Author Archive: Retro

Balduin, a student of Prague, leaves his roystering companions in the beer garden, when he finds he has reached the end of his resources. He is scarcely seated in a quiet corner when a hideous, shriveled-up old man taps him upon the shoulder and whispers vaguely of a big inheritance for Prague’s finest swordsman and wildest student if he will enter into a certain agreement. Balduin rebuffs him, satirically asking his weird companion to procure him “the luckiest ticket in a lottery or a doweried wife.” The old man goes off chuckling and thence onward persistently shadows Balduin, exerting a sinister influence over him, while Balduin is still disconsolate under the frowns of fortune. The Countess Margit Schwarzenberg, hunting with her cousin, to whom her father has betrothed her, meets with an accident. She is thrown over her horse’s head into a river, but Balduin, who has been directed to the spot by his evil [...]

Through a rapid succession of drawings, ingenious disguises and soft dissolves, the director portrays a quick-sketch artist who transforms to various characters according to the static outlines on his chalkboard.

A street cop repeatedly swats a down-on-his-luck gentleman with his nightstick and urges him to move along.

An incompetent hunter experiences a series of misadventures while out in the wilderness.

The fairies of Oz gather in the forest of Burzee one evening and weave a magic cloak that gives the wearer one wish, so long as it has not been stolen. The man in the moon tells them that their messenger should give it to the first miserable person she sees. Two children, Fluff and her younger brother “Bud” (a child’s attempt at “brother,” which stuck), have just lost their father and are taken by Aunt Rivette to live in Nole, the capital city of Noland, where the king has just died without heir. The messenger gives Fluff the cloak, who wishes to be happy again, while a legal loophole places Bud on the throne, and they empty the treasury to buy toys. Their pet mule Nickodemus is captured by robbers and puts together a small animal army (including the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, the Lonesome Zoop, the Woozy, and others) to battle the [...]

An inventor dreams that his newly designed airship takes flight.

Shy Joel Parker seems bound for nowhere, until Abbie Nettleton enters his life. With her prodding, Joel goes from timid nobody to a baseball star with bravura.

An unscrupulous and greedy capitalist speculator decides to corner the wheat market for his own profit, establishing complete control over the markets.