Monday, January 25, 2021
Obscurity of the Day: Ye Getting of Ye Goat
Last week's Carey obscurity was not one of his best by a long shot, but today's obscurity is, in my opinion, a delight. In Ye Getting of Ye Goat, penned for the New York Evening Telegram, Carey shows us various annoying dolts and some outright scoundrels getting their comeuppance. The cute kicker is that Carey turns the phrase "getting one's goat" into a literal event in the gags.
Ye Getting of Ye Goat first ran in the Evening Telegram on December 27 1910, then 11 more times in February through early April of the next year. The final strip, which was also Carey's swan song at the paper, ran on April 14.
Labels: Obscurities
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Wish You Were Here, from Cobb Shinn
Here's a Cobb Shinn postcard, postally dated 1913, from an unknown maker. Shinn's postcard work is generally crude like this (though I like the framing), but he produced bajillions of them.
Labels: Wish You Were Here
Yes, this is pretty poor. I always find it interesting that in an age that produced such high quality painting, sculpture and architecture and most magazine and advertising art seemed absolutely indifferent to further down mass culture graphic art in things like post cards and comics.
The great and the incompetent were side by side, without any problem. Publishers printed them, and people bought them.
: 1/23/2021 10:36 AM 
Friday, January 22, 2021
Magazine Cover Comics: Dimples' Day Dreams
Here's one of Nell Brinkley's magazine cover series, this one under the King Features brand. Dimples' Day Dreams ran from March 4 to May 20 1928.
Labels: Magazine Cover Comics
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Obscurity of the Day: The Troubles of Dictionary Jaques
Ed Carey managed to escape from McClure Syndicate around 1909, finding some takers for his wares in the higher-class precincts on the New York World and Evening Telegram. But for whatever reason, by late 1912 he returned to the fold as one of McClure's headliners. Being a headliner can be nice, but McClure at this time, struggling to find a market for the now out of fashion boilerplate Sundays, made him a big fish in a very small pond.
Carey decided not to bring back Simon Simple, his old McClure standby, but instead a new creation, The Troubles of Dictionary Jaques. However, the new strip is pretty much just Simon Simple with a French accent. Jaques (yes, he consistent spelled the name that way, not Jacques) adds on the additional conceit of trying to learn the ins and outs of English by misinterpreting dictionary definitions.
Carey still offers superb art, but the strip just doesn't seem to have the energy of his earlier efforts. It's no wonder, then, that the strip was retired after less than six months. It ran from November 3 1912 to April 20 1913*. Carey then runs under my radar until mid-1914, when he returned to McClure for another go-round.
* Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Labels: Obscurities
Monday, January 18, 2021
Obscurity of the Day: Comic Page Circus
I seldom consider unsigned features as worthy of being included in my Stripper's Guide listings, but this one caught my fancy. Comic Page Circus was never signed or bylined, and was never dignified by a listing in the E&P syndicate yearbook. It was a little filler feature, two columns wide and very skinny, as you can see. It assigned about half of it's daily appearances to gags told by a pair of clowns, and the other half to very simple profiles of various animals.
The feature was produced by Cleveland's Central Press Association. I know the artists who were in their cartooning bullpen, but the highly simplified art of Comic Page Circus resists my meager art-spotting prowess. If you put a gun to my head I might take a stab with Joe King, who was known to like drawing clowns. Only problem is he was at NEA at this time (also based in Cleveland), but who's to say he wouldn't moonlight on such a simple and safely anonymous job.
Comic Page Circus began on August 29 1932*. A year later, on August 28 1933*, the title of the series was changed to Midget Museum. This signalled a change of focus, as the writers were undoubtedly running out of animals to profile. Under the new title the gates were thrown open to profiles of just about anything that happened to show up on a random opening of the encyclopedia. The clowns were retired, and a new running character, Professor Nozitall, was sometimes used as presenter of odd and unusual factoids. The feature was finally retired on December 15 1934**, perhaps having exhausted itself for subject matter.
* Source: Mason City Globe-Gazette
** Source: St. Joseph Herald-Press
Labels: Obscurities
: 1/18/2021 2:15 PM --Allan
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Wish You Were Here, from an Anonymous Hack
I assumed this series was a freebie from the New York American, but Mark Johnson put me to rights back on this post about another card from the same series. This 1909 card is marked "Series 37 4". No telling how many of these awful cards were produced as who could stand to collect them all?
Friday, January 15, 2021
Obscurity of the Day: Home Culture
In this early Chicago Daily News weekday series, Raymond "GAR" Garman offers his take on what happens when Miss Redfeather, fresh out of college, returns to her tribe with the purpose of instructing them in sophisticated pursuits. Being this is 1902, I don't need to tell you that the gags are just as offensive as you might imagine.
Home Culture ran in the Chicago Daily News from February 10 to March 11 1902. Thanks to Cole Johnson for the scans.
