Stripper's Guide

If there's one thing you could depend on from the Graphic Syndicate, it was that pretty girls would be found in abundance in their comic strips. Ah, the Graphic. My favorite newspaper in the whole world. The New York Evening Graphic, which begat the Graphic Syndicate, was the wildest and wackiest newspaper that ever saw print. Helmed by physical culture fanatic and pulp magazine baron Bernarr MacFadden, the paper eschewed the normal journalistic standards in favor of raving sensationalism and lurid lechery. Think of it as a combination of the National Enquirer and Playboy, but without the polish.

If you'd like to learn more about the Porno-Graphic (a popular nickname for the paper in its day) I refer you to any of these fine memoirs and histories:

The New York Graphic - The World's Zaniest Newspaper by Lester Cohen
Sauce For The Gander by Frank Mallen
My Last Million Readers by Emile Gauvreau
Dumbbells And Carrot Strips by Mary MacFadden and Emile Gauvreau

All are out of print, but can be found used on ABE Books.

Anyway, on to the strip at hand. Susie Sunshine was a bubble-brained flapper, just another in a seemingly endless flow that seemed to issue from the syndicates in the mid-20s. This one started sometime in 1927 (specific date unknown because very little of the Graphic survives on microfilm), and ended December 14 1931.

Earl Hurd created the strip, and exhibited a heretofore unseen ability to draw curvaceous beauties. Hurd's comic strip heyday was in the teens, when he did the Sunday Brick Bodkin's Pa for the New York Herald, and several daily-style strips, most prominently Trials of Editor Mouse, for the affiliated Evening Telegram. He seems to have left the comic strip field in the mid-teens (did I read somewhere that he got into the animation game?), but came back over a decade later to plumb the bottom of the syndication barrel at the Graphic.

For reasons unknown, Hurd left the strip in mid 1930, and it was taken over by Al Zere, who took a swing at a whole lot of syndicated strips over his long career. Zere, too, didn't stick, and in 1931 the strip was taken over by Dick Richards.

In 1931 the history gets a bit murky, because at some point the Graphic Syndicate lost the strip to the World Feature Service (syndication arm of the New York World). This change seemed to happen on 8/24. However, the World was in the midst of its death throes at the time, and the Graphic continued to run the strip until the end of 1931 - whether it was running reprints or new material I don't know. In any case, Dick Richards renamed the strip as The Boomers at the start of 1932, and the strip continued with United Features (which took over all the World's syndication).

The title changed again, to The Doodle Family, in April 1934, and Ben Batsford took over the strip. Shortly thereafter, the strip changed titles again, this time to Frankie Doodle, and this final (I hope) incarnation lasted through sometime in 1938 (my last samples are from August of that year).

Now I must admit that I have not taken a good enough read of all these different versions to see if there is any thread of a plot or characters that follows through the whole history, so it's impossible for me to say whether we have one long-running strip or as many as four entirely different strips. Has anyone read enough of these to venture an opinion?

[Update 1/12/2011: Just figured out that Susie Sunshine began in May 1927, and was initially syndicated by King Features. The Graphic seems to have taken over the syndication late that year or maybe early the next.]

Labels: Obscurities