Today was the last day of the Masters of American Comics exhibition held jointly at the LA County Museum of Modern Art (which hosted the comic book art exhibit) and the UCLA Hammer Museum (which hosted the comic strip art portion). While we saw the MOMA exhibit months ago, we waited until the last moment (today) to see the comic strip work.
The Hammer put on one hell of an exhibit, with original pages, color proofs, and newspaper pages from Windsor McCay (Little Nemo), Lyonel Feininger (Kin-Der Kids), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), E.C. Segar (Popeye), Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), and Charles Schulz (you know what he's famouse for).
I thought the most incredible part of the exhibit was the McCay section, with several original pages (many from the collection of Garry Trudeau, and several over a hundred years old), including the one from the legendary walking bed sequence - which might have been the most amazing piece of original art I've seen in nearly 30 years of comics art collecting. And where else can you see an original political cartoon from 1899 about the Spanish-American war? The Herriman Krazy Kat pages were also spectacular, and I really enjoyed the Gould and Caniff pages. One touch I thought was nice was placing the color proof for the final Caniff Terry and the Pirates Sunday page from the '40's next to the one for the first Steve Canyon Sunday, which followed a couple of weeks later. As for the Schulz Peanuts pages, seeing the originals of strips you've seen reprinted numerous times gives a new appreciation for Schulz's artistry.
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