Labels: Obscurities
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
Obscurity of the Day: Three Squares
I'm a big fan of cartoonist Walt Ditzen. His sinuous smooth penwork and instantly recognizable bottle-shaped characters graced the strip Fan Fare for over two and a half decades. The strip is about sports, which isn't really my thing, but my gosh that art just makes my eyeballs so very happy.
Ditzen came by his interest in sports honestly; 6' 4" and powerfully built, he barnstormed with a travelling semi-pro basketball team for awhile until an injury sidelined him. He settled in Chicago and became an artist for the National Safety Council during the war years. After the war he took some strip ideas to the Chicago Sun; they must have been impressed by him because he was offered the position of comics editor. One of his first jobs was to try to market his sports humor strip. Having seen firsthand what is important to editors, he came up with a small 3-column format which could be run horizontally or vertically. Rather than play upon the sports aspect of the new strip, Ditzen appealed to editors even with the title, Three Squares. It had nothing to do with the sports theme but accentuated his marketing come-on that the strip could fit just about anywhere.
Three Squares didn't sell well, but in the newspaper world there were plenty of editors who weren't fans of Marshall Fields' Chicago Sun, so that could have been the problem. There were just enough clients to launch the strip on June 3 1946*. Most client papers placed the strip on their sports pages, where the subject matter was sure to find an appreciative audience. Ditzen figured out pretty quickly that readers particularly liked his strip when the gags were about sports they themselves engaged in -- bowling, golf, fishing and such -- and Ditzen served the audience loyally.
Unhappy with his small client list, Ditzen tried to figure out another angle. He came up with the idea of offering the strip in two formats -- Three Squares would continue as is, but he'd add a fourth panel to each day's strip and market that as Fan Fare (thankfully not Four Squares!). Papers could then run either version, responding to daily space constraints. The Three Squares name would not officially continue, but client papers being as lazy as they are, the name lived on with many of those early clients.
He did not come up with this idea on his own. Doing the practically unthinkable, he'd been shopping Three Squares around to other syndicates. He found an interested suitor at the John F. Dille Company, and he probably cooked up this idea with them. Although Fan Fare did in fact debut under the imprint of the Chicago Sun on September 29 1947**, Ditzen already had one foot out the door. He announced publicly in Editor & Publisher that the strip would be moving in December. What is unrecorded is how long it took Marshall Field to plant a boot on his backside -- for all I know he remained the comics editor for Field for years afterward (anyone know?).
The 'drop panel' employed with Fan Fare didn't last long. In fact, it may have already been dumped by the time Dille's syndicate slug began appearing on the strip December 22 1947.
* Source: Chicago Sun
** Source: Editor & Publisher, 9/27/1947.
Labels: Obscurities
Monday, January 11, 2021
Ink-Slinger Profiles by Alex Jay: Lawrence Lariar
Lawrence Lariar was born Lawrence Rosenblum on December 25, 1908, in Brooklyn, New York. His birth date was recorded on his World War II draft, Connecticut death certificate (transcribed at Ancestry.com) and at the Social Security Death Index. However, three documents have 24 as the birth day: his New York City birth certificate (Ancestry.com) and 1929 and 1936 passenger lists. Lariar’s parents were Marcy Rosenblum, an English emigrant, and Ella Poll, a New Yorker, who married on February 28, 1906 in Manhattan. Lariar’s birth surname was noted in Contemporary Authors (1975) and in The Armchair Detective, Winter or Spring 1982.
Lariar has not yet been found in the 1910 U.S. Federal Census. The 1915 New York State census enumerator misheard Lariar’s first name and wrote Florence. Lariar, his parents and two siblings resided in Brooklyn at 227 East 26th Street. Lariar’s father was a builder. The address was the same in the 1920 census.
Lariar’s father passed away July 19, 1924, according to his death certificate at Ancestry.com.
The Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center said “Lariar graduated from Erasmus High School in 1925 and studied art at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts …”
Editor & Publisher, March 19, 1949, profiled Lariar and said
Lariar’s training began in the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. For the first six months he was on commercial illustration, then switched to cartooning. After graduation he started out with two buddies, Jack Arthur, now a school teacher in the New York system, and Adolph Schus, now a designer in fabric house.Lariar was credited as “Lawrence La Riar” in 1934 issues of Collier’s Magazine.
The trio set up a cartoon agency in a flat in the 80’s in New York, sold vignettes to College Life, for which the editor wrote two-line captions. They also got in America's Humor magazine, primarily because it couldn’t pay as much as Life or Judge, says Lariar. Arthur, the oldest of the three (he was 21) would contact various outlets and say he represented a dozen different artists, which Lariar, Arthur and Schus tried to prove. One of their “artists” was named Baron de Shebago, who drew a full page of zanies.
In 1927, Lariar went to Paris on a scholarship to the school of dynamic symmetry. [Contemporary Authors said he studied at the Academie Julien.] He was accompanied by Arthur. Later, the third musketeer, Schus, joined them. They went into the same routine in Paris, and did a big business with British magazines and Fleetway House, then one of the big magazine publishing houses of the world. Much of their work was for The Looker-On, which folded but paid off—fortunately for the sake of their fares back home. They did work, too, for Boulevardier, a Paris publication operated by Erskine Gwynn, an American.
