Back in July I appeared on the Michael Coren show as part of the semi-regular arts panel. During the show I talked a bit about my Orphan Annie research. You can see the show by clicking on here. The Annie discussion starts at about 30 minutes into the show.
Harold Gray drawing Annie.
Click here if you want to see a brief but interesting discussion of Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie.
Annie, Daddy Warbucks versus the evil labour union leaders.
Because Tribune Media Services is canceling Annie, there have been a number of retrospective articles in the press. Sharon Cohen of AP has an interesting analysis which can be found here, and Michael Taube, a former speech writer to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, weighs in here.
As always, I’d encourage readers to take a look at the Complete Little Orphan Annie series issuing forth at a rapid rate from IDW.
Joe’s excellent post on thought balloons got me thinking about comics balloons (or text frames) in general: not just thought balloons but also word balloons, narrative boxes, and labels (like the famous arrows in Dick Tracy which diagrammatically call attention to two-way-radio-watches and other items of interest). It would be great to have a history of text frames in comics. There have been stabs here and there by scholars. Thierry Smolderen’s “Of Labels, Loops, and Bubbles” in Comic Art #8 is a good start.
About thought balloons: When did they emerge? I know Harold Gray was very chary of using them: he only used thought balloons a handful of times in his 44 year run on Little Orphan Annie. I think this was deliberate. While his characters where gabby they were also secretive – this is true not just of Warbucks but even Annie, who never says all she knows. Gray wanted to keep his characters mysterious, hence he avoided thought balloons.
