30 replies to this topic

[Jairus]

Christmas is not really the actual date Christ was born.... nobody knows the exact date. However we celebrate the birth of our savour on December 25th each year and THIS is the real reason for the season! It is a magical time for most little kids and a shadow-memory of that magic still enhabits most of us as adults.

While I was just a kid I collected Cartoons and the other Petersen Publishing cartoon magazines reveling in the beautifully painted covers and funny comics found inside.
From now until the 25th I will post (Provided the moderators don't lock the thread) a cover artwork every few days with a common theme: that of Christmas in full color! Eventho it is a little secular... it's still humorous and we all know that our Lord likes humor.
Jairus


This first image is from December 1964. The cover caption reads: It's the night before Christmas and all around the Timing Stand them Varmints are waitin' to decorate the Chrondek Tree that one Lil' rowdy Varmint has just chopped down... to Unk's dismay. Drawn by Jim Mueller and painted by Ron Dias.

Merry Christmas!

Edited by Jairus, 10 December 2007 - 07:23 PM.

[mikelo]

Great idea. I still have several myself. I think I have two from the 60's, the rest are from the 80's. I love those old mags. Thanks for helping to keep the focus were it needs to be.

[Harry P.]

I don't remember that mag... I'm sure if I had known about it back then I would have been into it!

[Jairus]

Good morning MCM bloggers!

Hey, I managed to dig up enough covers to have one per day until Christmas morning! Some of them are not much more than "Snow play" so I may wait and use those toward the end when we get tired of "Santa". Until then.... Here's another one:


This is a copy of Cycletoons December '72 featuring cartoons about two wheeled doner-mobiles, mostly choppers! The cover painting was sketched by John Bruno and painted by Jake Thompson, one of my favorite painters! The character playing Santa is "The Ol'Poop" and the guy in the cabin is Hogg Rider. Both enjoyed adventures in nearly every issue, and featured on almost all covers from 1968 to 1973.


I picked up this copy off the newsstand in November 1972 so it is a little worn having been handled by me for 35 years! But that doesn't really matter as I have no desire to own mint copies of each and every mag.
Incidentally, Cycletoons and HotRod Cartoons magazines were published on the even months and came out on the same day one month previous. Cartoons was published only on the odd months so even though there were only 6 issues per year I could look forward to finding one of them on the news stand monthly.

Merry Christmas!

[SoCalCarCulture]

Nice idea Jairus - if you're looking for more covers or info on Cartoons and George Trosley try this site...

http://www.georgetro...m/cartoons.html

[mikelo]

I checked through my collection (which goes from 82 to 91, with a couple from 70 & 71), and discovered only 83, 88 and 90 had Christmas themed covers. Let me know if you need one one of them.

Is 91 the last year Cartoons? I remember having a subscription and not being able to find the mags anywhere by then. Just curious.

[Jairus]

Mike, my collection is nearly complete from 1960 to the very early 80's After that... sporadic at best since I got married about then. If you want to post the 83, 88 and 90 then be my guest. But I will continue posting my last 13 issues, one per day, including one on Christmas day!
To answer your question, yes, the very last issue is Aug '91!

Only 13 more shopping days until Christmas.
Todays cover goes way back to 1966...


The cover for today shows "Unk and them Varmints" from Cartoons Dec 1966. Cover drawn by Mike Arens and painted by Jim Collender.
Notice the decorated "Christmas tree" in the upper left while Munch’in Melvin eats the paintbrush at the bottom. Actually, only two Varmints were ever named, Munch’in Melvin and Clever Kevin the leader of the bunch. I have read back to their beginning, and unless I missed something, the rest of them have not been named.
Many of the cover drawings (64-73) featured a reoccurring theme and had something to do with the Varmints rebuilding or destroying Unk's '23 T bucket street rod. This time they have created some sort of slingshot dragster painted up to look like Santa’s Sled.

Merry Christmas!

[ajulia]

Hello there friend! Just wanted to say that its a great idea!. I wasnt familiar only because of my age however myUncle Israel use to collect them. He was the " Drag n Hot" rodder in the family. I remember him actually fighting with his brother because when they moved back to P.R. he wanted to take them but they were thrown out. Needless to say he was pissed.
Peace
AJulia

[SoCalCarCulture]

This is fun, amazing what collectors are willing to pay for these issues now!