The trio caromed back to New York in October, 1929 [Lariar’s return was on September 10 according to a passenger list at Ancestry.com], a few days after the boom had burst.
“To make a living, we did everything,” says Lariar. “We had a service for printers, drew cartoons for calendars, played messenger and did some of the first work for the slicks.”
The boys hit upon a deal that brought home the bacon when they did a series of cartoon postcards, designed to save Boy Scouts time in writing home to mother. They sold over a million of them in a direct-mail campaign.
Flushed with success, they then embarked on a venture that sank them. In Paris, Lariar had picked up a book reproducing the etchings of a Rembrandt exposition. The plates were excellent, and they had sold many of them to friends back home without any other effort than razoring them out of the book. Reproduction by a photographic process was expensive, and they moved in trade as slowly as coal buckets from a hardware merchant’s shelves in the summer time. …
Lariar has not yet been found in the 1930 census. Contemporary Authors said he commercial advertising artist from 1930 to 1933, then a freelance illustrator and political cartoonist in 1933. Editor & Publisher said “Lariar rented offices on 45th Street where he turned to strip cartooning, drew some of the first comic books in 1933, and for Stuart Shaftell’s Young America created ‘Inspector Keene of Scotland Yard.’”
The New York City marriage index said Lariar married Susan Meyer in Brooklyn on October 19, 1935.
In 1936 the couple traveled to Europe. They returned to New York on October 16, 1936. The passenger list said their home was in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. That same year saw the publication of the first volume of Who’s Who in American Art which included Lariar (spelled La Riar) whose home address was 150 Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn, and office at 56 West 45th Street. The entry said his cartoons appeared in Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post, Judge, Life, Country Gentleman, Young America, American Magazine, New York American, and Everybody’s (London).
Editor & Publisher said
In 1935, Brooklyn-born Lawrence Lariar married his agent, Susan Mayer [sic] of Brooklyn. They have two children. Lariar says his wife was one of the first cartoon agents in the magazine gag panel field, and was a gag creator on her own. He took the Walt Disney aptitude test in 1938. …
Lawrence Lariar of Wynsum avenue, Merrick, whose humorous cartoons in Esquire, Colliers, Saturday Evening Post, American and many other publications are “tops” as laugh producers, has gone to Hollywood.In the 1940 census Lariar’s home was in Los Angeles at 2214 Holly Drive. The cartoonist worked 25 weeks in 1939 and had been out of work for 22 weeks. The books California Artists, 1935 to 1956 (1981) and Artists in California, 1786-1940: L–Z (2002) spelled Lariar as La Riar or LaRiar.
He will forsake his drawing board for the typewriter when he joins the staff of Walt Disney productions in the story department.
Although he is only 30, Lariar is near the top in his profession and has been for several years. When his name was added to “Who’s Who in America” in 1937, the ultimate listing medium for those who have arrived, he was the first comic artist to be listed in that book.
While he has been cartooning for seven years as a free lance, poking fun at politics and administrations with his funny characters, he is no stranger to writing, and he feels that in joining Walt Disney, he is heading one step nearer the top of the ladder.
For Lariar believes that Disney has only started his career in motion pictures. Lariar has written fiction and he hopes to write more for Disney productions, but with the difference, that instead of seeing his work only in print, he will see his characters in action on the screen. …
Lariar returned to New York and wrote Cartooning for Everybody which was published by Crown Publishers in 1941. In Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes, Volume 2 (2009), Walt Stanchfield wrote
In his book, Cartooning for Everybody, Lawrence Lariar astutely counseled, “Sketching is sketching. It involves a model, usually, whether the model is a buxom nude or an old tomato can. It is copying, after a fashion. The cartoonist, when he sketches, is going through a process of study. He concentrates upon the model, plumbs its movement, bulk, the ‘guts’ of the thing he’s after. He puts into his drawing (though it may be as big as your thumbnail) all his experience. He simplifies. He plays with his line. He experiments. He isn’t concerned with anatomy, chiaroscuro, or the symmetry of ‘flowing line.’ There’s nothing highbrow about his approach to the sketch pad. He is drawing because he likes to draw!”Contemporary Authors said Lariar was cartoon editor at Liberty Magazine from 1941 to 1948.
Self-employed Lariar signed his World War II draft card on October 16, 1940. His residence was in Roosevelt, Long Island, New York at 99 Raymond Avenue.
Lariar wrote many books. He used the pseudonyms Adam Knight, Michael Lawrence and Michael Stark on his fiction works. The Man With the Lumpy Nose crime novel was published in 1944 and featured cartoonist-detective Homer and his fellow artists of the Comic Arts Club. The book won the Red Badge Mystery Award of a thousand dollars.
Lariar’s Best Cartoons of the Year annuals began in 1942.
In 1945 Liberty published the comic strip The Thropp Family which was written by Lariar and drawn by Lou Fine and Don Komisarow.
