Stripper's Guide

If I haven't mentioned it before, and I'm sure I have, I really love the World Color Printing syndicate. I even made a special trip to St Louis a few years ago to research the history of the company. Didn't find out a great deal. One thing I did learn was why they lost interest in their syndication business in the 1920s (it really nose-dived). Turns out they got the contract to print The Sporting News, a national weekly sports newspaper. The windfall of that contract seems to have ended their interest in providing a low cost Sunday comic section to small papers.

Anyway, today we have one of their earlier efforts. Joco And Jack started, as best I can tell from cross-referencing partial Sunday sections, on July 10, 1904. It was drawn by H.C. Greening. This seems to be the only installment he did, as the next known example is from July 24th, and the mantle has been passed to Ed Goewey. Goewey created new episodes on a semi-regular basis until September 11th. Then, on October 2nd we get another artist change, this time to someone signing themselves something like 'Jarrant'. The signature is all but illegible and I could be way off on that name. Goewey returns on November 13th, and the last known episode of the strip runs on December 25th.

Our sample today is the first installment from July 10th.

Labels: Obscurities

Since 1904 the NEA syndicate (NEA stands for Newspaper Enterprise Association) has provided a daily package of features for newspapers. Along with their regular menu of comics, columns, editorials, news stories and photos, they often add special bonus items for their subscribing newspapers. One of their popular bonuses used to be short run closed-end comic strips. Often these strips commemorated a holiday (NEA still distributes a special Christmas series each year), others graphically discussed hot topics in the news, or tales from history.

These specials had their heyday in the 40s and 50s, when NEA was issuing them quite often, as much as three or four per year. Here we see the first episode of Generals Who Became President, a graphical history of, well, what the title says. This was a particularly short series, running just seven episodes from 1/12 - 1/19/1953. Most such special offerings lasted 2-4 weeks. This series was timed to run the week before the presidential inauguration of one Dwight Eisenhower. Art was by Ed Kudlaty, story by Ray Ellis.

Surprisingly enough, many subscribing papers did not run these specials, making them very tough to document for Stripper's Guide. Ironically, the newer ones are the toughest to find. Even the otherwise excellent NEA archives housed at Ohio State University's Cartoon Research Library has few of these special strips represented.

Labels: Obscurities

Now here's a real treasure. For reasons I can't fathom it never appeared in many papers during its run, and has been ignored or undiscovered by fans since.

Jeanie started as a 'filler' strip in the New York Herald-Tribune. During most of the 40s and 50s, the H-T ran a series of sixth-page strips as fillers when the page layout required. Usually this happened when they ran a page with a half-page strip and a third-page ad. The extra space would be taken by a one-tier filler.

Most of these 'filler' strips are eminently forgettable, but there are some notable exceptions. Perhaps the most interesting was Harvey Kurtzman's Silver Linings. But Jeanie is no slouch, either, with lusciously crisp art by Gill Fox, and snappy story by Selma Diamond. Diamond was a noted comedy writer and later a character actor. She's best remembered for her role on the sitcom Night Court. A short bio can be found here.

The strip started its run on 8/26/1951. Jeanie was eventually recognized as being far too good to remain an occasional filler strip, and was graduated to a full-fledge regular Sunday strip plus a daily in April 1952. As we already know, the syndication market was unaccountably uninterested in the well-drawn and well-written adventures of an often scantily clad gorgeous babe. Lack of syndication sales was probably the reason that Gill Fox dropped out in March 1953, to be replaced by Leon Win (a pseudonym?). Win's artwork looked like a very rushed version of Fox, and for all I know, may actually be just that. In any case, the drop-off in art quality certainly didn't help the strip's syndication chances, and it ended on 9/27/1953.

Labels: Obscurities

You gotta love the title of this strip. So evocative of the 40s. However, the original solicitations for the feature called it Hollywood Merry-Go-Round, and when it began running on 11/26/45, the title panel to the Sunday had the area where you see "Johnnie" in our sample blanked out. My guess is that the original title turned out to already be copyrighted and some last minute changes had to be made.