For those of you who didn't live through this era here's a link to the history of CARtoons by Ro McGonegal...

http://www.hotrod.co...tory/index.html

[dub]

Thank you for posting some CARtoons covers Jairus. They brighten my season. Also a big thanks to Dave for the two links he posted. I only had one copy of CARtoons when I was growing up and its gone. I know it was near the end becuse I couldn't find any after I lost the one I had. I love George Trosley's work and this fills a void.
Happy Holidays, everyone!

[Jairus]

Good morning!
Only 12 more shopping days until Christmas.
Todays cover is very special as it comes from a quite rare issue #15 of Surftoons circa January 1969.
Indeed the very last issue published!


On the cover dressed, as Santa is none other than Sandab McSkeg surfing down the chimney. Sandab, created by Nelson Dewey, became a regular character in Surftoons. Sandab’s search for the perfect wave continued on in the pages of Cartoon’s magazine long after Surftoons ceased publication. The cover was drawn by Nelson Dewey and painted by Bill Hughes. Sandab was someone who would never give up on surfing and indeed surfed when and where others couldn’t or wouldn’t. On issue #6 Sandab is shown surfing a lawnmower just so he could surf through a Kelp field ‘cause the waves were better! Weird huh?

Surftoons was published from August 1965 to January 1969 for a total of 15 issues. It was never a regular thing and they didn’t offer subscriptions. Cartoonists who wrote/illustrated for this publication, were also contributors to Cartoons, Cycletoons and Hot Rod Cartoons so the look and feel was pretty much the same. The famed cartoonist and illustrators Rick Griffin and Alex Toth were also contributors in some of the first few issues back in ’65 and ’66.

Merry Christmas!

[Jairus]

Good morning Model Cars Bloggers!
Only 11 more shopping days until Christmas.
Todays cover is from December 1970 CARtoons.


Bruce Steffenhagen painted the cover where Unk has been dressed up as a reindeer pulling his ’23 T bucket. He doesn’t look too happy about it but, note that they spelled Sleigh correctly this time….

I was born in ’59. Picked up my first Cartoons magazine June ’69. My family and I moved from Eugene Oregon to Salem during the following year so I missed quite a few issues until I could find a newsstand that carried them. This issue was one of the one’s I missed. Finally got it off eBay for cheap 35 years later!

Merry Christmas!

Edited by Jairus, 14 December 2007 - 05:19 AM.

[Jefbo]

Thanks Jairus,
This tread is dear to my heart also. You wrote:

I was born in ’59. Picked up my first Cartoons magazine June ’69.

I was born in 1960, and in the late sixties, I would wear out the pages of my CARtoons Magazines like my son wears out the discs on his Xbox games. I owe a great deal of my art training to the artist of CARtoons. I would sit for hours with a stack of my moms "typing" paper, pencil and Magazine copying each and every drawing. I would work all night just on wheels and tires. At a very young age I learned the illusion of rendering 3-D and foreshortening. In elementary art class the other kids would treat we as if I were a magician. I'm going to have to see if I can dig up an old drawing and post it here.

Jefbo

[Jairus]

Jeff, Thanks and I learned a lot about drawing from these pages as well. Your reminiscing about art class sounds just like my experience too!!!

Only 10 more shopping days until Christmas…

Today’s cover is an old one, issue #9 from January 1963 CARtoons.

Pete Miller painted the cover as he did most of the early covers. Pete is also credited with founding this publication and due to a falling out, started “DRAGcartoons” among other cartoon publications.
Note: If you check out the topography of the US below you will notice that it is fairly accurate!

Yes, this is an old magazine cover. To put it all in perspective, when this magazine was printed Kennedy was president and Lee Harvey Oswald nothing but a husband. School kids dove under desks because of the Cuban Missile Crisis while our president sent “advisors” to a little country in Southeast Asia. Popular movies were “Dr No” and “Lawrence of Arabia” while at home, people zoned out to “The Beverly Hillbillies” on TV. Beachboys made waves with their debut album, Surfin’ Safari and Tony Bennett had what would be his biggest hit, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

Starting with this January issue, CARtoons magazine started its long run as a 6 issue per year publication. (1959 and ‘60 only one issue per year, with two issues in ’61 and four issues in ’62) They didn’t go back to a quarterly schedule until 1978 and that for only a year called “The Best of CARtoons”. 1979 marked a return to bi-monthly publication but printing an issue # on the inside ceased in March of ’79 and continued through the last issue Aug. ’91. (Waaayyy more than most of you wanted to know)


Merry Christmas!

