefner (1926-2017), who truly was a lot of things to a lot of people, but to me, he remains, chief among these, one rare and precious thing: a steadfast, lifelong friend and patron to great cartoonists, a man of taste, at least in that particular area.

Here are a few relevant pieces. Mere drops in the bottomless bucket. All in good time, we’ll return to this topic.

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« I’ve been thrilled by the dazzling breakaway of your four-speed, close-ratio, synchromesh, manual transmission, and the lusty surge of your 315-horsepower, fuel-injection, high-lift cam engine… »

It’s astonishing how much toil an artist will put in, just to sell a simple gag. It doesn’t hurt if he’s recompensed decently, of course. Case in point: Ben Denison, for Playboy Magazine’s November, 1961 issue. Hugh Hefner has always known the value of his contributors, bless his great big heart.

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Erich Sokol (b. Vienna, 1933 – d. Mödling, 2003), originally published in Playboy’s September, 1960 issue.
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« This is nothing, wait until you see the women. »

Dink Siegel (1910-2003), from Playboy’s May, 1968 issue.

Happy trails, dear Mr. Hefner!

– RG