The title character was a small-time Hollywood agent, and his character swerves around between con artist and saint. Writer Renny McEvoy seemed a bit stuck for finding a direction in the storyline. The art by Jim Pabian, on the other hand, was excellent.

Poor Johnnie lost his star billing in April 1947 when the title was changed to Screen Girl. Apparently the title change wasn't enough to generate interest in the strip, and it ended on November 4, 1948.

Note in the sample the rare topper Movie Struck. Very few strips that began after World War II bothered with this convention of an earlier era.

Labels: Obscurities

Time for another letter of the mystery strips. If you don't know what this is about, look down about 5 posts for an explanation (I gotta figure out how to use those permalinks one of these days). EDIT - figured it out, here's the link.

C.B. Gordon - Mark Der Marderosian - Dickson-Bennett - weekly strip - 1981-82
Cactus Gal - Jack O'Brien - Nationwide Features - daily panel - 1949-50 [Charles Thompson supplies proof that Nationwide was a producer of advertising strips; not eligible for SG listing]
Campaign Button - Kearney Egerton - Interocean Press Syndicate - daily panel - 1972
Campus Laughter - Pedro Moreno - United Cartoonist Syndicate - daily panel - 1979-84
Can It Be Done? - Ray Gross - self-syndicated - daily panel - 1934-39
Can You Imagine - Art Radebaugh - General Features - daily panel - 1947
The Candy Man - Bill Murray - Minority Features - weekly - 1981-present
Cap'n Kadd - Pat Anderson - self-syndicated - weekly strip - 1970-75
Cap'n Knot - Howard Swift - Russell Enterprises - daily strip - 1968-69
Capitaine Bonvent - P.J. Kuhn - Douglas Whiting Ltd - daily strip - 1965-69
Capital Carnival - Gerald A. Bennett - Dickson-Bennett - weekly strip - 1979
Capital Hills - Jack Anderson and Mort Gerberg - United Feature - daily and Sunday strip - 1982
Captain Wings - Flowers - Editors Press Service - daily and Sunday strip - 1946-47
Captain Skid - Richard Benavidez - United Cartoonist Syndicate - daily - 1988
Captain Cockle - Peter Garvey - Transworld News Service - daily panel - 1976
Captain Flame - Pat Boyette, Bruce Darrow, Don Sherwood - Al Smith Service - weekly strip - 1954-58
Captain Flight - Ray Tobin, Bob Robson - Allied Features - daily strip - 1945-46
Captain Freedom - Farrell - Allied Features - Sunday - 1941
Cargo Smith, Navy Seal - Bill Barry - Adventure Features - daily and Sunday strip - 1996-97
Caricatoons - Buzz Gambill - self-syndicated - weekly panel - 1995-present
Carol Day - David Wright - Piccadilly Press - daily strip - 1966-69 (looking for proof that it ran in US)
Cars And Stars - Ray McNamara - Christy Walsh Syndicate - weekly panel - 1926
The Cartoon Bug - John Gallagher - Chicago Tribune-NY News Syndicate - weekly strip - 1970-74
Cartoon Comedy Club - John Shepherd - self-syndicated - weekly strip - 1994-95
Castles In The Sand - Henrik Rehr - At Large Features - daily strip - 2001-02
Catesby - William Ferguson - Chicago Tribune-NY News Syndicate - Sunday strip - 1952-53 [found by Todd Hillmer - thanks Todd!]
Caught In The Act - Horace Knight - Chicago Tribune-NY News Syndicate - thrice per week panel - 1956
Chameleon - Al Wiseman - Altair Inc. - daily strip - 1973
Channel Jockeys - Phil Evans and Jim Asher - Wheller-Evans - daily strip - 1977-78
The Chargers - Ross Bunch - Grand Prix Features - daily strip - 1971-78
Charley - Nathan Diggs - Amadou Features - weekly panel - 1973
Charley Sez - David Brown - self-syndicated - daily strip - 1974-75
Charley The Chump - Jim Navoni - Wheeler-Nicholson - daily strip - 1926
Cheerful Earful - Hazel Duncan - Fortune Features - weekly panel - 1948
Chester - William Hatch and Tony Ortiz - Feature Service - daily strip - 1991-2002
Chickita - Ed Hechtman - Dickson-Bennett - daily panel - 1984
Chip's Place - L. Stuchkus - Dickson Bennett - daily strip - 1980-81
Chris The Li'l Martian - Pedro Moreno - Transworld News Service - daily strip - 1976-82, 1993-94
Christina Anders - Robert Acomb - Chicago Sun-Times - daily strip - 1950 (turns out to just be an alternate name for "Jack and Judy in Bibleland")
Christopher Strong - Bill Scott and Jim Seed - Register & Tribune Syndicate - daily and Sunday strip - 1950
Chubby - Guy Hooks - Agnes Kelleher - daily panel - 1937
Chuck And Sally Ann - Rhoda Burton - Allied Features - daily strip - 1979
Church Chuckles - Charles Cartwright - Chicago Tribune/Al Smith Service - weekly panel - 1959-97
The Circle - Aaron Kerns - Universal Press Syndicate - daily strip - 1970
Citizen George - George Wolfe - Al Smith Service - weekly panel - 1970-73
Citizen Senior - Dave Berg - Whitegate Features - daily - 1989-93
