Milt Stein's Supermouse -- better than Carl Barks?
Stephen Worth of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive says:
Funny animal comics don't get enough respect.Supermouse Comics number 4Many incredibly talented artists worked in funny animal comics... some, like Kurtzman and Frazetta, went on to fame in other genres. Yet the only artist working in this field that most people are familiar with is Carl Barks. Uncle Scrooge comics are fine, but they're just the tip of the iceberg. In the 1940s and 50s, there was a wealth of funny animal comics all drawn in completely unique styles. I have to admit that comics aren't my strong suit, but when I see a comic like this one, I want to know more about the people responsible for them.
Here is Supermouse Comics number 4, drawn by Milt Stein. Little is known about Stein's career. Tom Sito points out that he was an animator at Famous for a time, and he worked on Tubby the Tuba for Dr. Alexander Shure's Westbury Long Island Company, the tradtional forerunner of NY Tech's Computer Animation Program. He committed suicide in 1977. Milton Knight adds, that Stein "animated some very expressive scenes at Terry in the early 40s (the girl mouse puppet in Down With Cats). And in the 60s, he animated the humorous characters on an independent TV pilot that Jerry Beck likes to include in his "Worst" ASIFA shows, titled Cosmic Raymond. I think Stein was one of the most neglected artists of all time; and he drew far better than Barks!"
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I agree that too little is known of the many kinds of funny animal comics created in the 40s and 50s.
Apart from Barks, there's Duck artists like Taliaferro, Mouse artists like Manuel Gonzalez, Floyd Gottfredson and Paul Murrey, and Li'l Bad Wolf artists like Carl von Buettner. And that's just in the Disney department!
Which also goes some way towards saying that I don't think it's entirely fair to say that Carl Barks is the only one people know about. Mike Barrier and Funnyworld (and other fanzines) have done a great job publicizing the work of other, less-known funny animal artists. In Holland, there's Tom Roep and his "Tom Puss", e.g.
Also I think Bark's work is mainly great if judged as an OEUVRE, i.e., in its entirety, and in his very best periods in the late 40s and early 50s. Judging from the page reproduced here, Milt Stein's work looks very interesting but I don't see any justification for the claim it's better than Carl Barks' work.
Funny animal comics don't get enough respect.
Except SuperMouse isn't very funny, unless, of course, you're a big fan of Sluggo.
"he drew far better than Barks!"
Echoing Agger, above, no evidence. Barks could hurry through a panel as fast as anyone in the field, but there is a wealth of detail in his works, q.v. the well-known one-pager where Uncle Scrooge is "kicking the tires" on a luxury automobile to justify spending a nickel on a raffle ticket to win that auto. While the above panel might not be Stein's best work, it is the only panel by which we are able to judge him. And it's fair at best.
Barks is also hugely INFLUENTIAL. He's the Jack Kirby of his genre. Mr. Stein's career is apparently not as influential, judging by the number of people who cite him as an influence, i.e., no one.
I can totally imagine the conversation between Stein and his wife, who happened to peek over his shoulder as he finished drawing the first panel...
MRS. STEIN: Hey hon. What's that green thing supposed to be?
MR. STEIN: It's a gorilla. A KILLER gorilla. Can't you tell?
MRS. STEIN: Not really. Looks like a cross between a bear and a caterpillar.
(Walks out of the room)
MR. STEIN: . . .
(Gets up, opens up his Encyclopedia Britannica to the entry for Gorilla, looks at picture)
(Holds up next to drawing)
MR. STEIN: (to himself) Hmmm... maybe an explanation is is in order. (Adds bubble) ... "Look out, I'm a killer gorilla"... Yeah, that should clear things up!
@GoGoGadgetBlog: I had the exact same thought. That "Gorilla" looks like it was drawn by someone who had never seen a gorilla and only had what one looks like briefly described to him.
All hail King Kelly, the best of them all: Pogo was also a comic book, remember?
Whats interesting is the feet on that "gorrila" look like those of a great ape... but the rest of it is more like a humanized bear.
"Uncle Scrooge comics are fine..."
...This is like saying that Coca-Cola circa 1965 was *not* the Real Thing. The Barks Duck Tales were better than "fine", kids. They were classics.
Geez, what is it with you kids these days? First Kirby gets dissed, now Barks...:-(
Maybe (MAYBE!) you could argue that Milt Stein outdrew Carl Barks. Maybe.
But you'd be wrong.
There MIGHT be a LITTLE something to it if you compare the BEST frames from the Supermouse book with some of Barks' weaker frames.
But Barks' genius went WAY beyond his awesomeness as a draftsman of individual frames. He freed his comics from the prison of regularly shaped frames -- the kind that make the layouts in Supermouse boringly the same from page to page. A page of Barks is likely to include a huge, frame-breaking panorama, or a series of offbeat compositions. And his stories were brilliant as well.
No need to hype the unknown, obviously talented Milt Stein by putting down one of the true geniuses of the field.
Like Barks, I remain a Duck Man.
I don't know much about this field, so I've never heard the name Carl Barks. Since the subject matter was funny animal comics, I assumed it was a dog in some crazy socialist cartoon.
How about Don Rosa?http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Rosa Maybe its just a Finland thing, but generally every Finnish family receives Aku Ankka (Donald Duck) once a week via subscription. Anecdotal evidence shows that Don Rosa is the favorite Disney cartoonist (at least in Finland). But what the hell do the ice monkeys of my adopted homeland know anyway? It may have to do with the fact that he did a Donald Duck-Kalevala thing a few years back, or maybe it has to with his education as an engineer. At any rate, he pays attention to detail, unlike most Disney cartoonists. (Check out his background art-always constant and usually containing an inside joke for the observant (or at least Finns and their immigrants who have learned the secret handshake). Man, I just realized its 11 a.m. Sunday here and I'm typing a Donald Duck sermon. Maybe I been in Finland too long.
First thoughts were 'is that a MightyMouse predecessor/superseder'.
Then I was suprised to find BOTH first appeared in 1942 (Super = comic, Mighty = screen).
Infact, 'MightyMouse' was originally called 'SuperMouse' until they discovered eachothers existance.
And they wear the same outfits (parodying SuperMan).
Can't see any lawsuits (though i'm not really going too deep).
"What are the chances of that happening? Eh!"