The late, great, Bud Handelsman, and his excellent family

Bud Handlesman's family dropped me an email, despite the fact that they were, and are, still grieving, to say thanks for mentioning Bud on this blog - is that Classy or what? I was knocked out, I have to say, and for once in a long career of being a noted blabbermouth I was lost for words and felt very humble.

As I said in the earlier post, a lot of we UK cartoonists, particularly those who drew for Punch or aspired to draw for Punch (remember this was the magazine on which The New Yorker was based), were somewhat in awe of Bud Handeslman. It's not difficult to see why, and when I was scanning these Freaky Fables to post them here my wife and my eldest daughter were giggling over them. Back in those days Handelsman had a full page, at least, you see, and not to do a bunch of gag cartoons on a given subject, it was a full page of what we would likely call 'sequential humour' today. This was the sort of sophisticated drawing-style and wit that was only associated with a small, select group of cartoonists that included Britain's Posey Simmonds and France's Claire Bretécher (I gave my wife Claire's cartoons on pregnancy when we were pregnant and she almost laughed herself into an early delivery - you've been warned). It's a sobering thought that both Posey Simmonds and Claire Bretécher have since been honoured by their respective countries.

I'm putting these Freaky Fables, by Bud Handelsman, here so that people who haven't experienced them can see just how good they are. These are from Punch in the 1980s, when Alan Coren was Editor and the magazine was still great (as usual, click the drawing to see a larger image):