Thursday, September 17, 2009

A Life in Art.

Had a customer ask if I had any books on Looney Tunes animation. Strangely, I did not. (How did that happen?)

Then he offhandedly mentioned that he once drew the Dennis the Menace strip. It was pulling teeth to get all the info out of him. Humble to a fault. He said he was Hal Ketcham's assistant for about 5 years. Then he went to draw his own syndicated strip for 30 years for King Features.

Well, this is the big time, but once again I had to draw it out of him. He drew a strip called PONYTAILS. So O.K. As I'm talking to him, I google him, and up he pops.

"So you're Lee Holley?"

"Why, yes."

"Wait, I think I just read something about you...."

We talked some more (he said, "I invested well,") and he left.

Dang, but that rang a bell. I googled it some more, and sure enough there is was on one of Pegasus Linked blogs, Journalista, on Sept. 1, 2009, with a link to a site called Cartoon Snap which had this to say:

PONYTAIL BY LEE HOLLEY, SUPERBLY DRAWN TEEN COMICS FROM THE SIXTIES.

"Meet Ponytail from cartoonist Lee Holley!

"After a long career of drawing cartoons for Warner Brothers, ghosting newspaper comic strips, and drawing the Dennis The Menace Sunday page, Lee Holley got his own comic strip in 1960. It was about a teen girl named Ponytail, and it’s drawn in a fun and breezy cartoony style that just dances and sings all across the newsprint. A couple of years later, Ponytail starred in new stories published in Dell comic books."

It's a small world.Too bad I couldn't have tracked that down while he was still standing there; it might have made his day.

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A friend found four of my "For Sale" books on the sidewalk around the corner. How pathetic do you have to be to steal .50 and 1.00 books? Maybe too pathetic. They must have changed their minds.

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Going to the doctor for routine checkup this morning. I think I'm not supposed to eat or drink anything, but I'll be damned if I couldn't at least get a cup of black coffee. Otherwise, operating my car might be dangerous.

I still wish I didn't have to go to the doctor every year just to renew my cholesterol medication. I'm exactly the same as last year, dammit.

But...they don't make any money just renewing prescriptions....

3 comments:

H. Bruce Miller said...

"I still wish I didn't have to go to the doctor every year just to renew my cholesterol medication."

I'm sure your doctor does more than that -- or if he doesn't you'd better get another one. It's worth having your other tests done once a year to check for diabetes, kidney function, liver function, infection, prostate conditions, etc.

I just had a colonoscopy done last week, so I don't wanna hear YOU bitchin about a crummy routine physical.

FYI if you just want your cholesterol and/or blood sugar checked you can walk into BMC and get it done for about 15 bucks.

Bender said...

"Had a customer ask if I had any books on Looney Tunes animation. Strangely, I did not. (How did that happen?)"

It's called a POS System ;-)

Duncan McGeary said...

I checked. There are 289 listings for Looney Tunes at my distributer. Most are animation; almost all are out of print.

The one legit history book looks to be Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.

Out of Print.

There are 4608 listings for Disney.

289 vs. 4608.

There's no justice, I tell you.