I still have a few issues of Cartoons. Mine are the Pete Millar ones. I think they are from around 1968. I have a few issues of my Drag Racing comic books. I think some of them were named Teenage Hotrodders or something like that. I drug them all out and looked at them about 7 years ago and them wrapped them back up and put them in storage. They sure were hard to put down. They brought back so many memories from when I bought them. I would go uptown after school and buy my magazines from the drug store and then hitchhike home. I was only 12-14 years old. You don't dare do that now.
i was lucky enough to be able to read them every month as my parents had a grocery store. pretty hard to od. on that stuff. always great reading and having unlimited ORANGE CRUSH! helped. unfortunatly it fell out of grace when i discovered i also had unlimited adult mags to read,good thing we had a ice machine to keep the elbow iced up!
...On a related topic,does anyone else remember the black velvet posters that came with markers in the 70's?I remember having a few of them that were hot rod related.I think they were drawn by a guy named Mike Pickle(or Pickel?)They were the same kind of artwork from the 70's CARtoon's magazines........
Little man, I won a fine art scholarship in year 11 here in Oz. Dumped it all to go and study Psychology, Physics, Chemistry for my career in the Military. Never regretted it though, I won a full scholarship to study Psychology in Year 12 and did a year of that before the original desire to join the Army came back. Kinda wish I stuck with it now. Did a degree in Paramedical Science in the Army instead. You know, some of these posts lately have had me thinking. I have done an absolute SHIT LOAD of different things. I'll have ta' settle down to something. Doc.
I remember those....and later there were posters that weren't velvet.....came with 10? markers. I still have an original box with the 5 posters, but the markers are long gone.....Peterson was a part of it......as one poster had a HOTROD logo and another had CAR CRAFT, had street freaks, vans, dragsters and hotrods.....
I was fortunate enough to have some of my stuff in CARtoons in ths late '70s. I'll have to dig it up. I think I even did a back cover if memory serves me. Dennis Ellefson was a great guy and one hell of a cartoonist. He ended his own life many years back. Shawn Kerry is also no longer with us. I know she and Dennis had some "wild times" (his words to me) back then. Extraordinary talent lost way too soon. Pete Millar was devastated after Dennis' death. We talked for quite a while about it one night on the phone. Pete was an extremely talented and gentle man. Wish I'd known him. Bill
Yeah,i remember they also had some with 18 wheelers that said stuff like"Fright-Liner" instead of Freightliner.He also would put his name in place of stuff like raised letters on tires.That whole do-it-yourself poster art stuff has alot to do with me taking up art in some ways....
Krass and Bernie absolutely ruled....I remember Dentman and Bondo was some pretty funny shit as well. If theyd re-release it as maybe an "underground" mag Id have a lifetime sub!!!
CARtoons was my bible in the '70s and very early '80s! I use to get my drawings in the "My Wheels" section, and they even printed a full page comic of mine called "Quick E. Shift". Man, heady stuff for a kid. When I was in art school I actually got Dennis Ellefson on the phone. He was a very nice person who truly loved the magazine. He said it was getting hard to keep kids interested in it, as the younger kids were more in love with skate boards and video games than cars... My favorite artist from CARtoons was Errol McCarthy. He used to do the "...and we don't have to tell you what happened next..." stuff, as well as amazing strips. Incredible imagination, UNREAL brush work. He was (and is) BADASS. I talked to him a couple years ago and he has a job with Mattel Toys. Again, a super nice person. Trosley taught me how to draw cars, and I always thought Duane Bibby and Steve Austin were really funny! Just really cool stuff for a gearhead kid... Jeb found this a while back and posted it on the Jockey Journal I think...I couldn't believe he found it! No scholarships for me...I had my school paid for by the Army, but when I was about to get out they offered to give me the few thousand I had saved in the college fund in cash. I took it and built a bad little '55 Chevy (because nobody from my family went to college and neither would I)....then, later on I had to PAY for art school!!!! I don't know which I enjoyed more.
I can't find my stuff, but here's a great cover by Millar. Many hours of work here. Trouble with the mag was that, since (like MAD back then) they sold no ad space, Peterson had to carry it as a loss. Like a multi-million-dollar company couldn't keep a thing like that going!?! Assholes! Oh well...
great magazines, i find them on that evil auction site now and then. they sure do bring back those flashbacks. cadillac dave
Can't believe this one got brought up again.My feelings about Pete Millar and the first 4 issues of CarToons.
Man, those were great! I used to try and draw all my cars like the ones in cartoons. I even used to draw the "CARTOONS" at the top of them. I've been thinking about those mags lately, I'm sure I've still got some.
For some reason I was more into Hot Rod CARtoons than CARtoons. Seemed like Pappy had cooler toys than Unk did. Nelson Dewey, Jim Grube and maybe my favorite car artist, Fred Boatman. DragToons was harder to find around here but they always had great parodies with caricatures of the drag racers of the day. Pete Millar was the king of this stuff! Got a bunch of these stashed away along with a handfull of CYCLEtoons (Hog Ryder and the Old Poop with his Webley-Vickers 50/80) and even a couple SURFtoons. Now I'll have to drag in a couple of boxes from the garage.
I had one issue but I read it over and over again. A couple of years ago I ordered a few things from Trosley's website, including a "How to Draw Cars" CD. Nice guy. Included a personal handwritten note with the order. --Matt
Greetings from Long Branch,NJ,Americas first seashore resort.... like many of you I collected first the little books then the blown up Cartoons....while others were getting off on Alfred E. Newman in MAD magazine we were buying Cartoons....one of my favorite covers that I thought was so typical for my area of the country was the one that showed a guy sitting in his T-bucket in the garage reading drag news....''drag racing this weekend'' or something like that ....while the window shows snow falling outside! ....can any body post it?....boy do those drawings and simple stories bring back good memories....how about engine rebuild ....too much! I'll do it myself! ...guy took the engine apart and couldnt put it back together....took it back to the builder....''I here you do engines cheap....I tell that story all of time.... Lee
Man, I used to read those things until the covers fell off, then read them again.....Thanks for the memories....
Beautiful work! I think Trosley still has a site dedicated to the mag...but you probably know that. My first stuff in there was a contest I won, I think. I had a couple single panels and a couple full pagers later. Dennis was just a super guy, as you discovered. Shawn Kerri was amazing, too. There were so damned many great artists that appeared in those pages, like Dave Deal. A real shame it went away 'cause some corporate turd who couldn't draw a line with a ruler put the kabosh on it. Good luck to you. You are very talented!
I seem to remember hearing from Unk Kohler's son several years ago. I've really been suffering from CRS the past couple years so I'm not sure why. But I really loved his covers. They were painful to look at 'cause you know those urchins are gonna clobber him at any second! I just love this cover! Reminds me of the Katzenjammer Kids and Donald Duck's nephews.
George is a hamber here and influenced me tremendously.I am proud to call him a friend.They all did. We need a mag like that again.
Oh hell yes I remeber them and still hsave them and the iron ons. heres a Krass&Bernie cartoon I scanned a while back. Its in the 25th aniverserry issue which was saddly close to the end of the run.
I just placed an order to have my car done by him should be exciting since reading this magazine since i was a kid!
Was it just the first 4 issues that were small books or were there many more before going to the lager magazine?
The Jalopy Journal
