Wow, these are great.
I love the sad fellow sitting alone in the boiler room in the basement of the hotel. posted by billypilgrim at 6:03 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
If you could slice through my eyes and back into my brain you would see how much I love this stuff. Insanely awesome. posted by Elmore at 6:03 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
I love these, too - they were great for playing pretend. posted by HopperFan at 6:09 PM on May 3
If you could slice into the back of MY brain, you'd find corkboard there, keeping the temperature just right. posted by orme at 6:09 PM on May 3
Having been born well after these ran, I'm not sure how they'd worked their way in to the back of my brain, but I recognized them right away. Maybe an old elementary teacher still had them up on her walls in the 70s. Whenever Bruce MaCall's done the cover of the New Yorker, I somehow knew he was evoking and playing off these illustrations. Also, Richard Scarry seemed to take some ideas from these. Really amazing pieces of visual communication. posted by bendybendy at 6:17 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
Nice post... this is what the internet is good at! posted by HuronBob at 6:26 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Very cool. They're in my brain as well! posted by carter at 6:40 PM on May 3
bendybendy:Having been born well after these ran, I'm not sure how they'd worked their way in to the back of my brain, but I recognized them right away.
Same here. I'm googling for proof, but I seem to remember seeing similar cutaways in MAD Magazine. posted by dr_dank at 6:43 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
The cutaways are wonderful. Thank you for introducing me to Frank Soltesz. posted by rmmcclay at 7:08 PM on May 3
These things are great, thanks. I used to try and draw stuff like this when I was a little kid. posted by marxchivist at 7:10 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
These are pretty awesome, but I keep wondering if we will ever do cut aways with the same sort of zeal again. Businesses and buildings today seem so networked and distended that a telling, compact cut away would be rare. posted by doobiedoo at 7:11 PM on May 3
Seconding the "reminded of Richard Scarry" comment, plus some of Mad Magazine's stuff. posted by not_on_display at 7:46 PM on May 3
I like how, in the first link, way down at the bottom, in the basement, is one guy sitting in a chair in an empty room. I love this. posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:49 PM on May 3
So wonderful! And clearly sources for ye olde skoole Mad Magazine and the ever-wonderful Jimmy Corrigan. Or so it seems to me. posted by dogrose at 8:00 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
After that it mostly gets kind of boring, with most of the organizations either still extant or not having very good history pages. posted by jedicus at 8:13 PM on May 3
This is clearly nothing more than a Pepsi Blue astroturfication for ARMSTRONG'S INDUSTRIAL INSULATION.
Oh I used to love this kind of thing. Although, now that I think about it, being born in '71, I have no idea where I would have seen them. I do remember just drinking in every little detail and trying to draw my own. Thank you so much for giving these back to me! posted by dogmom at 8:26 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
I came in to suggest a Richard Scarry mashup with these bwo see already that two others name dropped him. Why? Is it the isometric view or something?
(I so wanted to see gerbils diving little cars through that brewery) posted by sourwookie at 9:12 PM on May 3
Def. reminds me of some Richard Scarry, plus I think there was a book called "What Makes It Go?" in the 70s from a different author that had cutaways of ocean liners and things that this puts me more in mind of. Or maybe it was a Scarry book that had the ocean liner. Anyway, I love these, esp. the grocery store one showing the butcher shop inside it. I met a meat dept. manager who reminisced about when he started out working in grocery stores there were halves of beeves hanging up in the back, and as the years went by they kept getting smaller portions of meat to cut. I look forward to looking more closely at some of the other ones. posted by frobozz at 9:20 PM on May 3
These make me want to dig out my old copy of SimTower. posted by jal0021 at 9:21 PM on May 3
I remember seeing similar things when I was growing up.
As for the Richard Scarry mashup idea, it's sort of already been done: Jill Barklem's Brambly Hedge books (particularly "The Secret Staircase") show cutaways of buildings made out of trees and tree stumps and inhabited by mice. I was totally fascinated by them as a child. The Angelina Ballerina books do cutaways, too, I think.
