The Unseen Stanley, Pt. 2: John Stanley's Gag Cartoon Concepts

As in this post, I am honored and pleased to present some completely unpublished, unknown work of John Stanley. The following pieces are roughs for magazine gag cartoons. I don't know if these were reworked into slicker published versions, or if they were gags written for other cartoonists.

This is part of the heart of a curious choice John Stanley made in his career. He placed a cartoon in the pinnacle market for such material. The New Yorker published apparently just one of his signed cartoons in their March 15, 1947 issue. You can see a lovely hi-rez scan of this cartoon here.

Stanley was evidently held in high regard by Jim Geraghty, the New Yorker's cartoon editor at the time. According to an interview done with a Stanley colleague by cartoon/animation historian Michael Barrier, Stanley let what most could see as a golden opportunity slide. I quote from a recent post by Barrier:

Dan Noonan, who knew John Stanley when they were drawing comic books for Western Printing, said of Stanley that he “used to send ideas to The New Yorker, and Jim Geraghty, who was the cartoon director there, was so impressed with Stanley he wanted to give him a contract. Stanley wouldn’t have any of it; he didn’t want to be tied. Although I can’t think of any nicer way to be tied down than under a contract with The New Yorker.” Stanley’s ideas were “very sophisticated gag ideas, all of them,” Noonan said.

Stanley apparently had no issues with being "tied" to Western Publications, where he worked for 30 years or so in a work-for-hire capacity. In this time, he mostly did (vastly improved) versions of licensed media characters, and his few original series of the 1940s, which he never signed as his work, were failures. Not until the July, 1952 issue of Marge's Little Lulu was Stanley (and his assistants) given clear credit. (You can see that rare instance in this post.)

One dozen years after that, an apologetic "Stanley" is scrawled on the cover of the 12th issue of Stanley's superb original creation, Thirteen Going On Eighteen, which featured his writing and cartooning. That dashed-off  "Stanley," stuck into the corner of subsequent covers, was all the credit this creator allowed himself for all his hard work.

Being "tied" to a prestigious magazine like the New Yorker might have given Stanley a cache similar to that of Charles Addams, George Price, James Thurber, Roz Chast or Gahan Wilson. It would have likely been less work for the same--or more--pay. On the other hand, we would not have his large and important body of comic book stories.

Gag cartoons have their limits. They exist for the initial moment of surprise (and delight) of the reader. Their illustrations, usually tinged with ink wash, invite the eye to linger perhaps a bit longer than it might rest on a newspaper comic strip.

They are like a good joke: effective the moment you hear it, and to share with others who are unaware of it. After that, they cease to exist, save for those who enjoy the moment of the cartoon enough to either clip it out, or buy the eventual book collection of their favorite cartoonist's work.

The heft and depth of Stanley's comic book narratives is, ultimately, a far finer, more important body of work than almost any gag cartoonist's output, in my admittedly biased opinion. Stanley's stories invite multiple returns. Re-readings reveal details of character, stakes and narrative that grow richer in reflection.

Would the world be a better place, had John Stanley switched careers and become a full-time gag cartoonist? Would we, the world, be better-off with hard cover volumes of Stanley gag cartoons? The higher status and income would have served their creator well, but I wonder if he found the form, ultimately, as limiting as I do.

Stanley's sharp observational wit lent itself well to highly effective gag cartoons. His comic book stories often don't contain such explosive moments of comedy. The payoff of a gag cartoon is like an explosion--a trick cigar, if you will. The payoffs of Stanley's comic book narratives are slower, richer and more resonant. More like a fire, the effect of these pieces come upon the reader gradually, increase in intensity, and leave its aftermath (of one-upmanship, chaos and status shifts). These elements tend to linger in the reader's thoughts long after the impact of a sharp punch-line is gone.

Stanley was adept at the impact of a single panel cartoon. As these four rare examples show, his trick cigars often take a bit longer to burst. This first cartoon is an ideal example:

This gag is in line with many of Stanley's comic book stories that involve animals or pet shops. The resigned, blase expression of the shop's proprietor, and the radial arc of form and movement at his feet, are remarkably effective. Although this is clearly a rough, it keenly expresses its point.

Apropos with the holidays, the next two cartoons feature different aspects of jolly ol' Saint Nick--first as a swinger/lush:

and then as a pragmatist...