[Jairus]

Good morning!

Only 9 more shopping days until Christmas…

Today’s cover is from December 1965 CARtoons.


Cover drawn by Mike Arens and painted by Jim Collender.

In this illustration, The Varmints are playing “Santa” and trying to stuff a Slingshot Dragster down Unk’s chimney. Note the reoccurring theme of the decorated “Christmas Tree”.

“George Lemmons” who very shortly went on to edit “HOT ROD Cartoons” magazine leaving CARtoons in the able hands of funny man Jack Bonestell, edited this issue.
I have often wondered about the lack of snowy covers found on other comic magazines. While CARtoons had many Christmas themed covers, very few of the other Petersen comic publications featured them for some reason. In fact, if it were not for the date on the cover, one would be hard pressed to know what season each issue was published having green grass and bright skies depicted in each and every cover. My thoughts are that since they are all sister publications, basically coming out of the same “house”, that cooler minds left the “Winter season” humor to the pages of CARtoons.

Also consider that these magazines (and most magazines even today for that matter) were printed and distributed one month previous to the date on the cover. Because of this the artist needs to get his work into the layout department so the layout staff can do the paste-up, which could take a couple of weeks at least… Then the Artist needs time to work… so most December issues were being inked most likely in July. Reminds me of a cartoon I saw of a cartoonist sitting on a block of ice and his friend says… “You trying to get in the mood for the December issue?”


Merry Christmas!

[Brendan]

Jairus,

Thanks for sharing these with us. I've seen some of these, but most of them are new to me. Great idea for showing these for the Twleve Days of Christmas.

[Custom Hearse]

Thanks Jairus! I loved reading those when I was a kid! Even though they have Krass and Bernie in Car Craft magazine, I wish they would do a re-issue of all the mags again.... And issue some new ones to boot!

[darquewanderer]

Love this stuff Jarius. The Dec '72 CycleToons issue is very interesting, especially if you've seen the Harley Davison's new, for 2007, Christmas commericals. Is history repeating itself? Their "Be bad for badness' sake" schitck.

[Jairus]

Yeah, it's Monday.... seize the day!

Only 8 more shopping days until Christmas.

Todays cover comes from November 1973, and indeed the only seasonal cover to be found on a Hot Rod Cartoons magazine.


The cover was penned by George Lemmons and painted by Jake Thompson. Hot Rod Cartoons ran from Nov '64 to Nov '74. Editor was George "Pappy" Lemmons and the characters featured on the cover are Pappy'hiself, Rod (the tall guy) and Giz' the little guy. George joined the Cartoons team in '62 after being discharged from the Navy. He contributed for a number of years before eventually becoming the editor of Cartoons and then Hot Rod Cartoons for it's entire 10 year run. George also created a number of great reoccurring characters who were so popular with readers that other artists would pen stories of them taking up where Pappy left off such as Rod'n Giz, Granny McGo and of course Pappy too!

Personally, I liked HRC the best of all the Petersen comics due to the better quality of artwork usually found within and the seeming higher intelligence readership was geared for. At times it seemed more like a graphic novel due to the able talents of Errol McCarthy, Bob Burnett, George Trosley and Nelson Dewey.

Merry Christmas

[Jairus]

Good morning dudes!

Only 7 more shopping days until Christmas…

Today’s cover is from Winter 1978 CARtoons. (Remember, ’78 was quarterly.)


Cover drawn and painted by none other than George Trosley.

Krass and Bernie are the main characters on the cover and featured in the lead story from this the “NEW” CARtoons magazine. Reformatted and with a new editor starting mid 1975, each issue contained the extra value of Iron-On T-shirt designs.

K & B appeared in that first 1975 issue and their automotive adventures are still being penned to this very day by George Trosley, published in Car Craft magazine.

Merry Christmas!