Clancy Boys - Dan Cortor - Dickson-Bennett - daily panel - 1983-84
Classic Stories - uncredited - Ledger Syndicate - daily strip - 1950
Classie Addie - Ellen Conner and Lorene Rutherford - Agnes Kelleher - daily panel - 1939
Classified Chuckles - Morrie Turner - Register & Tribune Syndicate - daily panel - 1967-69
Claude Hopper - Lorna Caviness - R-GAB Features - daily panel - 1980-82
Clean Ups - Richard Johnson - Richmond Syndicate - weekly panel - 1976
Clem's Best - Clem Scalzitti - Dickson-Bennett - daily panel - 1981
Click - Gordon Shepard - World News Syndicate - daily panel - 1973
Clipper - L.F. Van Zelm - Globe Syndicate - daily strip - 1950
Clipper Williams On Courage Island - Dick Calkins - National Newspaper Syndicate - daily and Sunday strip - 1937-38
Close-Ups - Hinderer and Leitner - Wade Allen Syndicate - daily panel - 1968
Coby's Corner - Dick Smith - self-syndicated - weekly strip - 1991-93
Codgie - H.F. Voorhees - National Newspaper Syndicate - daily strip - 1924
Coffee-Oddities - C.M. Payne - self-syndicated - weekly strip - 1938
Colonel Hush - Theodore Scheel - Queen Features - weekly strip - 1939
Colonel Cracker - Lloyd James Williams - Thompson Service - daily panel - 1931-33
The Colonials - Richards and Wetherholy - Gordon Langley Hall News Service - daily and Sunday strip - 1967
Color Blind - Orrin Brewster - Creators Syndicate - daily and Sunday strip - 1999 FOUND! by Charles Brubaker; thanks Charles!
Comet Bill - uncredited - Press Alliance - weekly strip - 1940
Comigraph - W.F. Peters - Publishers Feature Service - weekly panel - 1946-49
Concrete Jungle - Dale Patterson - Copley News Service - weekly panel - 1982 FOUND! by D.D. Degg in Oswego County Messenger
Condemonium - Lee Martin - McNaught Syndicate - daily panel - 1981
Congressman Dripp - Ben Youman - Federated Press - weekly panel - 1946-56
Consolidated Enormous - Bob Zahn - Feature Associates - weekly - 1980
Cookie Pushers - Buford Tune - EAS - weekly strip - 1930-34
Cooking With Gags - Bob Archer - Royal News Syndicate - weekly panel - 1949
Copp Twins - D. Orme - Jolyon Features - daily strip - 1939
Copy Boy/Copy Cub - Homer Fey - Western Newspaper Union - weekly panel - 1947-50
Copycats - Robert Ranger - Transworld News Service - daily strip - 1978
Cornflakes - Nellis Johnson - Superior Features - weekly strip - 1978-81
Cosgrove - Martin Duffy - Transworld News Service - daily panel - 1976-78
Cosmic Critters - Jim George - Dispatch Features - daily strip - 1966
Count of Monte Cristo - Jack Cortez - Eisner-Iger Associates - weekly strip - 1938-40
Coupons - Bob Vojtko - Pat Anderson Features - daily panel - 1976
Courthouse Square - John Jarvis - Community Press Service - 1973,76,78,81-82,2001-present
Cowboy Joe - Joe Buresch - Unique Features - daily strip - 1938
The Cowboy - Gloria Jacquart - United Cartoonist Syndicate - daily - 1987-89
Cranberry Cafe - Tom Roy - Creators Syndicate - daily and Sunday strip - 2000
Crazy Quilt - Courtney Dunkel - Independent Features - weekly panel - 1965
Crazy Zoo - Hsaio Yen Chung - Sparks Syndication - weekly - 1991
Cringely - Al Fagaly and Harry Shorten - McClure Syndicate - Sunday strip - 1946
Critters - Jerry Cardona - United Cartoonist Syndicate - daily panel - 1980-84
The Critters - Gene Patterson - Allied Features - daily panel - 1969-71
Croaker (aka Crocker?) - John Jarvis - Community Press Service - weekly panel - 1983-2002
Crosby's Country Cousins - Joe Buresch and Abe Crosby - Crosby Newspaper Syndicate - daily strip - 1938-42
Cross Bones - Bob Ashley - Chicago Tribune-NY News Syndicate - daily and Sunday strip - 1974
Cross-Cuts - L.L. Cross - Fact Features - weekly panel - 1936-38
Crosscut - Morrie Brickman - National Newspaper Syndicate - daily panel - 1957-62
Crowe's Feats - J.D. Crowe - Copley News Service - weekly strip - 1986-88
Crowley Chronicle - Pat Crowley - Copley News Service - weekly strip - 1987-94
Cuff & Rubin - Curt Brando - American International Syndicate - daily strip - 1993-94
Curior-Rarezas - John Harvey - Inter-American Syndicate - daily panel - 1934
Curious Creatures - Richard Addison - King Features - daily panel - 1930-31
Curious Facts - C.J. Petersen - Matz Unique Features - daily strip - 1935
Curley's Cranes - Roger Curley - Allied Features - daily - 1972
Cy Cylinder - Bob Moore - Nationwide Features - Sunday panel - 1949-50 [Charles Thompson supplies proof that Nationwide was a producer of advertising strips; not eligible for SG listing]
Cybil Action - Dibble and Hatch - Feature Service - daily - 1991-92
Cynth Hiddle - Wing - Johnson Features - daily panel - 1925
Cyril - Bob Battle - Transworld Features - daily strip - 1952-55

