Today’s Dennis The Menace panel. Is this a swipe at prime time and cable cartoon shows?

My caption would’ve been: “I remember when Cartoon Network ran Cartoons!“

The annual Treehouse of Horror issue is out today. It’s guest edited by Sammy Harkam, the creator of the Kramers Ergot anthology. If you can’t find it at a comic store, it’s available for purchase online at the PictureBox website. Here’s the eclectic line-up:

Among Halloween-inspired short strips by such visionary cartoonists as C.F. (Powr Mastrs), Will Sweeney (Tales from Greenfuzz), Jordan Crane (Uptight), Tim Hensley (MOME), and John Kerschbaum (Petey & Pussy), are four featured tales of inspired Simpsons lunacy: heralded artists Kevin Huizenga (Ganges, Or Else) and Matthew Thurber (1-800 Mice, Kramers Ergot) collaborate on a weird and wild story equal parts Lovecraftian eco-horror and Philip K. Dick identity comedy. Jeffrey Brown (Incredible Change- Bots, Clumsy) does a creepy and suitably pathetic story featuring Milhouse in a “Bad Ronald”-inspired tale of murder and crawl space living. Harkham and Ted May (INJURY) pull out all the stops for a tragic monster tale of unrequited love, bad karaoke, and body snatching at Moe’s Bar. Ben Jones (Paper Rad) does the comic of his life with an epic tale of how bootleg candy being sold at the Kwik-E-Mart rapidly spirals out of control into an Invasion of The Body Snatchers-like nightmare of a Springfield filled with cheap bootleg versions of familiar characters. And nobody does squishy, sweaty, and gross like up and coming cartoonist Jon Vermilyea (MOME), who outdoes himself with “C.H.U.M.M.,” a C.H.U.D.-inspired parody featuring everybody’s favorite senior citizen, Hans Moleman!

Mike Peters takes a few shots in our direction this week:

Trick or treat? Direct from the Comic Con… due out just in time for Halloween, a new “Harvey” comic book from writer Todd Dezago and artist Pedro Delgado: Casper and the Spectrals. Alfred Harvey is probably rolling over in his grave, but personally I’m willing to give this take a chance. It sure beats the recent movie adaptation versions. Ardden Entertainment, who are currently publishing a nice update of Flash Gordon, is the company behind this. (Click on cover at left to see a larger image).

This is the grave marker for Alfred Harvey (1913-1994), founder of Harvey Comics, who is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Westchester County in New York. (Click on image to see larger picture).

I’m tempted to make some bad taste wisecracks about friendly ghosts, or how this headstone replaced an earlier one marked “Noveltoons”… but I gotta admit, that’s a really cool tombstone.

(Thanks, Mark Arnold)

Following on the heels of last year’s successful graphic novel anthology Who is Rocket Johnson?, Disney story artists and directors have teamed up once again to self-publish What is Torch Tiger? The new book will debut later this month at Comic-Con (booth #2302) and is limited to 1,300 copies. The line-up of artists is impressive to say the least, with a cover painted by Paul Felix and contributions from the following:

Steve Anderson
Aaron Blaise
Paul Briggs
Kevin Deters
Rob Edwards
Mike Gabriel
Nathan Greno
Don Hall
Byron Howard
Trevor Jimenez
Mark Kennedy
Joe Mateo
Nicole Mitchell
John Musker
Jeff Ranjo
Aurian Redson
Jeremy Spears
Lissa Treiman
Josie Trinidad
Chris Ure
Mark Walton
Dean Wellins
Stevie Wermers
Chris Williams

Pin-ups by:
Andreas Deja
Andy Harkness
Jeff Turley
Jin Kim
Shiyoon Kim

More details are available at TorchTiger.blogspot.com. Below are some exclusive preview pages provided to us by the Torch Tiger team. Click on any of the images for a closer view.

Ger Apeldoorn has posted a selection of rarely seen Tom & Jerry newspaper comics strips from 1950. Though credited to “Fred Quimby”, they were most likely drawn by Gene Hazelton. The strips looks great but, unlike the screen cartoons, T&J do a lot of talking. The strip, which ran between 1950 and 1952, occasionally features cameos by other MGM cartoon stars like Barney Bear and Droopy.

When I was at Ohio State in Columbus this past weekend I had the pleasure of meeting writer Tom Gammill, who (along with his partner Max Pross) has written some of the funniest episodes of Seinfeld, The Critic, the Simpsons and Futurama. Tom also writes and draws the weekly daily online comic strip The Doozies and started an online series of humorous “How To Draw” videos (several featuring guest cartoonists and celebrity friends).

In episode 17, Gammill visits Greg Ford’s studio in New York to watch a work-in-progress of a Doozies animated cartoon. Gammill first met Ford back in 1986 when they co-wrote the Looney Tunes 50th Anniversary Special for NBC. Let’s see how Ford is doing…