The concept of Santa at a self-service laundromat is gently incongruous, and settles into the reader's brain over the course of a few seconds. As with many of Stanley's comedic ideas, there is a palpable tinge of melancholy to this punchline.

The last of today's quartet is most typical of our gag-cartoon expectations, with a touch of black comedy:

Stanley's loose rough forms seethe with energy and personality. Even in this concept-pitch state, they're worthy of publication. These unseen examples give us an example of what might have been, and very likely could have been.

The loss of income and prestige Stanley had, by stubbornly remaining in the comic book field, may have contributed to his growing bitterness in the later 1960s. It was his decision, and it has ultimately given us a far greater reward in the work that remains.

Killer, Not Filler--John Stanley's complete "Woody Woodpecker" gag pages of 1947 [updated 9-22-10]

Here is an appropriately red-hued bouquet of 18 comic-book roses from the pen and wit of John Stanley. At least one of these has appeared here before, but most of these are mega-sized scans from my copies of these old funnybooks. I left 'em large so you can savor Stanley's slick, sharp pen line and vivid cartooning.

These were done around the same time of the only New Yorker cartoon Stanley published. They share the elegance and verve of that high-ticket achievement, in both looks and content. They're a marked improvement on the series of full-length stories Stanley wrote and drew in 1945 and '46 issues of New Funnies.

I now feel that Stanley probably didn't ink those "Woody Woodpecker" stories, a few examples of which you can find elsewhere on this blogscape. The pencils are clearly his, but the ink line is lifeless in comparison to these gag pages. They look exactly like his early story-and-art for the Little Lulu one-shots in this regard.


These gag pages, in turn, look more like the "Jigger and Mooch" stories Stanley wrote and drew for Animal Comics--all which are gathered elsewhere on Stanley Stories. Those share the thin, spiky pen-nib line of these shorter pieces.

Stanley contributed these filler pages for 10 issues of New Funnies. He was at the end of his tenure on this title when these pages were created.

Here's the first one Stanley did for New Funnies 121. These ran on the inside front (and, later, back) covers of each issue. The model airplane contest theme figures in several classic Little Lulu stories.

 

The humanoid dogface characters have a lot in common with Carl Barks' comic book work. Some of the background characters almost look like Barks' art style--almost being the operative word.

Though this pantomime gag is simple and straightforward, the eye appeal of Stanley's cartooning urges the onlooker to linger upon each frame.

Stanley had been drawing Little Lulu regularly for a couple of years, and all that practice really paid off. His cartooning of the later 1940s is among his best.

Issue 122 of New Funnies also contains one Stanley gag page. It's the wildest (and densest) of the entire run. This may be Stanley's finest piece of cartooning in the 1940s. It has strong hints of Milt Gross, blended with School-Of-Tex Avery zaniness. Stanley's cartooning is much stronger and more confident than in the prior issue. Thanks to Ron Limbaugh for supplying this hard to find issue.

 

Stanley took more chances with a licensed entity, in this single page, than he ever did elsewhere. The contemporary animated Woody was capable of such outbursts, but never with such grave consequences. As a result of his indoor hunting (which is, quite sanely, justified in the second panel) Woody's home is surrounded by armed police. The final silent panel shows him angry, in a strait jacket, and locked in a padded cell. A lot occurred between panels 10 and 11!

No gag pages ran in NF 123. There's almost no Stanley content, period, in that issue. Must have been a deadline crunch somewhere else that month.

Thanks to Alan Hutchinson's generous scan donations, I can share with you Stanley's pair of pages from New Funnies 124:

 

These pages just get better as they go along. The last one touches on a still-timely bit of American statis: the inertia that surrounds Christmas tree removal. I can still see Xmas decorations (and a few scraggly trees) on display in my neighborhood. (Truth told, I once left an Xmas tree up until Easter. Thus, this is strictly glass house material for me.)

It's a thrill to see Stanley's cartooning get so sharp and ferocious.  The highly varied figures on these two pages dance with life. (The Barksish dogmen are still here; this would be their last appearance in Woody's world. I suppose some black truck came for them in the night.)

The human woman who offers Woody fudge--in a seductive manner, I might add--looks a lot like Barks' contemporary drawings of human beings. 

The first gag page, with Woody's OCD collecting of bottle caps, ties in neatly with the "Andy Panda" story I posted HERE. "Hoarding, compulsive" emerges as a minor theme in the 1947 New Funnies issues.

