That funny cartoonist and H-B lover Mark Christiansen has pointed out a just-concluded auction on eBay for several comic strips drawn by Hanna-Barbera layout artist Walt Clinton.
No one seems to know anything about them. “Calvin,” as far as anyone knows, never appeared in any newspaper. Clinton could have been drawing some demos for one of the syndicates. The character designs are pretty familiar looking, aren’t they.
I suspect he lettered these himself. The italicized wail of the cat in the first panel looks really similar to the lettering on model sheets done in the later ‘40s when Clinton was working in Tex Avery’s unit at MGM. And is a coincidence that the family is named “Dibble”? (By the way, Clinton’s wife was named “Wilma”).
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All of the strips have Clinton’s address of “2756 Angus St. L.A. 34” on them. I suspect they’re from the late ‘50s or early ‘60s.
The funny thing about reading these, I can hear cartoon voice actors in my head: Hal Smith for Bagby, Herb Vigran for Herb and Marian Richman for the wife. Calvin bears a resemblance to George Jetson but I can hear Don Messick instead of George O’Hanlon.
Clinton arrived at Hanna-Barbera when it got underway in 1957 and retired in 1969 at age 63. He and Dick Bickenbach were among the layout artists on the “Cattanooga Cats” show; that apparently was his final work for the studio.
No one seems to know anything about them. “Calvin,” as far as anyone knows, never appeared in any newspaper. Clinton could have been drawing some demos for one of the syndicates. The character designs are pretty familiar looking, aren’t they.
I suspect he lettered these himself. The italicized wail of the cat in the first panel looks really similar to the lettering on model sheets done in the later ‘40s when Clinton was working in Tex Avery’s unit at MGM. And is a coincidence that the family is named “Dibble”? (By the way, Clinton’s wife was named “Wilma”).
All of the strips have Clinton’s address of “2756 Angus St. L.A. 34” on them. I suspect they’re from the late ‘50s or early ‘60s.
The funny thing about reading these, I can hear cartoon voice actors in my head: Hal Smith for Bagby, Herb Vigran for Herb and Marian Richman for the wife. Calvin bears a resemblance to George Jetson but I can hear Don Messick instead of George O’Hanlon.
Clinton arrived at Hanna-Barbera when it got underway in 1957 and retired in 1969 at age 63. He and Dick Bickenbach were among the layout artists on the “Cattanooga Cats” show; that apparently was his final work for the studio.