The Professional School of Cartooning was formed in 1947. An advertisement appeared in the January 1948 issue of Popular Mechanics. The teachers were Lariar (also executive director), Henry Boltinoff, Ed Nofziger, George Wolfe, Adolph Schus, Ben Roth, Irving Roir, Salo and Al Ross (the last four were brothers). One of Lariar’s students was Charles Johnson. Lariar was mentioned in The African American Encyclopedia, Volume 3 (1993), Charles Johnson’s Fiction (2003) and Passing the Three Gates: Interviews with Charles Johnson (2011).
American Newspaper Comics (2012) said Lariar was the writer on Bantam Prince. The series began as Bodyguard on May 2, 1948. The title changed to Ben Friday on July 11, 1949 then to Bantam Prince in October 1950. The first artist was John Spranger who was followed by Carl Pfeufer. See strips in color at Fabulous Fifties.
Two books by Lariar were published in 1950: The Easy Way to Cartooning from Crown and Careers in Cartooning from Dodd Mead. David Brown wrote the foreword to Careers and said in part
As Editor of Liberty, I’ve had an opportunity to observe Lawrence Lariar’s versatility in the field of comics. He has been Cartoon Editor of Liberty for seven years, during which his skilled judgment in selecting our cartoons helped maintain a high level of humor in the pages of our magazine. I know of nobody in the cartooning business who is better equipped to show the young talent of this country the inner workings of the various branches of the craft, for Lariar has been through the mill of experience in every phase of professional cartoonery.Lariar’s mother passed away July 2, 1950.
Lariar was the emcee of the CBS television show, Draw Me Another in 1947, and created the Happy Headlines show. According to Billboard, February 3, 1951, he was a panelist on What’s the Gag?
Freeport residents Larair and Guy Lombardo were included in World Biography. Lariar was president of the Freeport Artists Guild and Long Island Craftsmen’s Guild.
The New York Post, March 18, 1956, mentioned Lariar’s show at Pachita Crespi Gallery, 232 East 58th Street in Manhattan: “Also at Pachita’s are Lawrence Lariar, with cartoon sculpture, through March 30 ... ”
The 1960 Manhattan, New York City directory listed Lariar’s office at 52 Lexington Avenue.
Cartoonist Bill Griffith wrote about his mother’s affair with Lariar in Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist (2015) which was reviewed here.
Who’s Who in American Art (1973) said Lariar lived at 248 Mount Joy Avenue in Freeport, New York. In 1975 Contemporary Authors had his address as 57 West Lena Avenue in Freeport.
Lariar passed away on October 12, 1981, in Waterbury, Connecticut. The death certificate said his address was 399 Heritage Village, Southbury, Connecticut. It also mentioned his father’s surname, Rocenblum. A brief obituary appeared in The New York Times, October 15. Lariar’s wife passed away January 15, 1995 according to the Social Security Death Index.
—Alex Jay
Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles
Saturday, January 09, 2021
Wish You Were Here, from Percy Crosby
Here's another Percy Crosby postcard from the unknown maker who designated this series #580 (or is it S80?). This one was postally used in 1912, probably several years after they were produced.
To understand this gag are we to assume there's a beautiful babe who crowned him for getting fresh? Hey Percy, it'd help if you'd show that!
Like most of these Crosby cards, he seems to be just hating every pen stroke he puts down, carelessly flying through it without considering perspective or proportion. Look at that bag-why the 10 point brush outline on it alone? Feet don't bend that way! What is he wearing in lieu of a jacket?
I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
: 1/10/2021 10:14 AM Friday, January 08, 2021
Obscurity of the Day: Mike -- They Love Him So
Do you know what a "minced oath" is? What a lovely picturesque term for something you can say in polite company when what you really want to say is !@#$%$#@!!!!
Some minced oaths replace a naughty word with a G rated one. Think "Darn it all!" or "I don't give a fig!" Others are designed to keep the speaker from violating Commandment #3 -- that's where we get terms like "cripes" and "jeez" so as to not actually be taking a certain someone's name in vain.
It appears some take that third Commandment so seriously they don't even like to utter the names of saints. From these goody-goodies we got the terms "for Pete's sake" and "for the love of Mike" (St. Peter and St. Michael barely disguised), and that's where today's obscurity comes in.
The phrase "For the love of Mike" can be traced back at least to the 1880s, but it took a few decades before Ardo D. Condo, one of the brightest lights in the NEA cartooning stable, took aim at this ridiculous phrase. He wondered in cartoon form what would happen if there really was a Mike to whom all these minced oath utterers were referring. While Mike -- They Love Him So is no competition for Condo's classic series Everett True and Mr. Skygack from Mars, this cartoon is great fun nonetheless, showing what sort of interesting permutations Condo could twist out of such a one-note comic idea.
Mike - They Love Him So runs in the NEA archives as an occasional weekday strip from September 8 1910 to January 5 1911, but NEA clients were notorious for running things on their own schedules, so don't be surprised if you find it in a paper a little earlier or later.
Wednesday, January 06, 2021
Obscurity of the Day: Jack the Giant Killer
Johnny Gruelle was a very prolific newspaper cartoonist in the years before Raggedy Ann became his ticket to fame and fortune. Some of his best work was at the New York Herald, where he created the very long-running series, Mr. Tweedeedle. That series began in 1911 and ran for eight years, an extremely impressive run in those days.
Surprisingly, Gruelle did little else for the Herald in that long peiod. Only two other series are known, one of which is today's obscurity, Jack the Giant Killer. Jack is not much older than a toddler, and in his fantasy world he and his dog, Dumplins, are professional giant wranglers. The pair are able to best a giant with ease; the combat is over so quickly it is carried out between panels.
This series is so gosh-darn adorable it seems a pity that Gruelle abandoned it after a mere five episodes, from August 6 to September 3 1911. As much effort as he expended on this strip and Mr. Tweedeedle, though, perhaps he simply didn't have time to do both.
Several housekeeping notes: in my book I miscredit this strip to the New York Tribune and credit it to Charles Twelvetrees -- get out your White-Out to correct those embarrassing errors.
Second, I was perusing the Johnny Gruelle wiki entry, and if you are a Wikipedia editor, please oh please correct the ridiculous statements that Gruelle worked at the Tacoma Tribune, Toledo News-Bee, Pittsburgh Press, Spokane Press and Cleveland Press -- all the material being referenced is syndicated stuff from NEA, where Gruelle worked in much of the latter half of the 1900s. Sheesh.
This is my first exposure to the JTGK strip which is cute, funny and beautifully rendered. Dumplins, with his occasional droll comments, is a hoot.
FYI, your book lists Charles H. Twelvetrees as creator of the Jack the Giant Killer strip, without mention of Johnny Gruelle.
Did Mr. Twelvetrees write the strip?
Bob Carlin
As for the Literary Digest, perhaps without going any deeper than whatever paper the item was clipt from, the credit would be assigned.
: 1/07/2021 9:59 AM --Allan
Monday, January 04, 2021
Obscurity of the Day: Herkimer
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a few locally produced cartoons, the most famous of which was (and is) The Weatherbird, a front page daily panel cartoon. Even the Sunday comics section of the P-D once had some impressive local content, Walter Quermann's lovely Hickory Hollow Folks. That wasn't the only locally produced Sunday strip, though. From November 17 1946 October 11 1953, Quermann's strip was joined by Herkimer by Amadee Wohlschlaeger.
Wohlschlaeger produced sports cartoons for the P-D, but was mainly entrusted with the mascot feature of the paper, The Weatherbird. Wohlschlaeger helmed this feature for almost fifty years (1932 - 1981). Evidently the daily panel and sports cartoons left the cartoonist with a little free time, and he came up with Herkimer, a delightful and skillfully executed pantomime strip. Herkimer was a rotund middle-aged man whose short one-tier adventures have him about half the time as the playful force behind some hijinks, and the other half as the butt of misfortune. The character reminds me of French actor Jacques Tati's Mr. Hulot, who first appeared on screen just as Herkimer was winding down.
Thanks for running these "Herkimer" strips by Amadee. He didn't use "Wohlschlaeger' in the Post-Dispatch. He also created a feature called "St. Louis Oddities" which became "Our Own Oddities". It was sort of like a Ripley strip but with local interest. I loved his lady characters with the pointed legs when I was growing up in St. Louis, and I was in love with the Hickory Hollow Folks page, and O. Hum the Opossum, who was the star of the strip. The rotogravure color printing in the Post was beautiful, but it doesn't age as well as the more conventional four-color printing. Thanks, Mark
I can't think of any other papers that did that, it must have just been too expensive or impractical, as more and more papers had their sections printed for them elswhere.
: 1/05/2021 4:14 PM Thursday, December 31, 2020
Advertising Strips: Good Vision Will Help Win the Decision
Are you depressed? Anxious? Stressed? It's not because you are a war worker in 1943, with members of your family fighting and dying overseas. It's not that you're putting in long hours. It's not the changes in your diet since rationing began. Nah, buddy, the problem is your eyes! Can't you see how obvious it is?
Some association of optometrists, apparently with the initials A.C.S., offered their members a sequence of five comic strips designed to stimulate business. In each strip a war worker who is troubled on the job is discovered to be slipping because of eye problems. The series, titled Good Vision Will Help Win the Decision, began appearing in newspapers in March 1943; in some cases it ran daily, others weekly, and still others on a more haphazard schedule*. The strips are always run featuring the name and sometimes an associated print ad from a local optometrist.
The samples were supplied to me by Mark Johnson, who IDs the anonymous cartoonist as F. O. Alexander. Thanks Mark!
* Sources: Sedalia Democrat, Rochester Democrat, Ord Quiz.
Speaking of F. O. Alexander, if anyone is interested in seeing his jolly countenance, you should take a blink at the Stripper's Guide entry of 4 March 2020.
Happy New Year, everyone- we sure could use one.
: 12/31/2020 10:59 AM Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Magazine Cover Comics: Two Innocents Abroad
One of only three magazine cover series drawn by Leonard T. Holton, Two Innocents Abroad is the earliest of them and the only one he drew for the Philadelphia Ledger Syndicate.
Holton later became a comedy writer, so it is unfortunate that for this series he was assigned only the art duties. The writer was Margaret Ernst, whose ability to write comedic verse was quite nearly nonexistent. I don't know if this is the same Margaret Ernst who later paired up with James Thurber for a book called In A Word, but if so she was lucky to have fine collaborators at least twice.
Two Innocents Abroad offers us vignettes from the whirlwind world tour of two flapper-types. Our gals may very well have never been dignified with names -- they aren't in my examples. There also seems to be a problem with the count of travellers, as a schnook named Bobby Day tags along in at least one sample (and he even has a name!).
This pretty forgettable magazine cover series had a very short run, from July 28 to September 1 1929. Impressive, though, that these ladies made the Grand Tour in a mere six weekly episodes.
Incidently, did someone figure out their income tax on your second example?
: 12/31/2020 5:14 PM Thursday, December 24, 2020
A Christmas Obscurity: The Nobodies of Santa Claus Land, Discovered by a Modern Columbus
Comic strips? Oh, yeah, I remember those things. Used to like them. Liked delving into their history. Hazy, but it's coming back to me now.
But that was in the before times, the long ago carefree days when I wasn't renovating a house. See, I bought this house last winter, to renovate and resell. But the project, which was expected to take about four months, ended up taking ten. It became an unremitting slog, everything taking longer than expected, materials very hard to source because of the pandemic, and prices spiralling for the same reason.
In one way, the project was great. We started work just a week or two before covid became an issue, and while many people found themselves stuck at home twiddling their thumbs, boredom was the least of our problems during this pandemic crisis. In fact, bizarrely enough the pandemic was in a way the savior of the venture. You see, rural Nova Scotia has been practically untouched by covid; in fact it has been touted as one of the safest places to be in the world during the pandemic. That has stimulated the real estate market here to go bonkers. Canadians and foreigners from big cities are trying to escape here in droves. Our project, which went far over budget, could have turned into a veritable ocean of red ink, but due to covid we ended up having a very easy time selling the property for a reasonable, if not spectacular, profit. To everything ... even a pandemic ... there is a silver lining I suppose.
The house sale closed on December 21, and I plan to take it easy for the rest of the winter. That means hopefully lots of time spent researching and blogging about comic strips ... my idea of R&R. No idea if anyone is still out there checking in with the blog, so I may well be in an echo chamber, but, well, shrug. My apologies to Stripper's Guide readers for leaving you for such a very long time.
The blog will probably not get daily updates like it used to, at least for the near future. I certainly don't plan to go straight from one daily slog right to another. So I ask for your patience. I'm also very interested to hear if you have any ideas for content, as I'd like to come up with some different themes than our old tried and true ones. I do want to go back to our Cartoons Magazine series, the George Herriman series (if I can ever find the remaining stack of material in some box somewhere), and maybe even finish the final letters of the Mystery Strips of E&P series. That one has been languishing for a very long time.
As an aside, due to my work schedule I have been leaving many emails unanswered over the past months. I apologize to all who have written and been met only with silence back.
So, all that housekeeping out of the way, today's special Christmas obscurity brings together an unwieldy title, excruciating doggerel, a plot that is all but MIA and cartoons that can't really be bothered to have much to do with the text. Merry Christmas from the New York Herald, 1897!
The Nobodies of Santa Claus Land sports some decent art by J.M. Condé, but the art fails to really illustrate the story. In the episode above the climax of the action is the formation of the flags, but Conde didn't read that far. He elected rather to draw vignettes of the fairy tale characters mentioned early on. I can't say I blame him for reading only the first few stanzas as the verses by S.R. Maconochie* could be classified as torture under the Geneva Convention.
The series ran in the Herald from October 3 to November 28 1897. On that last date it looks like the art is by someone other than Condé, but it is unsigned. That installment tells us that the series will run through December 19, but it was never seen again, at least on the New York Herald microfilm I reviewed.
* The versifier may have been hiding behind a clever pseudonym. Although Maconochie is a known surname, it was in these days also the name of a detested soldier's tinned ration. Bad stew ... dog food ... doggerel ... Maconochie?
OFFISSA PUPP: DAWGUNIT! IT LOOKS LIKE THIS "PEACE PIPE" HAS GIVEN THEM AN OVERDOSE OF PEACE.
FRAME 2: AND IT'S LOADED WITH NOTHING BUT THE FINEST TOBACCO TOO--WITH PEACE IN EVERY FIBER OF IT--SNIFF
FRAME 3: HMMM IT TASTES PEACEFUL ENOUGH--THERE ISN'T A BIT OF HARSHNESS TO IT.
FRAME 4: IGNATZ, KAT AND PUPP ARE ALL PROPPED UP WITH A LOG FOR A PILLOW SLEEPING SIDE BY SIDE.
Anything you do will be interesting, but here's an idea. I've always wanted a grand encyclopedia of comic strip themes and tropes: the masked mugger in the alley, the wife with the rolling pin behind the door, the flip-take. You can't even start on any of those without already having an encyclopedic knowledge of the terrain. So how about every once in a while having a historical treatment of some theme or another?
(The TV Tropes site does this, sporadically. Nice but not thorough or authoritative.)
: 12/25/2020 5:02 PM Now, I named them damn comic stamps, been looking at them every day since August, I forget- was there a prize involved, or no?
Also,what do you make of the "Cut-Out Toy" feature and what the mysterious alternate syndicates mean?
Yours,
Mark Johnson
: 12/26/2020 9:25 AM Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Comic Stamp Quiz, Part 6
Here is the sixth and final batch of unidentified comic stamps. Can you name the strip the stamp ran with, and the name of the character depicted?
Labels: Q and A
All from MOON MULLINS:
45-"MISS SCHMALTZ'S FATHER. PLUTO G. SCHMALTZ" (17 July 1932)
46-"CAPT. OSCAR SCHMALTZ ABOUT THE TIME THAT REVENUE CUTTER SPOILED HIS WINTER CRUISE TO CUBA."(14 August 1932)
47-"T.N. TOMATONOSE MULLINS. MOONSHINE'S FATHER'S SECOND COUSIN." (24 July 1932)
48-"MOON'S GRANDFATHER BUNGSTARTER G. MULLINS, ESQ." (7 August 1932)
49-"EMMY SCHMALTZ WHEN SHE WAS SIX YEARS OLD." (10 July 1932)
50-"MUSHMOUTH WHEN HE WAS A PRIZE FIGHTER-A CHARACTERISTIC POSE" (29 May 1932)
51-"KITTY HIGGINS HERSELF!(22 May 1932)
: 8/18/2020 8:20 AM It's been almost a month without a new posting- Has anything happened?
: 9/14/2020 9:12 PM : 9/29/2020 11:43 AM It's now into October, and no new posts since mid-August. Does anyone know what's become of Allan?
: 10/01/2020 12:13 AM --Allan Holtz
: 11/03/2020 11:59 AM He has assured me he will soon be back here, but for now, an all time-consuming renovation project on some of his property must take precedent.
: 12/11/2020 12:35 PM in 1921-1923, there was a syndicated feature drawn by Dan Rudolph called "A Colored Cut-Out Toy". It ran in the Atlanta Constitution, the Syracuse Herald, LA Times, and San Francisco Chronicle, among others. It had a copyright mark for Thomson Features.
Are you familiar with this feature? Do you have any other information about the artist Dan Rudolph?
Thank you.
: 12/17/2020 11:16 AM Monday, August 17, 2020
Comic Stamp Quiz, Part 5
Here is the fifth batch of unidentified comic stamps. Can you name the strip the stamp ran with, and the name of the character depicted?
Labels: Q and A
These are from MOON MULLINS and The GUMPS:
39- "ANDY GUMP AT THE AGE OF ONE WEEK-FIRST ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPH-WEIGHT 8/10 POUNDS-" (15 May 1932)
40-YOUR KAYO TRADING STAMP. HE POSED FOR THIS A THOUSAND FEET UNDER WATER." (27 December 1931)
41-"MIN AT THE AGE OF TEN-" (4 June 1932)
42-"MOONSHINE'S OLD AUNT JELLYROLL MULLINS." (28 August 1932)
43-"OLD UNCLE WILLIE MULLINS. A PHOTO TAKEN DURING HIS THIRD YEAR IN THE SIXTH GRADE." (4 June 1932)
44-"LORD PLUSHBOTTOM WHEN HE WAS A LITTLE BOY WEARING A SAILOR SUIT." (8 May 1932)
: 8/17/2020 2:49 PM Friday, August 14, 2020
Comic Stamp Quiz, Part 4
Here is the fourth batch of unidentified comic stamps. Can you name the
strip the stamp ran with, and the name of the character depicted?
This bunch seem to be Gumprocentric:
31- "AN OLD PRINT OF UNCLE BIM-"(10 July 1932)
32- "TOWNSEND ZANDER" (31 July 1932)
33-" AN OLD TIN TYPE OF ANDY GUMP-" (25 September 1932)
34- "AN OLD PRINT OF ANDY'S MOTHER-" (18 June 1932)
35-"ANDY GUMP'S MOTHER-IN-LAW" (21 August 1932)
36-"MIN AT THE AGE OF FOURTEEN-" (24 July 1932)
37- "FROM AN OLD PRINT-" (11 June 1932)
38-"ANDY GUMP AT THE AGE OF FOUR-"(29 May 1932)
going back a few days:
30- ANDY GUMP AT THE AGE OF SIX-TEACHER'S PET-" (7 August 1932)
And Here's a HERBY one-
20- "EVERYTHING TO LITTLE HERBY LOOKS VERY VERY GREEN. HE'D KNOW IT WAS THE SUN GLASSES IF HE'D USE HIS BEAN!"(21 August 1932)
Incidentally, these all had captions and borders when they were published, so whoever cut them up really liked to cut things close.