Mrs. Fret-Not is a delightfully funny strip that had a short but entertaining run; March 24 - August 16, 1913. The feature, and the one shown above is an excellent example, must be read in light of the era in which it appeared to be fully appreciated. The idea of an upstanding married woman being an accomplished card-sharp was, in these rather uptight post-Victorian years, scandalously wicked. This strip might have actually been worthy of a spit-take over a few breakfast tables in 1913.

The strip was distributed by Associated Newspapers, and that syndicate is eminently worthy of an extended discussion, but I'll leave that for another day. Today I want to focus on the cartoonist of this feature, a fellow by the name of Williams.

Now I know this signature as well as if it was tattooed on my forehead, because I love the guy's work. What I can't remember is how I came up with the notion that his slightly more complete moniker is O.P. Williams. I don't recall his signature ever being anything more than just 'Williams', and I don't recall a byline to that effect on any of his strips. However, that's how I have him listed, so I presume I discovered it in some way.

Anyway, his most memorable work was back in the mid-oughts when he took over the position once held by Winsor McCay at the Cincinnati Enquirer. Along with another fine cartoonist who has been lost to history, Apworth Adams, these two made Enquirer readers miss the great McCay a little bit less. If they didn't have quite the level of native ability of the master, they made up for it with imaginative concepts, good art and funny gags.

