A Blog of Bosh

Sunday Press has announced the availability of their new collection reprinting in full colour the whole run of  Gustave Verbeek’s The Upside-Downs of Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo, the late Terrors of the Tiny Tads, as well the first complete collection of The Loony Lyrics of Lulu. While writing an introduction for this last [...]

In a previous post I noted a rare instance of contemporary reference in Gustave Verbeek’s Terrors of the Tiny Tads. Here is another from the strip for 19 May 1907, a few weeks after the appearance of the “Cowboisterous Kangaroosevelt Bear:”
Here comes the Rockefellerphant, so wealthy and so bold,
His stomach like a money bag, all [...]

Theodore Roosevelt’s refusal, in 1902, to shoot an imprisoned bear spawned a long series of political cartoons and, since the bound animal was often represented as a cub, and brought to the creation of the Teddy Bear.
Roosevelt’s hunting mania was the subject of a 1909 booklet by Peter Newell, Jungle Jangle, and of one of [...]

In the second half of the nineteenth century the west shows a sudden interest in images that can be seen upside down. There are several examples, the most famous being probably Peter Newell’s Topsys and Turvys (New York: The Century Co., 1893), followed by a second volume in 1894, and Gustave Verbeek’s comic strip, Upside-Downs [...]

I have added an article on Gustave Verbeek’s monotypes, to which he devoted his efforts after abandoning comics in the 1910s: Hawthorne, Hildegarde. “A New Achievement in an Old Medium: Gustave Verbeek’s Monotypes.” The Century Magazine 92.2, June 1916, 96-102.

The architect, John Prentiss Benson (1865-1947), had always dreamed of becoming an artist like his older brother Frank. In 1905 he lived in Flushing NY with his wife and four children and worked at his architecture firm of Benson and Brockway. He kept a studio in his home where he dabbled with paints, brushes, and [...]