Chuck Jones' Comic Strip

Comic Book Resources has an interview with Dean Mullaney and Kurtis Findlay, who have edited Chuck Jones: The Dream that Never Was, a collection of the comic strip Crawford that Jones did in the late 1970s. The book will be available in December.

I remember reading the strip and clipped a few of them before I lost interest. One of the ironies of Jones' career is that he received more attention and opportunity when his work was in decline than he did when he was at his peak. Crawford suffers from the cuteness that infected much of his post-Warner Bros. work and the coarsening of his drawing that also occurred then.

I will definitely look this book over when it is published for the opportunity to see unpublished work and to compare my current impression with my memories of the strip, but I don't believe that Crawford is a hidden treasure that will add anything to Jones' reputation. This is not Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes. If it was, the strip never would have been cancelled and would be better known today.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Does A HOME, Mean To You?

By  Richard Brody   Most of us, have heard, the expression, A house, is not, a home, but, we often, pay far too little attention, to that, before we commit to purchasing a particular house. Wouldn't it make sense, if, we spent, a little more time, and effort, considering, what would make us, consider it, to be, a HOME, and what emotional, family, and personal considerations, and necessities, might differentiate between, simply living in some house, and truly, making it, a home, of our own? With that in mind, this article will attempt to briefly, review, consider, and discuss, using the mnemonic approach, some of the key components, involved, etc. 1. Human; humane; heart; heals; houses: A key difference, to consider, in advance, is beginning the process, by delving deeply, into our personal needs, etc, realistically, and based on our real, human priorities, including, whether, it will fulfill some of our humane - needs, such as how it might, address, family needs and consid...
Read more

Dumbo Part 11

Image
How many elephants in a pyramid? In shot 1, there are eight elephants standing around the ringmaster. In shot 4, there are seven around the ringmaster. In shot 23, the pyramid consists of six elephants. In shot 40.1, there are eight elephants in the pyramid. In shot 41.1, there are seven, as there are in shot 51.1. All of this takes place before they trip over Dumbo and scatter, so the number should be consistent. Hugh Fraser does excellent work in this sequence. He manages to capture the drawing and the personalities of the elephants in a manner consistent with Bill Tytla's work. He does that while dealing with multiple characters whose weight must be animated believably or the sequence loses its effectiveness. Shot 10.2. gets even more complicated with one of the elephants being swung towards and away from the camera, adding a size change to the rest of the difficulties. While Fraser has Tytla's work as a template, the animation challenges here are possibly great...
Read more

Dumbo Part 4

Image
(Revisions down below.) It's a shame that the Dumbo draft that Hans Perk has posted (and it's all available now on his blog) is missing many animator identifications. We can guess that Art Babbitt handled the stork in this sequence, but it remains just a guess. We're fortunate, however, in knowing what Bill Tytla animated in this sequence. This sequence keeps the audience in suspense over Mrs. Jumbo's baby until the baby is finally revealed. It's a two stage reveal, first showing us a cute elephant child and once he sneezes, showing us the ears that are his curse and finally his blessing. The female elephants are never named onscreen, but are named in the draft. They are Matriarch, Prissy, Catty and Giggles. They are successors to the seven dwarfs in that their names describe their personalities and that they look similar, so must be differentiated by the way they move. Needless to say, Tytla is up to the task. No explanation is ever given as to where Jumbo, S...
Read more