These are pages 47, 48 and 49 from a story board for a proposed series called “Roxie’s Raiders”, done by
Jack Kirby for the Ruby-Spears animation studio, some time in the early ‘80’s.
(My set of copies has many gaps; I invited anyone who is able to fill those
gaps. I’m missing pages 4,6,12, 14 through 29, and 36 through 46.)
For more on the project, follow
this link. http://comicsalliance.com/10-amazing-jack-kirby-designs-that-need-to-happen/
The last sentence of yesterday’s
post puts me in mind of something that I hadn’t questioned until writing that
sentence: That John Dorman, head director of the Ruby-Spears Action-Adventure
Storyboard Department, was also in charge of the Presentation Art Department
(or whatever it was called. It was the department in charge of working up ideas
for new series to pitch to the networks.) Is this actually true though? Was
John Dorman the decider-in-chief who got to commission his favorite comic book
artists to come up with ideas for series? I assume he had to answer to Joe Ruby
and Ken Spears.
To quote Wikipedia: “Ruby-Spears Productions (also know as
Ruby-Spears Enterprises was a Burbank, California based entertainment
production company that specialized in animation. The firm was founded in 1977
by veteran writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears. Both Ruby and Spears started out
as sound editors
at Hanna-Barbera,
and later branched out into writing stories for such programs as Space Ghost and The Herculoids. In
1968, they were assigned the task of developing a mystery-based cartoon series
for Saturday morning, the result of which was Scooby-Doo,
Where Are You!. They were also writers and producers for DePatie-Freleng
Enterprises, particularly for The Pink Panther
and Sons.[1]
The firm's credits include the animated series Fangface, Fangface and
Fangpuss, The Plastic Man
Comedy/Adventure Show, Thundarr the
Barbarian, Rubik the
Amazing Cube, the 1983 version of Alvin and the
Chipmunks series, The Centurions,
the 1988 Superman
series and the American Mega Man
cartoon series.
Only one series, Piggsburg Pigs!,
used Canadian voice talent rather than American one like most of their other
cartoon shows. Ruby-Spears was also responsible for the animated sequence in
the 1988 film Child's Play.
The Ruby-Spears studio was
founded in 1977 as a subsidiary of Filmways Television and
was sold in late 1981 to Taft Broadcasting,
becoming a sister company to Hanna-Barbera Productions. In 1991, Ruby-Spears
was spun off into RS Holdings while most of the original Ruby-Spears library
(its pre-1991 library) was sold along with Hanna-Barbera to Turner
Broadcasting System, which in turn merged with Time Warner in 1996. The
Ruby-Spears studio closed in 1996.[2]”
This
obituary of John Dorman is quoted from Animation Magazine , February 1, 2011.
“Veteran
storyboard artist John Dorman died Saturday at the age of 58, according to a post on The Animation Guild blog. The cause of
death has not been revealed.
Dorman
began his career in 1974 as an assistant animator on The Nine Lives of Fritz
the Cat. Within a few years, he was working regularly as a layout artist on
animated TV series such as Tarzan, Fantastic Four and Plastic Man
and a segment in the animated feature Heavy Metal.
In the
1980s, he worked as a story director on such series as Thundarr the
Barbarian, Goldie Gold and Action Jack, Rubik the Amazing Cube, Mister T
and Foofur.
Dorman’s
credits as a storyboard artist include The New Adventures of Batman, Smurfs,
Tiny Toon Adventures, The Ripping Friends and the 2005 animated feature Valiant. He
also designed characters for several projects, including an animated Police
Academy series.
The
images in this story are from Dorman’s blog, which you can find at http://johndorman.wordpress.com.”
Wow. John
was only 2 years older at the time of his death than I am now.
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