Friday, October 17, 2008


Number 397


Harvey Eisenberg's Two Mouseketeers


Yesterday Hairy Green Eyeball showed you a 1953 kid's book with artwork by animator/cartoonist Harvey Eisenberg. The Eyeball showed a Little Golden Book-style adventure of Beany and Cecil. My choice is this beautiful example of his comic book work from The Two Mouseketeers, Four Color Comics #475, with a date of June 1953.

When I think of Eisenberg I think of his great composition from panel to panel and page to page, but also his action-filled artwork. His characters run low to the ground, and they always seem to be in some sort of motion. As a sort of signature of his work Eisenberg used occasional silhouettes, see page 1 of the story.

Eisenberg died way too young in 1965 at age 53.















3 comments:

  1. I love these little guys, Pappy. En garde Monsieur Le Pussycat!

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  2. It always used to bug me that Tom & Jerry always talked in the comics, even though they hardly EVER talked in the original cartoons (Tuffy and Spike did talk quite a bit, though).

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  3. Sea of Green: I understand the problem the guys who made the comics had with translating the slapstick of animation to the static formats of printed comic books. They used dialogue to move the action along, something the animated cartoons didn't have to do. Even Road Runner and Coyote talked in their comic book incarnations. It seems almost sacrilegious!

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