Williams seems to have been quite the gypsy. He first shows up on the comics pages in Boston, at first with the Herald in 1904, then doing strips for the Post and Globe. He then had his stint in Cincinnati in 1908-09, then returned to Boston again. Here he did a lot of work for the Post, and through them got syndicated with Associated Newspapers. In 1915 he shows up in Philadelphia working for the North American. Then he disappears for over a decade, only to reappear once last time in New York, doing a short-lived strip for the Evening Graphic.

Does anyone have additional information on O.P. Williams?

Labels: Obscurities

Some animated cartoon characters have made successful transitions to the newspaper comic page. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, of course, and later Yogi Bear and The Flintstones, have all be syndication success stories.

Unfortunately syndicate suits often see those successes as based purely on the popularity of the characters in their native medium. The truth, of course, is that to be a success the newspaper version must stay true to the character and have good gags. The toughest part, though, is to judiciously modify the character for the new medium.

For instance, one of the surefire bits of business for Donald Duck on screen are his insane tantrums. Frenetic action, though, does not translate well to the comic page, so Al Taliaferro made a very important tweak to Donald's character. Instead of tantrums Donald in the newspaper became a master of the slow burn and a hilarious Jack Benny-like doubletake. The tantrums still make an occasional appearance, but they tend to be the springboards for gags, they're not relied on to be the punchline.

No such deep thought seems to have gone into the translation of Mister Magoo, whose cartoonist(s) were uncredited (Pete Alvarado is mentioned in one reference). The gags are mostly repetitive and unimaginative. The gag in our sample is so lame that it is barely recognizeable, and Magoo's speech in the last panel is out of character and, more importantly, hits like a lead balloon. Worse yet, the storyline depends on Magoo having good eyesight - good enough to recognize that there's a bunch of tourists in his car from across the parking lot. Sheesh!

The Nearsighted Mister Magoo was syndicated by the Chicago Tribune-NY News Syndicate, and I don't recall seeing it appear anywhere other than their papers. It ran 12/5/1964 - 5/8/1966.

Labels: Obscurities

Taking a break from the E&P mystery strip listings...

Here's a real rare one by Pat Boyer. It ran from November 6, 1967 to January 27, 1968 as a daily in the Washington Post. The Post also ran the Sunday but only a few times. If it ran longer elsewhere I haven't been able to locate it. It was syndicated by Publishers-Hall Syndicate.

This is one of those attempts to be mod and 'with it', notable for being an early entry in that late 1960s-early 70s genre that continued with features like Laugh-In and Peter Max's Meditation.

This is Pat Boyer's only syndicated credit that I know of. Since I find his/her characters to look vaguely unsettling and menacing (those eyes! ) this doesn't seem too surprising.

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 9:50 AM 4 comments

Here are the mystery strip B listings. Read yesterday's post to see what this whole mess is about.

I'm going to stop with B for a few days to see what sort of response comes in. Putting together a letter's worth of listings takes anywhere from 2 - 6 hours, so it's a major time investment. I'd like to see if the investment has any dividends...