There. Your "small furry mammal" + cutaway fix should be taken care of now. posted by ocherdraco at 9:47 PM on May 3
Holy cow, frozen locker plants... it boggles my mind that such places existed. I sure won't be taking my $150 chest freezer for granted anymore. posted by crapmatic at 10:17 PM on May 3
I love the sad fellow sitting alone in the boiler room in the basement of the hotel.
Wonderful pictures, and a great blog (Telstar Logistics) to wit. Thanks very much! posted by stinkycheese at 10:27 PM on May 3
Scruffy would be a boiler room operator (a title that persists, although often in use for Glengarry Glen Ross Kevin Spacey roles). It may not have been full of excitement, but it was certainly full of ... pressure. If you don't keep a boiler in an optimal range, it can explode.
I really think that Al Jaffee took inspiration from these. They were instantly familiar to me, even though they were likely obsolete by the time I encountered them. The title plate, especially, seems to have inspired the MAD Fold-In title plates, at least in language. posted by dhartung at 10:57 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
As for cutaways of fictional stuff, see also Wil Huygen's and Rien Poortvliet's Gnomes for a few. That's a wonderful book overall, too. posted by Harald74 at 11:34 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Thanks for all the great in-thread links and comments.
Yes, Dennis Shay is a bit of a plagiarist. In fact, Dennis Shay's entire blog is pretty much lifted from metafilter. It doesn't really bother me that Dennis Shay copied my post without attribution but it might bother some people and since I am still up in the middle of the night I think I will just make this complaint about the author, Dennis Shay. posted by Rumple at 1:17 AM on May 4
Dennis Shay's next blog entry: "Yes, Dennis Shay is a bit of a plagiarist. In fact, ..." posted by pracowity at 1:32 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]
Seems that Dennis Shay may be a member named fautedemieux - this member has only made one comment in three years. posted by madamjujujive at 1:45 AM on May 4
Neat, but in that grocery store one, just what did those truck drivers think they were doing when they parked like that? posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:09 AM on May 4
Shay is better discussed there, I think. posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:59 AM on May 4
So. About them there cutaway pictures.
I love stuff like this. Cutaways from extinct white America. White men are everywhere in hats and coats, or they have their sleeves rolled up so they can work shoulder to shoulder with other white men. White women are dressed up (compared to today) for a trip to the grocery, or they're in hairnets (and still in dresses) and working shoulder to shoulder with other white women. White babies are quarantined. Black people don't get sick, don't shop, almost don't exist. Black men are waiters waiting obediently on white men and women in the restaurant but otherwise are absent. I haven't found any black women or children yet. posted by pracowity at 4:11 AM on May 4 [3 favorites]
*hisses at Marisa, then grunts*
No talk ... only kill
*draws his thumb across his throat, then pads stealthily towards the Red Room* posted by adipocere at 4:40 AM on May 4
I haven't found any black women or children yet.
That's interesting pracowity, when even the laundry workers in the hotel are white, it goes beyond a representation of some illustrator's normative views of the world. posted by Rumple at 10:31 AM on May 4
I'm sure Soltesz was dishing out what he knew his corporate clients wanted. The Negroes may have been much more than token on the factory floors, but the Armstrong boss certainly didn't want his clients to associate Armstrong with anyone other than folk like the bread coming out of that cutaway bakery. posted by pracowity at 11:47 AM on May 4
i want these as posters so badly i can taste it. posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 4:47 PM on May 4
Thanks for those links about "Life: A User's Manual" xod. For those who have not read it the apartment he described had a cut-away front elevation like this and the knights tour - by which each successive chapter moved from one apartment to the other looked like this. The amazing thing to me is that the book is a great read in its own right: I only discovered about its hidden puzzles years after reading it (and never knew the sequence was a Knight's Tour). posted by rongorongo at 3:15 AM on May 6 [1 favorite]
I've never seen those diagrams before, rongorongo, thank you! posted by xod at 10:00 AM on May 11
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I love the sad fellow sitting alone in the boiler room in the basement of the hotel.
posted by billypilgrim at 6:03 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]