These next two are not my scans; they're from New Funnies 125.

By this time, the Barksoid dogfaces are 100% replaced by human characters. It's interesting to see Stanley drawing more attractive figures, as he does in the first page here. His human characters tend to be chubby, spindly or child-sized.

Look at how well he draws human feet in that first page, too. As any cartoonist will tell ya, feet--bare feet in particular--are a b!tch to draw. They're rendered in such simple, confident lines here. Stanley must have been feeling pretty engaged and inspired as a cartoonist in 1947. His New Yorker cartoon sale contributed to that vibe, I would guess.

Woody's act of aggression towards the studly lifeguard, in the first gag page, is hilarious. This is a great instance of the Stanley "Tubby type" expressing himself to his oblivious "superiors."

I ran one of the pages from New Funnies 126 in the second "John Stanley's World" post. For completeness' sake, here it is again. You will recognize one panel as part of the collage of the logo for this blog. 

I am proud of Woody's pro-active solution to his sneering asshole neighbor's request.

126's "B" page again recalls the cartoon style of Milt Gross, and the archly exaggerated, angular figures of Tex Avery's 1946-8 MGM cartoons. The scouts at the end could easily fit into an average "Little Lulu" episode.

New Funnies 127's gag pages are both gems--perfect executions of essential Stanley themes and comedic set-ups. I ran a lesser scan of the second one recently, but its morbid visuals and macabre overtones made it a must for re-scanning at a large size.

Stanley's cartooning gets more aggressive and expressive in the last batch of these gag pages. Dig the vibrant poses and great panel compositions of the first page below. Both are from New Funnies 128.

The next two, from New Funnies 129, feature some of the spikiest, most Milt Gross-like cartoon art Stanley ever produced. It's got so much raw life in every line! Tho' his Woody goes dangerously off-model by this time, the verve and snap are a marked improvement over the bland official design.

 
Look at the final panel of that first page! Wow! That jack in the box is right out of a 1927 Nize Baby page by Milt Gross! Stanley's cartooning style of the '40s is typically so laid-back and naturalistic. It's great to see him pushing the boundaries of cartooniness in these pages.

Stanley's last writing appears in NF 129. His gag pages graced the now-inept monthly for two more issues. Perhaps these were inventory items, done some time before the end of '47.

Here are the two pages for NF 130.

The first of these two is a laugh-out-loud affair, with quite the different angle on the housing market. 2010's Woody would be glad he wasn't saddled with unsellable homes!

Dig the atrocious mis-coloring by the monochromatic production person. Woody's creepy uncolored lower eyelids in the third tier... brrr!

Exhibit B shows the 'pecker's more mischievous side, and ends on a barbed note of feathered frustration.

Issue 131 offers the last of his Woody gag pages. They're both doozies. As with issue 130, the "b" page is just three tiers, to make room for money-saving coupons. Here they are:

 

Woody's act of shoplifting, in the "A" page, suggests a subtle continuity from the previous issue's "B" page. From realtor to apple thief in just one issue!

The final page in this series offers a Zen approach to comedic problem-solving. It's fitting that this series concludes with Woody living at a Dutch angle--and the happier for it.

These are the last pieces John Stanley did for New Funnies--ending a run of almost five years in this magazine.

Other artists, including Dick Hall and Dan Gormley, continued these magenta-tinted Woody gag pages for some time in New Funnies. Suffice to say they fall short of the standards Stanley set in this short run of brilliant cartooning.

It's taken a year to gather all these pages together. I'm glad to finally present them here. I feel they are significant additions to the works of John Stanley, cartoonist-writer.

Stanley's New Yorker cartoon: A Second [MUCH Closer] Look

Thanks to Tom Devlin, the generous and extra-swell editor of Drawn + Quarterly's John Stanley Library, we are afforded a very welcome super-sized look at John Stanley's 3/15/1947 New Yorker cartoon.

The teensy, lo-rez version I recently ran is a sad joke--a travesty of Stanley's work. Here, we can savor Stanley's sophisticated pen-line and distinctive cartooning style at a generous, revealing king-size.

But first, the genuinely clever and well-designed cover of the 3/15/47 issue. It's not Stanley's work, but it might help you find the issue, should you ever come across a horde of vintage New Yorkers in a bookshop or antique mall:



And now, the cartoon itself. In its original appearance, it was split into 2/3 and 1/3, and run on two pages. I've left the first page as is, but cropped out the article section that filled most of the second page. Have a look at this beautiful work...





