Didn’t mean to buy so many books but I could not help myself when I went to my regular secondhand bookstore.
If I didn’t stop myself, I would have bought more. And a few more old issues of the O magazine by Oprah. And In-Style, too.
One of the most exciting finds was this tiny booklet by Gustav Verbeek, a comic artist who lived at the turn of the old century (he died in 1937).
What’s interesting is he only drew 6-panel comics. If you read it one way, you get half the story.
If you read the comic panels the upside down way, you get the other half of the story!
His comics are mainly about the silly adventures of two characters called Lovekins and Muffarroo. Both are odd in their own way. But it is simply amazing how creative Verbeek is because once you turn the picture upside down, a totally new ‘scene’ appears!
You can take a look at what I mean by looking at this drawing of his. First you see how Muffaroo is attacked by a big fish in his canoe but when you turn the comic upside down, you see Lovekins being caught by a giant bird. How amazing is that!
And the story does make sense. And this Dutch-American man did this type of comic every week for the 64 weeks that he was drawing for The New York Herald newspaper.
It’s like the ambigrams made famous by Dan Brown in Angels & Demons. Ambigrams are graphic art where the word reads the same both ways!
Of course, Verbeek’s booklet of 6 stories were a complete steal at RM1.50. I don’t think you can get it anywhere even if you had pots of money.
The things one can get at the secondhand bookstore!