I thought I was pretty familiar with Theo’s career, from his work on Private Snafu training films and WWII Editorial cartoons and ads for War Bonds, which, it was always bizarre to see the guy who did Cat in the Hat caricature Hitler and Mussolini…

to his short-lived comic strip Hejji, to his screenplay for The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, and then into the kids books.

However, I was unfamiliar with these gag cartoons he did for Judge…here’s a small smattering.

There’s lots of gags about people detoxing and hallucinating weird Dr. Suess creatures. References to absinthe orgies in Cambridge, ha.

This last sheds an interesting light on his Hejji strip…which was dropped by King Features Syndicate supposedly because there were complaints this sequence was too sexual…

(Scan taken from Chris Sims Comics Alliance post.)

I can’t see the mushroom sequence as sexual myself, but now I’m willing to admit the doctor may have had a bit of sex on the brain revisiting this palace setting… Seven Lady Godivas, his book for adults, featuring 7 naked ladies, was always a favorite.

This is pretty much my favorite thing ever though…

It’s a clock made of animals.

The book, edited by Richard Marschall, also has the ads Dr. Suess drew for a bug repellent called, Flit (the first of which was the wellspring of the phrase, “Quick Henry, the Flit!”).

I really wish I could post this whole book. Perhaps I’ll visit the Dr. Suess collection at nearby Dartmouth and do another post on the good doctor.

I also wanted to point people to Mike Lynch’s post on a book Virgil Partch illustrated with some, as always, inspired, beautiful gag cartoons…VIP If you’re into cartooning, and you don’t already visit Mike’s blog, you should!

Another fire who liked to feed itself logs…

But if that was an anthropomorphic fire, this Krazy Kat Mintz cartoon is arson… 

List of fire gags:

Fire squares his logs and plays them like a pan pipe…

Fire jump ropes the spit…

Fire gets hit by a wave and is knocked unconscious…

Krazy picks the fire up and wrings it out!  Then apparently forgets what he was doing, or gets distracted.  That Kat!

Krazy feeds logs to fire (that one works every time!) 

When I was growing up I watched Mickey’s Christmas Carol every year without fail. I remember it being terrifying, especially the Pete character.

Goofy as Jacob Marley.

Click here for a blog post about the movie’s production by Mike Peraza. The images below are production art stolen from his blog posts.

Merry Christmas!

B.Stone

We’ve been on a Gerald McBoingBoing kick here at Funny Aminals HQ. Starting with the UPA comics in the 301st issue of The Comics Journal. That got me reading a Dr. Seuss book, The Tough Coughs As He Ploughs the Dough (lots of good reading here at HQ). That got me inspired to do a super big post on the doctor proper…prooobably get to it tomorrow.

For now, here’s a nice big scan of another Carl Barks painting…from here. Hi-Rez here. (although you may have to do a little addition with your clicker). Perhaps this is a little late in the blogging game to ask, but is it not okay to post scans, images, and video from other websites, and have that be, for the most part, your “content?” I’m seriously asking actually. The posts would be few and far between without it, but I feel etiquette is important, both at the dinner table and on the world wide web.

Joann Sfar music video? Why not.

Final spread from Animation, by Preston Blair — I can’t scan the rest of my copy because a previous owner (some kid I’ll bet) drew dog collars on (almost) literally every drawing with a silver metallic marker. But here’s a pdf of it, so that’s easy. Thank you internet for making things easier. And thank you kid for getting tired on the third to last page.

Boy oh boy! Hawley Pratt layouts for 5 Golden books