Babs & Aldo - Buddy Valentine - King Features - daily/Sunday strip - 2003 (found! ran in Deseret Morning News - thanks to Charles Brubaker)
Baby Bee - Garcia - RDR Syndicate - daily panel - 1983
Baby Lynn - Tony Marchese - Trans-World - weekly panel - 1978
Bac Talk - Bob Howard - self-syndicated - weekly strip - 1973
Bachelor Bill - Bill O’Malley - Independent Features - daily panel - 1965
Bachelor Party - Adam Miller - Creators Syndicate - daily panel - 2002-03
Bachelors - George Castillo - United Cartoonists - daily strip - 1988
Back Home - Homer Box - Editors Copy Syndicate - weekly strip - 1986-present
Backfire! - George Leeds and Henry Riddick - Family Features - daily panel - 1948-49
Bad Example - Carlton Winford - self-syndicated - daily panel - 1971
Bad Libs - Ronald Boerem - Danny Ball Productions - weekly strip - 1978-79
The Baffles - Mahoney - National Weekly Newspaper Service - weekly panel - 1956-62 (found! in Soda Springs (ID) Sun)
The Bag Line - H.F.Voorhees - Dille - weekly panel - 1925
Ballads Of Classified Clara - Clarence W. Payne - CP Syndicate - daily panel - 1936
Balloonatics - Ernest Hix - Bell Syndicate - daily panel - 1948
Balloonatiks - Mark Gandy and Fred Goodman - Animagic - daily strip - 1996-97
Baloney - Martin Duffy - Trans-World - daily panel - 1976-78
Bannister Babies - Constance Bannister - Columbia Features - thrice weekly panel - 1972
Barbs & Brickbats - Allen and Owen Richardson - Dickson Features - weekly panel - 1979
Bargain Daze - Harley Schwadron - Davy Associates - weekly panel - 1990-present
Barkis And Family - Crockett Johnson - George Matthew Adams - daily panel - 1955 (FOUND! in Oakland Tribune)
Barklay - Laing - Interpress - daily strip - 1973
Barnacle - Alexander Monroe - Singer - weekly strip - 1978
Barnacle And His Friends - Alex Moore - Oceanic Press Service - weekly panel - 1983-95
Barnstormers - Frank Tabor - Trans-World - daily panel - 1976-81
The Barnyard Gate - Sarge O’Neill - Southern - daily strip - 1970-78
Baron Nobux - Jack Thomas - Queen Features - daily strip - 1939
Barring None - Burck - Chicago Times - daily panel - 1941
Barry Finn - Tarpe Mills - Watkins Syndicate (Brooklyn Eagle) - weekly strip - 1939
Basic Nature - Dick Lancaster - Continental - weekly panel - 1995
Batch - Marty Bartels and Bill Lane - Chicago Sun-Times - daily strip - 1994-95
Baz And Company - Mike Higgs - News America - daily panel - 1993
Be A Detective - Bruce Patterson - Matz Features - daily strip - 1937
Be A Sport - Jim Janeway - American International - daily strip - 1992-94
Beaker - Leonard Bruce - Leoleen Durck Creations - daily strip - 1991-92
Beat This - Tip Brady - McClure Syndicate - daily panel - 1958
Beau Geste - P.C. Wren - Register & Tribune Syndicate - daily strip - 1933-34 (never mind -- turns out this is an alternate title for Flying To Fame)
Beau Peep - Andrew Christine and Roger Kettle - The Syndicate - daily strip - 1987-90
Beauregard - Jack Davis - McClure Syndicate - daily strip - 1961 (Ger Apeldoom says the strip didn't sell, ran in a humor magazine instead)
Beautiful! - Charles Bowen and Barbara Jones - Allied Features - daily panel - 1977-86
Beautyettes - Aldine Swank - Associated Features - daily panel - 1935
Becky - Frank Tabor - Anderson Features - weekly strip - 1970
Becky’s Senior - Evans Krehbiel - Weekly Features - daily strip - 1986-89
Bee Smart - John Prinkey - Other Dimensions - daily strip - 1971-79
The Beehive - editors of Childlife - Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate - Sunday strip - 1957-61
Beep-Beep - Robert Leduc - Service Offset de Presse - daily and Sunday panel - 1968-71
Begger - Ken Muse - Dickson-Bennett - weekly strip - 1982
Belly Laughs - Sarge O'Neill - Southern Cartoon Syndicate - daily strip - 1970-73
Benny Kukoe - T.J. Garlan - Thompson Service - daily - 1932
Berenstain Bears - Stan & Jan Berenstain - King Features - daily panel - 1982
