Hal Johnson's Blog, page 21
July 4, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels
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Samm Schwartz!
July 2, 2024
A garland of quotations LXXIV
Beleeve, if you please, that the ruine of this Library will be more carefully marked in all Histories and Calendars, than the taking and sacking of Constantinople.
•Gabriel Naudé, News from France, or a Description of the Library of Cardinall Mazarini (1652).
The Catalogue of the Library of the London Institution is one of the handsomest ever produced. Unfortunately the cost of production was too great for the funds of the Institution, and the elaborate Catalogue of Tracts...
June 30, 2024
Dr. Seuss's conjoined characters
A canonical list of Dr. Seuss's conjoined characters: Additions welcome!
I. Naturally conjoined
•“Lads with the Siamese Beard” (PM (1941)).
•“a long, twisting eel” (McElligot’s Pool (1947)).
•“a very odd family of deer” (If I Ran the Zoo (1950)).
•Whitney and Judson (The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)).
•detail from a circus parade (If I Ran the Circus (1956)).
•“When Better Horses Are Breeded, Broder will Brood them” (original sketch (1956)).
•the Brothers Ba-zoo (Did I Ever ...
June 27, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels
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Dillin/Giella!
June 25, 2024
A garland of quotations LXXIII
Take heed; have open eye, for thieves do foot by night:
Take heed, ere summer comes or cuckoo-birds do sing.
•Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597?).
Th’ teacher she kisses you good-bye an’ cries—
An’ all th’ girls they are wipin’ their eyes.
Huh! Think what she does when you don’t mind th’ rule—
Oh th’ last day is th’ best day of all days in school!
•Wilbur D. Nesbit, “School’s Out” (1913).
God made a little Gentian—
It tried—to be a Rose—
And failed—and all the Summer l...
June 24, 2024
Daniel Pinkwater's Young Adults
(Once again I lost the ACX book-review contest. Previous prize-losing (though admittedly less spectacularly prize-losing) book reviews can be found as follows: Watership Down; Albion. The current loser is below. If you like any of these reviews, please note that I write books you may also enjoy.)
“What can I but enumerate old themes…”
•Yeats, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” (1939).
Some artists return again and again to their favorite well, same old bucket in hand. Alfred Hitchcock never tires of ...
June 20, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels
(Psst! It's just a bunch of my books!)
Thanks for reading Hal Johnson Books! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Andru/Esposito!
June 18, 2024
A garland of quotations LXXII
Nice contradiction between fact and fact
Will make the whole read human and exact.
•Robert Graves, “The Devil’s Advice to Story-Tellers” (1938).
And weel I wot, I heard a shepherd sing
That, like a bee, Love hath a little sting.
•Robert Green, The Scottish History of James the Fourth (c. 1590).
To sene hir part, and folowe I na myght.
Me thought the day was turnyt into nyght.
•James I, The Kingis Quair (1424).
Lust would more common be then any one,
Could it, as other sins, be don...
June 13, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels
To make you think, "Man, I am glad I am
not the main character of this novel!"
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Kane/Romita!
June 11, 2024
A garland of quotations LXXI
Arthur G. Hays: I do not think either of them are at all dangerous.
Richard M. Nixon: In other words, the Socialists and Communists are just as dangerous.
Hays: No; I do not say anything of the kind.
Nixon: Then what do you say?
Hays: I said that since I regard neither of them as at all dangerous, I think one is as dangerous as the other.
Nixon: Then you do say that one is as dangerous as the other.
Hays: Like zero is as to zero.
•HUAC hearings, 1948.
What would happen if we took...
