Camera-ready comic art drawing for Big George

Camera-ready comic art drawing for Big George

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Description (Brief)
This pen-and-ink drawing produced for the single-panel daily comic Big George shows George learning how to play the ukulele using the key-tuning phrase “My Dog Has Fleas.”
Virgil Franklin "Vip" Partch (1916-1984) began his career in 1937 illustrating for Walt Disney Studios. He is known for his participation in the 1941 Disney animators’ strike, and as a result of his participation, never returned to work for the company. Before his service in the U.S. Army Partch assisted Walter Lantz on the Woody Woodpecker cartoons. This prewar work assisted his transfer to his position as the art director and cartoonist for the weekly military magazine Panorama. After he left the army, Partch began freelancing and published books containing single-panel cartoons. In 1960 he created Big George, the strip that became his biggest success.
Big George (1960-1990) was a comic strip featuring family humor. The title character, much like other comic-strip husbands, was often neglected or ridiculed by the rest of his family. The daily version of the comic was usually shown in a single-panel format, but with the debut of the Sunday page a few years later, in the early 1960s, it took on a more traditional strip form. Partch died unexpectedly in 1984 as a result of a car crash.
Location
Currently not on view
Object Name
drawing
date made
1964-05-08
graphic artist
Partch, Virgil
publisher
Publishers Newspapers Syndicate, Inc.
Physical Description
paper (overall material)
ink (overall color)
Measurements
overall: 22.8 cm x 29.5 cm; 8 31/32 in x 11 5/8 in
ID Number
2010.0081.399
accession number
2010.0081
catalog number
2010.0081.399
Credit Line
Joseph Gura, Jr. (through Carl Sandberg IV)
See more items in
Work and Industry: Graphic Arts
Cultures & Communities
Comic Art
Communications
Data Source
National Museum of American History
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Comments

Big George was the distant ancestor of The Far Side. Wherever Big George and his wife Susan went, they saw the strangest things. The ants at the picnic were bigger than George. I never saw George as a typical husband-father-wimp. He was the coolest blue-collar uncle a kid could ever have. Susan was no helpless woman either. She was just the right one to deal with the strange, frightening world of their comic adventures.

Don Davis

Mon, 2017-06-05 10:57

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