Synopsis
Drawing Power is a lively collection of mass-market print advertising from the 1890s to the recent past, starring both cartoonists and cartoon characters. While critics debate whether comics are high art or low art, the fact is that the comic strip was born as a commercial medium and was nurtured by competition, commerce, and advertising. Drawing Power will focus on the commercial roots of newspaper strips; the cross-promotions of artists, their characters, and retail products; and of the superb artwork that cartoonists invested in their lucrative freelance work in advertising. Drawing Power is cultural history, chronicling a time in popular culture when cartoonists were celebrities and their strips and characters competed with the movies for the attention of a mass audience. The book will examine cartoonists as public personalities, and their advertising efforts from the first heartbeat of the comic strip as an art form. Here are surprising and familiar examples of products, accounts, memorable ad campaigns, and examples of widely known catchphrases.
oDr Seuss' "Flit" cartoons and his longtime career hyping motor oil
oThe best-looking comic strip ads ever: Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles (under pen names!) depicting character's personal crises relieved by a coffee substitute
oLittle Orphan Annie's famous Ovaltine campaign (as seen in A Christmas Story.)
oPeanuts shilling Falcons, Dagwood selling atomic energy, and virtually every super-hero trafficking in the mortal realm to shill every product imaginable.
About the Authors
Rick Marschall, called by BostoniaMagazine “perhaps America’s foremost authority on popular culture,” has written or edited more than 60 books. He co-founded Nemo: The Classic Comics Library and Hogan’s Alley magazines and is President of Rosebud Archives. He also has taught comics history at the School of Visual Arts and Rutgers University.
Warren Bernard is Executive Director of the Small Press Expo (SPX) independent sequential art festival, and is a comics-focused writer and historian. He co-authored the Eisner Award-nominated book Drawing Power, and has extensively researched and written about the 1950s Juvenile Delinquency / Senate Comic Book Hearings. A contributor to more than a dozen books, he often provides rare materials from his own extensive collection. Both the Library of Congress and the Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) have hosted his lectures. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
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