Thursday, September 20, 2012

In the News-John Hambrock

Art of Hoosier Cartoonists Goes on Display in Wisconsin

The Kenosha Public Museum of Kenosha, Wisconsin, is hosting an art exhibit called “More Than Funny: Cartoons and Comics From the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning.” The exhibit will run through Saturday, September 29, 2012, and includes work by Indiana cartoonists John Hambrock, Dave Coverly, and Michael Jantze, among others. A blog called "KenoWi" carried the story of the exhibit and of Mr. Hambrock in "John Hambrock at the Kenosha Public Museum," a posting of September 9.

John Hambrock, creator of the daily comic strip The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and like Dave Coverly (Speed Bump), attended Indiana University. Mr. Hambrock received a degree from the Ringling School of Art and Design. (Cartoonist and fine artist Rob Harrell, creator of Big Top, also went to the Ringling School.) Before becoming an artist, Mr. Hambrock aspired to a career in marine biology, which happens to have been the vocation of SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenberg. In any case, marine biology's loss is cartooning's gain. (Mark O'Hare, one more in a seemingly endless list of Hoosier cartoonists, has also worked on SpongeBob.) In addition to drawing a syndicated comic strip, John Hambrock works in advertising. Among his clients is Keebler, maker of cookies and crackers. (If I can squeeze in just one more parenthetical statement and one more Indiana connection, the Keebler Elves were co-created by advertising executive William Harty, an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame.) Check out the blog posting, and if you live close enough to Kenosha, check out the exhibit, too.

Copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

In the News-Bill Holman

Bill Holman, Foo-lish Creator of Smokey Stover and Foo, in Traces

Traces, the magazine of the Indiana Historical Society, has published a biographical article on Bill Holman, creator of the comic strip Smokey Stover, in its Summer 2012 issue. The eight-page article includes three full-page photographs of the Indiana cartoonist, plus several pieces of his art. Holman's zany strip ran in newspapers for almost forty years. Few readers of Smokey Stover could have known that the physical violence visited on Smokey, Chief Cash U. Nutt, and the strip's other characters probably originated in Bill Holman's own life story. You can read more in "Foo! Bill Holman and Smokey Stover" by Terence E. Hanley in Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Summer 2012. To order a copy or a subscription, go to the website of the magazine and the Indiana Historical Society, here.

Courtesy of Traces.
Text copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley