Stripper's Guide

 

The Christian Science Monitor had sort of a mini-golden age of comics in their staid pages during the 1940s. Well, maybe not quite gold, but at least high end aluminum foil. These were the years when Adventures of Waddles, The Bells, and other fine strips ran regularly there. Amid the many new features that came and went in this dcade was Jennifer, a strip (or sometimes panel) about a pig-tailed little girl who thinks rather grandly of herself.  As with most CSM strips, it wasn't a daily, but just ran a few times per week. It first appeared on November 25 1944 and ended July 26 1946. 

The strip is bylined to Isabelle Grover. I can find not a peep about her on the 'net. That might just be me not searching well enough, or that old single/married name bugaboo. Another possibility is that the creator used a pseudonym -- some artists who worked for the Christian Science Monitor felt it prudent to keep their real identity a secret rather than to be known for practicing Christian Science.

Labels: Obscurities

 

Here's card #500 from Reinthal & Newman, featuring a Drayton cherub who has a very healthy appetite. She's ready to chow down, so hop to it mom.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

 

Halley's Comet is finally reaching the general environs of the Earth, and while some ordinary people are up in arms at the scary prospect, the scientists are happy to explain that everything is going according to predictions.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

 

Mister & Mrs. is a truly odd success story, a strip that survived for over forty years with essentially no fan base that I am aware of, or, for that matter, that I can imagine. 

The strip debuted in 1919, helmed at first by the great Clare Briggs. Mr. & Mrs. sure didn't have much of the touch of greatness that Briggs could impart, though. The strip was about a bickering couple, Joe and Vi Green, and was quite depressing in its horrifically negative view of marriage. The couple were constantly at each other's throats and honestly seemed to be just one more fight away from either divorce or even homicide. The regular tagline of the strip, in which the couple's young son meekly whispers to the adult combatants, "Papa love mama?", heartbreaking as it is, seems to say it all. 

Why would anyone want to read this? If the reader is unmarried, this strip is scary enough to make them swear off the institution. If happily married, it's a horror show of what could eventually be. If unhappily married, a confirmation that this is a perfectly normal situation, not one that will ever likely improve. 

But what do I know? People read and seem to love Andy Capp and The Lockhorns, which are more of the same. So perhaps there's some weird fascination, a "there but by the grace of God go I", that draws an appreciative audience. 

My guess is that Briggs had little to do with the Sunday strip; he probably took primarily a supervisory role once the ball was rolling. When he unexpectedly died in 1930 the strip was taken over by a series of lesser creators, without even the guidance of a brilliant manager. The new creators seemed content to continue the formula as long as the paychecks kept coming. 

The last creator was Kin Platt, whose work on the strip began as artist only, from scripts by Arthur Folwell, in 1948. Platt's work at the outset was marginally attractive, but by the mid-50s was looking so crude and slapdash that you might think he was a doddery octogenarian; he was actually just in his 40s. 

Folwell dropped out in 1957, and the daily strip (added after Briggs' death) was dropped in 1958, but Platt kept up the Sunday until September 22 1963. You might expect that Platt would have finally given readers what I'm sure they were hoping for all those years, a nice day in divorce court for Joe and Vi. But no, he elected to end the strip  with a breaking of the fourth wall episode, and some final bickering from Jo and Vi before they went forever back in the inkwell.

Labels: Firsts and Lasts

Miss Maher to Wed on July 10

Is Bride-Elect of Westerner

Mrs. Francis Langford Maher of 395 Clinton Ave. announces the engagement and approaching marriage of her daughter, Miss Elizabeth Maher, to Harley Griffiths of Coronado Beach, Cal.

Miss Maher, daughter of the late Francis L. Maher, is president of the Alumnae Association of the College of New Rochelle, She is also a graduate of St. Angela Hall and received her Masters Degree from Fordham University.

Mr. Griffiths is the son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Harley Bradley Griffiths of Brooklyn. He is a graduate of. St. Augustine’s Academy and attended Pratt Institute and the National Academy of Design. Mr. Griffiths is associated with Consolidated Aircraft Company in San Diego, Cal.

The wedding will take place on July 10. 

Cathedral Is Scene of Miss Maher’s Bridal

Miss Elizabeth Maher, daughter of Mrs. Francis Langford Maher of 885 Clinton Ave. and the late Mr. Maher, was married yesterday to Harley Griffiths, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Harley Bradley Griffiths of Coronado Beach, Cal. The ceremony was performed in the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Manhattan, by Monsignor Joseph F. Flannelly and a reception followed at Sherry’s.

Miss Maher was attended by her sister, Mrs. Edward T. Kelly of Kew Gardens, and Mrs. Amedeo Giorando of Manhattan. Francis L. Maher gave his sister in marriage. The bride wore a gown of white satin made with a sweetheart neckline. Her tulle veil was fastened by a braided satin cap and she carried her mother’s prayerbook with a marker of white orchids. The attendants wore turquoise blue crepe gowns and carried bouquets of pink delphinium and wore headdresses of similar flowers and blue tulle. White stock and blue delphinium decorated the chapel. 

William E. Frost of Forest Hills was best manned the ushers were Dr. Edward Brennan of Brooklyn and Ensign Daniel Sullivan of Cedarhurst.

The bride received her education at St. Angela Hall and the College of new Rochelle and received her masters degree at Fordham university. She is president of the Alumnae Association of the College of New Rochelle. The bridegroom attended St. Augustine’s Academy, Pratt Institute and the National Academy of Design. 

Following a trip to Canada, the couple will reside in Allentown, Pa.

Harley Griffiths

386 Weaver St. 2-1150

Larchmont, N. Y.

Mr. Griffiths exhibited his work at galleries in Larchmont, Pelham, New York City and Nantucket His shows included the annual show of the Greenwich Art Association and the 50th annual show of the Hudson Valley Art Association. 

For more than 25 years, he was a commercial artist and illustrator for B. Altman & Co. He retired in 1975 and became a free-lance artist. Mr. Griffiths lived in Larchmont for 46 years and spent most of his summers on Nantucket. In Larchmont he was a parishioner of St. Augustines Church. Mr. Griffiths was a member of the Nantucket Artists Association and the National Arts Club of New York. 

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

 

In the 1960s and 70s, Tug McGraw was a star relief pitcher for the Mets, then the Phillies, and a gregarious colorful character embraced by baseball fans. He chose to parley that goodwill into, of all things, a daily and Sunday newspaper comic strip. 

The strip was titled Scroogie, starring (who else?) a major-league relief pitcher, playing for the Pets. Scroogie's main co-star is Tyrone, his best buddy and outfielder. Other characters include Homer, a dimwitted slugger; Millicent Cashman, owner of the team; and Royce Rawls, a starting pitcher. Many characters were loosely based on McGraw's real-life teammates, and real player names were often dropped for gags in the strip. 

The strip, which was syndicated by the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, offered a somewhat different take on the world of pro sports owing to a creator who was actually experiencing that world from the inside. The strip was much more realistic than old-school baseball epics like Ozark Ike. Gags often target the fans, managers and owners, and predictably there's a lot of material about the existential dread of a relief pitcher, the perennial hero or goat in every appearance. 

The real problem with any baseball strip, though, is what to do in the off-season. Options are slim -- you can either ignore reality and have your team blithely playing away in January, or you can find other things for your characters to do from November to March. Scroogie gave its characterts an off-season, and filled much of the time with what players do on their vacations. Scroogie and Tyrone also took a shot at playing pro football, a ridiculous contrivance also favoured by other sports strips in the past.

Although Tug McGraw conceived the strip and tried to keep a hand in it, the day to day creation of Scroogie was handled by the uncredited writers Dave Fisher and Neil Offen, and the credited artist Mike Witte. The strip debuted on March 17 1975* (just in time for spring training) in a pretty healthy number of papers. The other shoe fell, though, when the baseball season was over and papers inevitably started dropping the strip. With two writers, an artist, a syndicate and a pro baseball player all on the payroll, the strip soon failed to pull its weight. Scroogie was retired after just over two years, on April 24 1977**. The final Sunday strip (with a very funny gag) is our bottom sample. Oddly enough, McGraw made claims that he was going to revive the strip, self-syndicated. As far as I know this never came to pass. What did come to pass, though, is that McGraw had some costumes created of the characters and booked actors to wear them for personal appearances for several years after the strip ended:

Mall appearance in Allentown, March 1979

During its short life Scroogie appeared in two paperback collections, Scroogie (Signet, 1976) and Hello There Ball (Signet, 1977).

Oh, and why name the strip's main character Scroogie? That's baseball jargon for a screwball pitcher, an infamously tough pitch for pitchers to master, and when thrown correctly, for hitters to hit. Tug McGraw was a screwball pitcher, one of the best.

* Source: Editor & Publisher, February 15 1975

** Source: Oakland Tribune

Labels: Obscurities

 

What an odd little snippet of poetry in this Little Nemo Valentine's postcard issued by Tuck:

Though, princess,

Nemo's far away.

He'll love but you,

For aye and aye.

I sure don't get that 'aye and aye' business, but a quick Google reveals that the phrase has currency in other poems as well. Basically it seems like it's a fancy way of saying 'forever'. Who says comics don't teach you stuff.

Anyway, the game with these Little Nemo cards is to find the source of the scene in the original McCay Sunday strips. Can you find it?

Labels: Wish You Were Here

 

May 19 1910 -- Halley's Comet is now passing close to Earth, and some people are blaming it for all sorts of imagined effects.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

 

After stints at a number of papers in San Francisco and Chicago, including the Chicago Tribune, Pete Llanuza seems to have had a short stop-over at the Trib's sister paper, the New York Daily News. His only known cartoon series for them is the awkwardly titled Slang How It Looks, a small panel cartoon illustrating slang phrases taken literally. It only ran in the Sunday paper, and even then seems to have missed the occasional week. It ran from May 1 to July 10 1921.

If this was actually done while Llanuza was on staff at the Trib, it does not seem to have been used in the flagship paper.

Labels: Obscurities

 This year no papers that we surveyed went out of business or merged with another paper, but we still have some missing information on 5 papers making the total for this survey is 268.

In the Top 30 spots,  Calvin and Hobbes continued its climb moving one spot from number 5 to number 4 knocking Beetle Bailey down one spot to 5. This is the second time since we started this survey that Beetle Bailey has moved down one slot. Cathy had the biggest movement, up 3 spots from 15 to 12. This year no new strip entered the Top 30.

Title	Place	Movement	+/- Papers	Total Papers
Peanuts	1	Same	1	218
Blondie	2	Same	0	212
Garfield	3	Same	0	211
Calvin and Hobbes	4	Up 1	23	198
Beetle Bailey	5	Down 1	2	189
Far Side	6	Same	13	176
Hagar The Horrible	7	Same	7	167
Doonesbury	8	Same	1	149
Family Circus	9	Same	1	144
For Better or For Worse	10	Same	8	137
Wizard of Id	11	Same	-3	124
Cathy	12	Up 3	12	121
Shoe	13	Down 1	-2	114
B.C.	14	Down 1	-2	108
Frank and Ernest	15	Down 2	-3	107
Hi and Lois	15	Up 1	1	107
Born Loser	17	Same	3	95
Dennis the Menace	18	Same	-2	86
Andy Capp	19	Same	-4	69
Marmaduke	20	Same	-3	67
Herman	21	Up 1	-1	57
Mary Worth	21	Same	-2	57
Mother Goose and Grimm	23	Same	1	56
Ziggy	24	Up 1	2	55
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith	25	Down 1	-3	51
Sally Forth	26	Up 2	5	48
Rex Morgan	27	Down 1	-3	46
Marvin	28	Down 1	-2	43
Arlo and Janis	29	Same	0	41
Funky Winkerbean	30	Down 1	-1	40

 Again this year the Universal Comic Strip is getting stronger. The biggest movements are the top 4 to top 8 strips appearing in more papers. This year's Universal Comics winner is the Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswick, NJ) which ran the Top 16 strips.

Top 2 – 185 (Up 1)
Top 3 – 164 (Up 1)
Top 4 – 148 (Up 14)
Top 5 – 124 (Up 16)
Top 6 – 100 (Up 16)
Top 7 – 78 (Up 12)
Top 8 – 62 (Up 19)
Top 9 – 48 (Up 5)
Top 10 – 37 (Up 3)
Top 11 – 26 (0)
Top 12 – 21 (0)
Top 13 – 17 (0)
Top 14 – 15 (Up 10)
Top 15 – 12 (Up 7)
Top 15 – 1 (Down 4)

Here are the remaining strips that appeared in the Top 300 papers, ranked by newspaper count and noting increase/decrease:

39 – Gasoline Alley (0), Winthorp (-1)
36 – Fox Trot (+1)
35 – Alley Oop (-2)
33 – Heathcliff (+1), The Lockhorns (-1)
32 – Eek and Meek (-3), Grizzwells (+3), Tank McNamara (-4)
28 – Geech (0), Judge Parker (+1)
26 – Dick Tracy (+4), Rose is Rose (0), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (R)
23 – Berry’s World (-3), Kit N Carlyle (-2), Nancy (0)
22 – Snafu (-3)
21 – Crankshaft (0), In The Bleachers (-5), Robotman (+16)
19 – Curtis (-1), Pogo (-13)
18 – Amazing Spider-Man (0)
17 – Luann (-2)
16 – Apartment 3-G (-7), Phantom (+2), Tiger (-5), Tumbleweeds (-1)
15 – Broom Hilda (-1), Fred Basset (0), Mark Trail (0)
13 – Jump Start (+7), Kuduz (0), When I Was Short (R)
12 – Adam (+1), Archie (0), Drabble (0), Dunagin’s People (+2), Ernie (-6)
11 – Donald Duck (+1), Mr. Boffo (-2), Safe Havens (0), Willy N’ Ethel (+1)
10 – Bizarro (0), Brenda Starr (-1), Crock (0), Gil Thorp (0), Rubes (+4), Steve Roper and Mike Nomad (0)
9 – Hazel (0), Herb and Jamaal (+1), Mickey Mouse (+7)
8 – Baby Blues (R), Hocus-Focus (+1), Momma (0), Zippy (0)
7 – Batman (-8), Middletons (-2), Suburban Cowgirls (R), They’ll Do It Every Time (-1)
 

6 - Animal Crackers (-1), Fusco Brothers (+1), Horrorscope (R), Little Orphan Annie (-1), One Big Happy (+2), Phipps (-5), Redeye (-1), Sports Hall of Shame (+5), Sylvia (+1)
 

5 - Bent Offerings (0), Dilbert (+1), Duffy (+2), Francie (-1), Grin and Bear It (-1), Love Is (+1), Motley’s Crew (-1), New Breed (-2), Off The Leash (-1), On The Fastrack (-2), Overboard (R), That’s Jake (-1), Trudy (0), Word For Word (-3)

4 - Moose Miller, Rip Kirby, Small Society
3 - Agatha Crumm, Better Half, Catfish, Chubb & Chauncey, Counter Culture, Dillon, Heart of Juliet Jones, Long Overdue, Miss Peach, Our Fascinating Earth, Pickles, Play Better Golf With Jack Nicklaus, Ryatts, Smith Family, Stanley Family, What A Guy, Winnie Winkle

2 – Airwaves, Alex, Ben Wicks, Boner's Ark, Bringing Up Father, Flash Gordon, Flintstones, Good News Bad News, Graffiti, Ophelia & Jake, Pavlov, Phoebe’s Place, Popeye, Queen of the Universe, Quigmans, Sibling Revelry, Single Slices, Warp Factor, Wit of The World

1 – Belvedere, Dad’s-Eye-View, Defunitions, Family Business, Ferd’Nand, Henry, Jasper, Kaleb, Laff-A-Day, Laffbreak, Modesty Blaise, Moon Mullins, Normal, Outcasts, Out of Bounds, Pop’s Place, Potluck, Pot-Shots, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Sam and Silo, Stan Smith’s Tennis Class, Strahle’s Bailiwick, Tom and Jerry, Wild Life, Willie, Yecch Is

You may request Jeffrey Lindenblatt's complete list, in DOC format, of every paper that ran every feature mentioned in this set of posts. Just write to strippersuide@gmail.com and let me know what year(s) you want.

Labels: Paper Trends

You could call 1990 a throwback year, or say it continues  the status quo. First the status quo: Calvin and Hobbes continued its growth, adding 23 papers, making it the biggest winner of the year. Another big gainer was The Far Side with 13 added papers and Cathy with 12. With the end of NEA's Bugs Bunny strip on the last day in 1989, we also had a newer NEA strip, Robotman, gaining papers.
 

As for the throwbacks, in 1955 some King Features sitcoms strips abandoned the light continuituy format and became just gag a day strips. One of these strips was more of an adventure comedy strip and became a gag a day strip. In 1990 the strip decided to return to its root and became an adventure comedy strip again, though not every day. What they did was run a 3-to-4-week adventure story and then run a week of gag strips. This new format gained them 7 new papers that year. The strip was Mickey Mouse.

Here are the strips that gained 5 or more papers:

Calvin and Hobbes – 23
Robotman - 16
Far Side – 13
Cathy – 12
For Better or For Worse – 8
Hagar The Horrible – 7
Jump Start – 7
Mickey Mouse – 7
Sally Forth – 5
Sports Hall of Shame – 5

As in previous years the big rookies from last year followed that up with big losses the next year: Pogo with 13 and Batman with 8. Also, we have a big drop for a soap strip; Apartment 3-G lost 7 papers.

Here are the big losers this year:

Pogo – 13
Batman - 8
Apartment 3-G – 7
Ernie - 6
In The Bleachers – 5
Tiger – 5
Phipps – 5
Good News Bad News – 5

With the introduction of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the return of Mickey Mouse, the adventure strip category has its first gain in over 10 years with an 18.3 % gain from last year.


Alley Oop – 35 (-2)
Dick Tracy – 26 (4)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 26 (26)
Amazing Spider-Man – 18 (0)
Phantom – 16 (2)
Mark Trail – 15 (0)
Brenda Starr – 10 (-1)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 10 (0)
Mickey Mouse – 9 (9)
Batman – 7 (-8)
Little Orphan Annie – 6 (-1)
Rip Kirby – 4 (0)
Flash Gordon – 2 (0)
Popeye – 2 (0)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Secret Agent – 0
Tim Tyler’s Luck - 0

The soap strip category had a drop of 6.8% mainly because of papers dropping Apartment 3-G:

Mary Worth – 57 (-2)
Rex Morgan – 46 (-3)
Judge Parker – 28 (1)
Apartment 3-G – 16 (-7)
Gil Thorp – 10 (0)
Heart of Juliet Jones – 3 (0)
Winnie Winkle – 3 (0)

Labels: Paper Trends

 Last year Creators Syndicate premiered the new version of the comic strip Batman, piggybacking on the  successful movie series. That strip  debuted in second place in our rookie survey from last year. Well, this year Creators tried again and this time they did even better, giving the syndicate its first rookie win. The strip was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with 26 papers. This is also the first time since 1979 that a story strip was the top rookie strip --  the last was Star Wars.

Syndicates and newspapers think that these sorts of strips will bring in more kids to reading newspapers. With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles they upped the ante by encouraging reader participation; first having the Sundays and later Saturday daily strips displaying reader submitted drawings of their favorite Turtles. This may have helped the strip a little bit, but it only lasted for six years before going into reruns, which lasted at least another 5 years.

Coming in second with 13 papers is When I Was Short, by Michael Fry and Guy Vasilovich and syndicated by King Features. This strip would only last 2 years. Fry would have greater success with the strip Over the Hedge which will start 5 years later.

Creators also takes the third spot with Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman’s Baby Blues, which debuts with 8 papers.

Here are the rest of the rookies from this year:

Suburban Cowgirls – 7
Horrorscope – 6
Overboard – 5
Pickles – 3
The Stanley Family – 3
Airwaves – 2
Alex's – 2
Phoebe’s Place – 2
Queen of the Universe – 2
Warp Factor – 2
Wit of The World – 2
Dad’s-Eye-View, Family Business, Jasper, Normal, Potluck, Strahle’s Bailiwick, Wild Life – 1

Let’s take a look at the top five strips of 1991 that debuted in past decades:

Before 1950:

Blondie (1930) – 217
Mary Worth (1934) – 57
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (1919) - 51
Rex Morgan (1948) – 46
Gasoline Alley (1918) – 39

1950s:

Peanuts (1950) – 218
Beetle Bailey (1950) – 189
B.C. (1958) – 108
Hi and Lois (1954) - 107    
Dennis the Menace (1951) – 86

1960s:

Family Circus (1960) – 144
Wizard of Id (1964) – 124
Born Loser (1965) – 95    
Winthrop (1966) - 39
Eek and Meek (1965) – 32

1970s:

Garfield (1978) – 211
Far Side (1979) – 176
Hagar the Horrible (1973) – 167
Doonesbury (1970) – 149
For Better or For Worse (1979) - 137

1980s:

Calvin and Hobbes (1985) – 198
Mother Goose and Grimm (1984) - 56
Sally Forth (1982) – 48
Marvin (1982) – 43
Arlo and Janis (1985) - 41

Interesting that over thirty years later, only four of these top 5 features have ended (not counting those in reruns)!

Labels: Paper Trends

 

Here's another Out Our Way postcard published by the Standley-May concern. This one is coded Series 1 W524. 

Although I think I get A gag here, the one I'm reading depends on readers being familiar with the Buddhist/Hindu belief in reincarnation. That seems somehow less than likely, for the readers or the cowboys in the cartoon. So is that THE gag, or just one I misinterpreted?

Labels: Wish You Were Here

 

May 20 1910 -- On May 19 Herriman published a cartoon, "If Jack Johnson Wins", showing the Black folks enjoying the high life. Today he offers his impression of what happens if Johnson loses -- empty pocketbooks due to all the lost bets.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Stokes, Manning L.

Mysterious island, by Jules Verne, adapted by Manning L. Stokes, illustrated by Robert Hayward Webb and David Heames. [New York, Gilberton co., 1947] 55 p. col. illus. 26cm. (Classic comics. Feb. 1947. no. 34) © publisher; 11Mar47; AA53546.

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

 

Al Smith's eponymous syndicate served weekly papers with comic strips for almost fifty years, accomplishing the nearly impossible task of separating a goodly number of tight-fisted small town newspaper proprietors from a little cash each week. Many prospective syndicates tried marketing to weeklies, certain that they were going to wow an overlooked market, and almost all crashed and burned. Small town newspapers are not only produced on a shoestring budget, but they know that their audience is mostly interested in seeing their names and the names of those they know in those weekly pages. Comic strips might be a nice addition, but they rarely pay for themselves with additional subscriptions to the Podunk Weekly Demopublican. 

The very first offering of the Al Smith Service was this strip, Jackie, and it predates the rest of his offerings by about a year or so. Why Smith would start a syndicate with a blackface throwback strip I don't know, but I do know that it sold well in Alabama. The earliest I have found the strip is in the Birmingham Weekly Review in April 1949*, and that paper proves that Smith really knew how to sell, because that is a black paper. Granted, there's no real overt racism in Jackie, but even way back in 1949 black folks were not too fond of this visual portrayal. 

When Smith started offering a whole roster of strips in 1950, Jackie remained Smith's only artistic contribution. In late 1951, though, contributor Paul Gringle left the popular Rural Delivery strip, and Smith took that over as well. Between the two strips, and Al Smith's 'real' job of producing the 7-day per week Mutt and Jeff, and handling sales and distribution chores, he must have been one busy guy.

He soldiered on though, and it wasn't until two years later that due to either overwork or a sense that Jackie was a relic of a bygone time, Smith made a change. Or at least a baby step. He cancelled Jackie in March 1953, and moved the character over into his Rural Delivery strip, renaming it Jackie In Rural Delivery. Jackie remained a titled player in the strip until early 1954, and an occasional player well past that (often in reused old strips). 

Jackie is not in my book, and I completely misunderstood what I was seeing in the spotty microfilm archives of the weeklies back then. In the book's listing for Rural Delivery I said that it was advertised as Jackie in 1951-1952. With much better online archives now available, the history related here is hopefully much more accurate.

~~~~

* I have an unattributed note saying that the strip started in 1948, but I can't find any proof of that.

Labels: Obscurities

 

Grace Drayton produced some slyly funny cards for Reinnthal & Newman, but here she is in cloyingly cute mode. This is card #488.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

 

May 19 1910 -- Herriman shows his readers what they can expect for blacks if Jack Johnson wins the Fight of the Century -- they have bet big and won, so they'll be living the high life. Be with us next Herriman Saturday for the other side of the coin.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons