Bolt was a square-jawed he-man boxer with a piercing stare and determined vision about his future, and Prince Valiant (perhaps best known for a hairstyle later adopted by British boy bands of the ’60s) was a man’s man who served God, the Empire, and fate: Murphy would gain greater fame as illustrator of the historical comic serial Prince Valiant, and both strips shared similar characteristics. His father was launching his first comic strip, Big Ben Bolt, and there was a need to isolate poses, to capture various facial emotional gestures. The camera was a Polaroid, purchased soon after its 1949 arrival on the market. He’d take pictures of his father John Cullen Murphy in various emotive poses. Author Cullen Murphy opens with an account of how he used to spend his spare time, after his after-school job. It’s the start of the Connecticut School, comprised of creative men who lived hard, smoked, drank, wore grey flannel suits, raised families, and built worlds that remain vital to this day if only in the hearts of those longing for more seemingly innocent times.Ĭartoon County is a warm, sweet book that manages to perfectly capture its time and players without drowning in nostalgia. They regularly take the train into New York City to sell their gags, pitch their newspaper comic strip ideas, and make names for themselves in the worlds of fantasy, historical dramas, romance, and domestic comedy. The towns of Westport, Stamford, Greenwich, and New Canaan are hosting some of the greatest cartoonists and illustrators in the history of the medium. It’s the ’50s and the United States is standing firm in the wake of World War II and “saving the world”. In Cullen Murphy’s warm and generous Cartoon County: My Father and his Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe, the reader feels both comfortable and privileged after visiting this world in the southwest corner of Connecticut. The strength of good memoir often rests in its willingness to open up the perspective, embrace secondary characters, and put even the smallest bit players into chronological and cultural context.
0 kommentar(er)
