Floyd
by Jeet Heer
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
For me, and I admit I have specialized taste, the best news coming out San Diego was the announcement that Fantagraphics is going to reprinting Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse comic strips, which really was during the 1930s one of the great adventure strips. This will be hard for anyone who hasn’t read Gottfredson’s work to believe, but his Mickey Mouse was as rousing as Roy Crane’s Captain Easy and as rich in invention as Barks’ longer Duck stories.
Given the track record of Fanta’s excellent design and editorial team, I’m confident that Gottfredson is in good hands. A word of advice: I’d suggest that Fanta recruit Kevin Huizenga to write an intro for one of these books. Huizenga has a keen appreciation for Gottfredson’s cartooning, as can be seen in this tribute page from Or Else #3. Huizenga, by the way, is completely right about Gottfredson’s profusive use of sweat drops. Gottfredson must have been the sweatiest cartoonist ever (close second: Dan Clowes).
Labels: Floyd Gottfredson, Kevin Huizenga, Mickey Mouse
SO yes.
Also, I nominate Johnny Craig for the Sweat Club.
Good point about Craig. Even his pretty women sweat heavily.
How many “naturalistic” artists use Gottfredson shooting air born sweat exclamation drops?
Jamie Hernandez does. Any others?
@Evan Dorkin and Patrick Ford. Yes, Craig and J. Hernandez also do sweat drops well.
I have to admit, this was the biggest announcement of the ‘Con for me. But I’m not sure you can complete a list of “sweaty” cartoonists without mentioning Herge. Every second panel seems to have Tintin or Haddock or even Snowy (despite the fact that dogs don’t sweat) bouncing sweat drops off of their Belgian bonces.
Craig doesn’t ever use “projectile drops” though.
Young punks, Michael Deforge and Noah Van Sciver do some good sweat buckest.
that would be so ideal!
I think Yves Cheland employs the flying sweat drop. Sounds like a wrestling move, put that way.
I love that page, which I hadn’t seen before. The plants growing is achingly wonderful. I have no sweat comment additions except to say that it was one of the first things I noticed when getting into the Gottfredson files last week. So much proof of exertion and shock.
Speaking as a huge fan, I’ve long thought “Craig Sweat” should hold the same universal resonance as “Kirby Krackle.”
Speaking as huge fan of Kirby if I never heard mention of “Krackle” again it would be too soon.
I could think of 100’s of things to say about Kirby, and Krackle would never cross my mind.