Now you can harness those little imaginations with Tikatok, a new web 2.0 site in beta.  This nifty little site will make book publishers out of your little tykes. Yikes Kids! Look out now you can become a writer and illustrator with this simple site and share your work with kids and family all over the world. Tikatok can be incorporated in library and school workshops. Sharpen those pencils and power up those scanners and become a writer with ease with Tikatok.  Kids will have hours of fun and it’s a great way to encourage kids with this show and tell site for all to see.  Who knows we might have the next little JK Rowling in the works. Tikatok will be the talk of the block.

Child’s Play: The Berenstain Baby Boom, 1946-1964: Cartoon Art by Stan and Jan Berenstain
Some artists become formulating in their ways as a certain work finds success. Stan and Jan Berenstain before the "Bear" fame were toiling with gag cartoons in McCall’s, The Saturday Evening Post, and other publications of the time between 1946 until 1964. Their body of work is what lead Dr. Seuss to ask them to join his stable of top talent. The Berenstain Bears became a household name after Dr. Seuss encouraged the couple to join his team. Some of the early Berenstain Bear stories were works of art. The stories were babied down more and fell into a routine for many years. The couple have an amazing collection of comic strips before they met Dr. Seuss and you will marvel at the work in this book. Read more>>

"Otis and Rae and the Grumbling Splunk is a slam dunk for kids."

Laura & Leo Espinosa are the perfect married dynamic duo for the latest graphic novel for all ages. It’s not easy to create original content with a market littered with so much fluff out there. Both having wet their feet in the advertising world, it was a matter of time before they wanted to exploit their own original creations. It’s one thing to get your drawings published in magazines, the returns outweigh creativity with a good salary. But working for the man can leave a few artists a bit dry and want to quench their thirst in original projects that will outlive a monthly or even weekly lifespan of a magazine. Most magazines are discarded after one read. So our couple decided to create their own characters and unleashed unto the world. "Otis and Rae and the Grumbling Splunk." Simple lined art that will have a universal appeal to all and a great start for Laura & Leo Espinosa.

 

On a perfectly perfect summer day, best friends Otis and Rae decide to go camping - for the first time ever! Otis is content to set up his tent right away and spend the night eating PBandB (peanut butter and banana) sandwiches. But Rae wants to tell stories - scary stories about Grumbling Splunks! No need for Otis to worry. There’s no such thing as a Grumbling Splunk! Or, is there?"

Checker Book Publishing Group is becoming the Criterion of the comic strip industry. They are polishing forgotten treasures for us to once again re-discover. Beetle Bailey is one of those quirky strips that has made waves year after year without much fanfare. A bumbling Sad Sack that is the epitome of procrastination glorified many folds and made it an art form out of it. A credit to many out there who can achieve much without doing anything really. Beetle has found a niche for laziness and is doing a great job after 50 years. This strip has longevity with a non transitory cast that has not evolved that much. The character traits stemming from Sarge to Beetle are set in stone and you will know their reactions from strip to strip. Never making much of an impact like some of the other major strips, it has found a way to survive and a welcome guest for all these years. Keep an eye on the Checker Book Publishing Group, they are publishing some great books out there. They are tooting themselves as The Graphic Novel Specialists and with good reason.

 

From the very first Beetle Bailey strips on a college campus through Beetle’s enlistment in the U.S. Army, this volume contains the first two years of Mort Walker’s famous strips, encompassing September 1950 through June 1952. Enjoy two separate casts of quirky characters, the first based on Mort Walker’s fraternity brothers at the University of Missouri and the second on his Korean era stint in the Army. These are the strips that won him the Ruben Award in 1953. Beetle Bailey went on to become the third most widely distributed comic strip of all time. Introduction with comments by Mort Walker himself! See page samples>>

The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett is a quick read, and the story is quite simple. The interesting thing about the this book the multi-layered pages that build the denouement at the end of the story. Young kids will be marvelled at the ending. It’s a slow build up to what is a shocker at the end of the story. Emily already has a few books to her credit and she is expanding as an artist and her latest offering, The Odd Egg, is a playful book of well orchestrated work. Kids loves surprises and Emily does deliver at the end.

Flight is one of those gems that comes out every year and worth waiting for. You beg for more, and more we shall get. I am pretty sure there is a conscious effort to bring a well packaged product for all ages with quality stories and effort by Flight. This new smaller version of Flight is a free pass to libraries who have staff who just don’t have the time to examine every illustrated book coming out and feel secure in the content. This is the right direction to go in my opinion. Let’s hope for more editions and new contributors. With the announcement of Warner and Scholastic dipping into  Flight main contributor Kazu Kibuishi, it’s safe to say this is the route to go. With two companies like that taking you seriously, there is only blue skies up ahead for this project. This is the perfect vehicle to introduce your kids to comics. Preview>>

There is the McDonald’s kiddie attitude out there in the publishing world that if you hook them young you can have them for life as customers.  WWE is always seen as kid’s fare at best with their convoluted controlled violence for the masses. They publish also magazines about their famous brands Raw and Smackdown, and now they are in talks and preparing for a new magazine for kids only. They are talking with comic book writers and illustrators to create a new magazine for kids, most likely it will be called WWE Kids. Nothing new since many adult version magazines have gone this route to increase future readership. Now WWE is no stranger to the comic world because most of the characters they create for their shows are based on comic  book characters and have a rich tradition of emulating real life heroes and sometimes they get in trouble with the law to keep such standards because the industry is is littered in steroids and exemplary hero worship is murky at best because of hidden demons these wrestlers go through a rigorous daily grind of travel and bodily injury. I am a firm believer that anything a kid reads is good for his future, better than not reading. What standards and practices will WWE have with the new magazine? Let’s hope it’s of quality and explain the true world of wrestling to a degree.

Palookaville #19 is finally out and finishes a three issue arc of Seth’s Clyde Fans . It’s been ages since the last issue. This would be murder for any publisher out there waiting for a delay like this, this is fine wine and needs time to ferment. Seth creator extraordinaire is the Bordeaux in the comic community, his work a thing of delight. The wait is over, it will be another year or two till issue 20 I guess, but worth it. The man is so busy with other projects with both Drawn and Quarterly and Fantagraphics and from reports a meticulous worker for fine detail, a true craftsman to his credit. Palookaville is a slow drawn out character analogy of character and plot as of late, but this is the beauty of the latest tale of old age and the reflections of the past as one flows through the passage of time and self examining.

Seth by many in the 21st century might consider him to be a quirky character who lives in the past without the conveniences of the present time. It’s as though he is living in the fifties in lifestyle and thought. A grand time in my opinion to be living in the past, a shelter for some to escape the troubles of today. Seth’s characters are an extension of his own composure in today’s world. A cog out of place but still functioning in the machine of life. We benefit from his about swing life, a true fan will know that since Palookavile #1 first made an appearance, Seth the semi-autobiography comic strip was not the man we know today. He matured by travelling back in time with his passion for old comic strip literature he picked up through his daily commute each day at second hand book stores in various parts in Ontario. His morphing has influenced his friends and a whole reading community who come to respect this behaviour eccentric to many. At the end of the day if you are content and he seems to be since his first splash on comics and grown as both a writer and cartoonist and now a book cover designer he is stronger for it. The human art collective is stronger for it and Seth’s as a man and myth is a thing of mystic and only his true friends know the real him. We read about him in his book Palookville and examine and perceive what is real and not in his realm of fantasy or reality.