The grace of Stanley's handiwork is obscured in the Complete New Yorker Cartoons' pint-size reproduction. His confident contour pen lines fairly sing as they describe the volume and form of their figures and settings.

Those familiar with Stanley's cartooning for Little Lulu, New Funnies and Animal Comics will recognize his human characters. Stanley's comic book stories were drawn with a bolder, simpler line than he uses for this piece. (This may be caused by the cheap, high-speed funnybook printing process, which wasn't always hi-fi to the original artwork.)

I particularly like Stanley's decision to let pen lines invade boundaries of volume and form. The lines that run from the characters' pants legs into their overcoats is very much of its era, technique-wise. Contemporary cartoons by Vip, Hank Ketcham, Sam Cobean and other successful magazine artists also affected a deceptively loose pen line.

I've read that this developed from the cartoonists' submitted rough versions of their cartoon gags. Editors liked the freeness of their more relaxed preliminary drawings, and encouraged them to adapt this looseness to their finished art.

This style ran rampant in post-war commercial art, especially through the 1950s. A study of paperback book covers in the 1950s shows a trend that moves away from tight, photo-realist painting styles to sketchy, loose, freer styles of drawing and painting.

This off-the-cuff technique belies the masterful artistic skill that many post-war commercial artists possessed. It did bring a freshness to traditionally earth-bound, representative styles in print and advertising work. This style reached an unfortunate nadir in the 1960s and early '70s--as did many post-war stylistics that had been run into the ground via repetition and dilution.

Stanley's cartooning style owes a bit to James Thurber's. I don't know if Stanley considered Thurber a major influence, but his 1940s work is essentially a tighter, more solid variant on that unmistakable style.

I also see a bit of similarity to Charles Schulz's 1940s cartooning. The faces of the figures, and the pen line, are close to Schulz's way of rendering. Of course, there's no way Stanley could have seen Schulz's early work. It's more of a zeitgeist thing, as many post-war cartoonists sought to work in this visually pleasing manner.

Seeing this lone New Yorker cartoon in high-resolution and large size makes me mourn Stanley's lack of similar efforts. It was a gain for the comic book world, and to us, as readers and admirers of Stanley's storytelling brilliance.

To be honest, I'm glad that we have the hundreds of rich, detailed, satisfying comic book stories, rather than a similar lot of magazine gag cartoons. It would have, on one hand, been a waste of Stanley's great narrative and comedic gifts.

On the other, Stanley would have made more money as a New Yorker cartoonist and gag-writer. He would have been able to sign his name to his work, and receive public acclaim.

()()()()()

With the next post, I'm going to make a departure from the Stanley Stories formula. It may take some extra time, but I hope the end results will meet with your interest and approval. 'Til then, thanks for dropping by once again...

John Stanley's New Yorker Cartoon, 3/15/1947

Thanks to Jeet Heer and James Gill for helping me locate this one-off shot at the Big Time for our hero, John Stanley.

Alas, it's from the well-intentioned CD-ROM within The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker.

I suppose that, with such a draconian project, it wasn't possible to include every cartoon and have them in large, hi-rez images. For a browser, one just perusing the cartoons for reading pleasure, it's fine, but for us more OCD comix/cartooning devotees, the end result is frustrating.

All that said, I think this is a charming cartoon. Its drawing style completely ties in with the "Little Lulu," "Woody Woodpecker" and "Jigger" stories Stanley drew around this time.

It's rumored that Stanley continued to write cartoons for other New Yorker artists. Apparently, correspondence exists in the magazine's files. When next I get to NYC, I'd love to spend a day (or two) researching this, and seeing if I can find out exactly how long Stanley's connection to this high-status magazine lasted--and why HE didn't continue as a cartoonist there.

This is just as good, if not better than, some severe competition in the March 15, 1947 issue. Stanley is up against Charles Addams, Sam Cobean, R. Taylor and other big-leaguers.

This cartoon has a strong thematic link to his contemporary comix--the theme of rich vs. poor, and of the underprivileged yearning for the creature comforts of the well-off.

I wish this was a better-quality image, but it's the best the book's CD-ROM offers. I hope to find an original copy of this issue soon. I'll scan the cartoon and post it here if/when.