: 8/14/2020 10:14 AM Thursday, August 13, 2020
Comic Stamp Quiz, Part 3
Here is the third batch of unidentified comic stamps. Can you name the strip the stamp ran with, and the name of the character depicted?
In fairness, I wonder if perhaps #23-26 aren't real; they sure look like amateur drawings to me.
Labels: Q and A
Here's my suggestions:
23-26- Home made, I guess whoever collected these stamps couldn't get enough, so he made some up. I can't wait to see some samples of the strip these might be from.
27- Texas Slim
28- On Our Block
29 a/b-Mr. Bailey(Smitty)
30- Is this even intended as a "stamp?" It looks like a detail in a regular panel of something.
: 8/13/2020 11:47 AM In "The Great Comic Book Heroes", Jules Feiffer described how he hand-drew his own comic books as a kid, then took them to where other kids would swap or sell comics. Feiffer notes, "Mine went for less because they weren't real"
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Comic Stamp Quiz, Part 2
Here is the second batch of unidentified comic stamps. Can you name the strip the stamp ran with, and the name of the character depicted? (Okay, a few are named ....) One hint: our comic stamp collector has the ID wrong on #15; it is not Tillie the Toiler.
Labels: Q and A
The stamps as far as I can tell, some Chicago tribune and /or NEA things as well as KFS:
10a/b-Freckles?
11- A strain on the family tie
12,-Little Jimmy
13-?
14-Gasoline Alley?
15- Lillums Lovewell, Harold Teen's girl.
16 a/b Corky? Herby?
17-Gasoline Alley?
18,19, 20 Corky?
21- Obviosly there was no more Silk Hat Harry series in the 1930s, I think this might be from one of Murphy's sets of theme stamps, this being hearst strips of the then recent past.
22- It's Alexander Smart, but was it drawn by Winner?
: 8/12/2020 12:26 PM Tuesday, August 11, 2020
Comic Stamp Quiz, Part 1
What are comic stamps?
They were an extra added feature of some Sunday comic strips, mostly in the 1930s. In addition to the main strip and up to two topper strips, some cartoonists added yet more punch to their pages with comic stamps, which were little cartoon portraits typically printed at about the size of a typical postage stamp. Most simulated stamps, with the perforations along the edges, others play money with character faces, some just put the portraits in plain ol' rectangles.
Here's a typical comic stamp from a Tillie the Toiler Sunday, an addendum to the Van Swaggers topper strip:
The idea of comic stamps was that kids should cut them out and paste them into stamp albums or scrapbooks, I guess. I don't really get the entertainment value of this, but then I'm not the intended audience. There evidently were kids who did this, because today if you watch the eBay auctions sometimes you'll come across a dusty old collection of comic stamps or play money.
Much to my surprise, there are even people today who collect them. I was contacted recently by a comic stamp collector who was hoping to get my help IDing some of their more obecure stamps. What I thought would be easy turned out to be anything but. It turns out that many comic stamps don't identify the characters, and often they depict secondary or even short-lived guests in the strips.
Rather than have all the fun to myself of trying to figure out the comic strip that gave birth to these comic stamps, and the characters they depict, I decided to throw it open to the group as a quiz. And this is not some easily aced gimme, either. So if you can figure any of them out, be sure to post a comment and accept the laurels of an expert comic stamp spotter.
Here's the first batch. I'm not sure #1 is an actual comic stamp, but the rest appear to be the real thing:
Labels: Q and A
Here's my pathetic guesses:
1-The corner of a Post Toasties ad
2-A character from Tim Tyler's Luck(?)
3-A character from Blondie.
4-From Johnnie Round-the-world stamp gallery?
5-A character from Count Screwloose
6,7,8- from Katzenjammer Kids
9-from Captain & the Kids(?)
: 8/11/2020 11:52 AM Always wondered about those. Had the impression they were an organized campaign by, at first anyway, one syndicate. They were almost always presented without comment, so I wonder if there any kind of promotion telling kids to look for them and collect them.
Went back to the Popeye reprints and noticed Segar favored play money, larger than the stamps and often featuring gags or words of wisdom. Unlike the other strips I'd seen, there was usually a character commenting on the play money or a mini draw-me thing.
Early in the '30s Segar abandoned the play money in favor of cut-out movies and eventually the Cartoon Club. But years later, Prince Valiant sported collectible-type images on its masthead into the 40s: Always the same portrait of Val on the left, and various characters, objects and scenes on the right. They vanish when the masthead strip vanishes.
Were there other strips that kept the stamp / play money thing going that long, or was Prince Valiant a last stand?
The play money could be in other syndicate series. If you've seen 1930's copies of the Sunday Mirror of New York City, you'll notice for years they had play money of their strips, Hearst and non-Hearst, such as Toonerville Folks, that they made themselves, used as space fillers along the bottom of the pages when they couldn't come up with a long,thin ad. (often for "Baby Ruth")
: 8/11/2020 5:53 PM : 8/11/2020 8:46 PM 