Obviously, Popeye cartoons use many ingredients to make them so special. Throbbing is one of them.
Personality is another, but those are secondary qualities of cartoons. Well, actually maybe throbbing is pretty important since it is hard to imagine live action being able to throb to the beat.

Don Martin has to be in the top 5 most original cartoonists in history.
One of the reasons I started my blog was because it was depressing to see how inbred modern cartoons had become and I figured if I started posting a wide variety of cartoon styles that had life, individuality, humor and skill that maybe the next generation of cartoonists would have a wider assortment of inspirations that just the last 30 years of decadent Disney and Saturday morning cartoons.
I have not been posting as much stuff as I used to and that's mainly because there are so many great blogs now that do better what mine was for.
These Don Martin images are from ComicCrazys, one of my favorite blogs.
To me, blogs are even better than books because the people who make them actually like the work itself and are generously willing to share it with the rest of the world. Fans put up the cartoons and comics in all their glory - unlike so many books that hide tiny thumbnail drawings within a vast sea of boring text written by pompous non-cartoonists who want to find some way to intellectualize the work -rather than just showing you the work and letting you enjoy it for what it is.
Don Martin's drawing style is even funnier than his jokes and that's what makes cartooning different than other forms of humor.

I don't anyone who draws funnier 'tards than Martin.



This feeding the pigeon comic story is a true work of cartoon art.

Chris Lopez shares tons of great and unique cartoon art with the world. I hope it helps to break the cycle of hideous stylistic inbreeding we have been suffering from for too long.
http://comicrazys.com/2011/06/20/more-of-the-completely-mad-don-martin-best-cartoons-from-mad-magazine-don-martin/

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I like this style. It's sort of a cross between Jimmy Hatlo and Chic Young.
Compared to animation of the same time period it's a bit stiff, but it has other attributes:
Great linework, interesting detail and a gritty man-on-the-street sort of outlook.
I like the perception of the world that many strip cartoonists had ( as opposed to Disney-influenced animation designers). They pictured everyone and everything as sort of ugly-funny, -even kids. Contemporary animation tended to have a very small handful of stock designs and kids were usually drawn in a Freddy Moore generic-cute style (like Harvey comics, who also published these Little Iodine comics). Animation had some notable exceptions to the cute kids rule, like the Hansel and Gretel characters in the Chuck Jones cartoon.
http://comicrazys.com/2011/05/02/little-iodine-mystery-of-the-crooked-stick-jimmy-hatlo/

Harvey Kurtzman's "Hey Look" is UPA before UPA. It's also something more. It has the graphic qualities of "Gerald McBoing Boing" and "Fudget's Budget", but without abandoning its cartoony roots. It's similar to T. Hee's style, but with a lot more verve.
Technically, Harvey has a lot of obvious great qualities but above and beyond them all is his ability to balance them graphically to convey a sense of uber-life.
His use of space, positive and negative is the best of any cartoonist I've ever seen. He balances the spaces to make perfectly readable and appealing pictures that tell a story in the most direct possible way. I could write a whole page just explaining the genius of the picture above.
His continuity is wonderful too. He only changes what needs to be changed from panel to panel and uses hierarchy in how much he changes each character. The chef above changes more from panel 1 to panel 2 than the guy watching him. He is the active character while the little guy, being reactive, moves only enough to help draw more attention to the main guy.
His angles, compositions, poses and eye direction all serve to focus our attention exactly to the point of the scene. I don't know any other cartoonist who is so perfectly direct in his graphic technique. No extraneous busy distracting details. Everything leads our eyes to where Kurtzman wants us to look.
It's very hard to have this much thoughtful planned skill and still be able to convey a sense of spontaneity and fun.
I love the way his characters are so interested in everything they do. They believe intensely in every pose, gesture, emotion and expression they perform.
Even without knowing the context of some of these drawings, the graphic skill and balance of shapes are aesthetically beautiful. It's truly modern art.

Very graphic, but still cartoony.
Nothing vague about his poses and expressions.
This is such a contrast with today's completely timid approach to everything. No one wants to commit to a clear statement anymore.
It takes a rare kind of talent to have such an unabashed and bold way to communicate clear ideas through his art.
Even though the images are beautiful in of themselves, the content and context of the stories is what inspired every pose and composition. These aren't floating doodles in a sketchbook. They are all continuity drawings of characters acting out a little story.
More cocksure masterful balancing of positive and negative shapes. I feel like I'm reading the comic equivalent of Fred Astaire. This work glorifies in its confidence and show offy skill.
One of the few real cartooning geniuses: Harvey Kurtzman.

To Denis Kitchen: Please re-release "Hey Look"!

Thanks again to Chris Lopez for scanning all the great comic art from his collection to share with us.
HEY LOOK! and Harvey Kurtzman's great MAD covers

MORE RARE KURTZMAN!