I See Stees Sees, Stees Sees Stees Sees, Everybody Sees Stees Sees

Monday Cartoon Day.

I have shown some of John Stees Sunday gag collections earlier. Most of those were in black and white and clipped from online sources from Sunday magazines rather than a comic section. Here are a couple of color samples I came across on the back of some comic clippings.

The Bees Knees

Monday Cartoon Day.

Over the years there have been many Sunday features that were in fact no more than a collection of cartoons. Arnold Roth had Poor Arnold's Almanac and Gaham Wilson had a short run at it in the seventies. Bill Keane made a living out of it with Silly Philly, Channel Chuckles and finally The Family Circle. Lesser know is John Stees, who may have eventually done a daily panel as well, but for these Sundays he always created thematic groups of cartoons, making it almost like a Mad magazine article. Stees was the political cartoonist for the Baltimore Evening Sun, but he branched out in these sort of gags. A forgotten cartoonist of none to little charms.

The color sample I am showing came from the ilovecomix archives. In the past, they have collecte stuff from my page (always with asking for permission) so I hope they won't mind me taking one back.

Seven Gags A WeekMonday Cartoon Day

When I showed some of John Stees' Sunday gag collections, I mentioned the fact that he wasn't the first or the last to produce such a Sunday feature. I have already shown some of Gaham Wilson's pages last year. There were the long running pages by George Lichty and Ed Reed's Off The Record. There even was a Laugh In daily and Sunday, which I am showing here with another favorite of mine: Arnold Roth's Poor Arnold's Almanac.

I actually have quite few of these, but I haven't scanned them in for two reasons; first of all, my samples are from the Winnipeg newspaper that did their own color and bad as it is on other strips, it leaves nothing of Arnold Roth's beauty and secondly, there was a comlete reprinting of all strips (in black and white, but from the best of line art possible) by Fantagraphics in 1998. I had a look at their website, but they are offering it now for slightly over $8 and I urge you to go there and buy it, before they run out and you end up payning $30 or more for it in a couple of years. When I came across these two vibrantly colored samples last week, I just had to show them to you. I have added a color sample of Stees Sees and the aforementioned Laugh In.

April 24 1959:



June 14 1959:



May 8 1960:



A random selection from late 1968:












Aug 30 1970:



Sept 6 1970:

Test Stees

Monday Cartoon Day.

In the fifties and sixties most funny comic strips were drawn by fomer cartoonists. It seems as if everyone who made cartoons for a living was allowed to have a go at it. Some cartoonists cou;dn't come up with a concept, though and tried to do a daily or weekly cartoon series. The weekly series often took the form of a collection of cartoons held together by a weak story or a theme. This effort was at least done in 1959. I had never seen or heard from it's maker, but according to one internet source, we are talking about John Stees, who did this feature between 1958 and 1969. My samples just happen to all be from the same year.