Berserkers of the 21st Century - Bob Tuna - Lew Little Enterprises - daily and Sunday strip - 1998 (creator tells me that the strip has so far appeared online only)
Bert 'n' Gert - Jack Levin - General Features - daily strip - 1954 (found! turns out to be continuation of "Hands 'n' Faces")
Best Years - Ed Heckman - American International Syndicate - daily strip - 1992-94
Best of Church Humor - Jack Hamm - Religious Drawings Inc - Sunday - 1960 (not the same as Church Humor from the 1970s)
Best Of Press - L. Hughes - Editors Copy Syndicate - weekly panel - 1976
Bettey And Her Pals - William Miller - Unique Features - daily panel - 1945
Betty Blurbs - J.C. Beesley - King Features - daily panel - 1929-30 (FOUND! in Lethbridge Herald)
Betty Botch and Bob Botch (listed separately) - Mel Millar - Pat Anderson Features - weekly panel - 1972-75
Betty Brighteyes - Bill Seidcheck - General Features - weekly strip - 1937-42
Betty Lee - Ralph Matz - Matz Features - daily strip - 1935-38
Between Us Girls - Ashton Wing - Allied Feature - daily panel - 1964-69
Bi-Focals - Rith Marcus - McNaught Syndicate - daily and Sunday panel - 1977
Bible Stories in Color - La Sorgente - Spadea Syndicate - weekly strip - 1973-75
Bible Story - Glen Cassel - American International - daily strip - 1990-94
Bible Today - M. Roget - Mark Morgan Inc - weekly panel - 1970-72
Bibs - Mickey Jai and Martin Kormic - Dickson Bennett - daily panel - 1982
Big Boss & Company - Richard Davies - Community Features - weekly panel - 1980
Big Boy - Ferd Himme - Lowery Cartoon Corp - weekly panel - 1932
Big Brother - Clem Scalzetti - Dickson-Bennett - weekly strip - 1980-82
Big Feet - Pedro Moreno - United Cartoonist Syndicate - daily panel - 1979-85
Big Flat City - Richard Kolkman - self-syndicated - weekly strip - 1994-97 (FOUND! Creator reports it ran in college papers 1988-96)
Big Foot - Robert Beasley - Danny Ball Productions - daily strip - 1979
Big Little Things - Walter Galli and Dick Thomas - Watkins Syndicate - weekly strip - 1936
Big Moments - Ving Fuller - self-syndicated - daily panel - 1950
Big Town Follies - Mike Gray and Bob Moore - Nationwide Features - weekly panel - 1949-50 [Charles Thompson supplies proof that Nationwide was a producer of advertising strips; not eligible for SG listing]
Big World Of Little Things - Alfred O. Shedd - Science Service - weekly panel - 1927
Bigg's Business - Bob Zahn - Centurion Press and others - daily panel - 1972-79 and 1990-present
Bill And Hazel - Harlan Wade - Transworld News Service - daily panel - 1978
Bill Bunker - Henry Formhals - United Feature - unknown - 1933
Billy And His Dog/Billy The Kid - Lloyd James Williams - self-syndicated - daily strip - 1939-40
Billy The Beaver - James Rodriguez - Comic Art Therapy - daily - 1993-95
Bing And His Buddies - Ed Brennon - General Features - weekly strip - 1937-42
Bizness Peepul - W.O. Evans Jr - Thompson Service - thrice weekly panel - 1933-34
Bizz And Biff - F.H. Cumberworth - Watkins Syndicate - daily strip - 1940
Black Bart - Dick Locher - Winford Co. - daily - 1971
Black Sheep - W.A. Dillard - Columbia Inc - daily strip - 1935
Black And White - Weihrauch - Select Features - daily panel - 1948
Blaze Braden - Paul Morgan - Crown Features - Sunday strip - 1960
Blisters - Jeb Ladouceur and Neel Roth - Transworld News Service - daily strip - 1978
Blockheads - John Gile - Register & Tribune Syndicate - daily panel - 1979
Bloop - Joseph Morton - United Cartoonist Syndicate - daily - 1988
Bob Bannon - Prentice Phillips and Ray Tucker - Ray Gross Features - daily panel - 1938
Bob Sledd - Stuart Welsh - McClure Syndicate - daily strip - 1928
Bobby Babysitter - Ron Fritz - American International - daily strip - 1992-94
Bodities - Dr. Kruidenier - Esquire Features - daily panel - 1939
Boids - Peter Garvey - Transworld News Service - daily panel - 1976
Boldo Inc - Steve Moore - Star Group - weekly panel - 1984-85
Bonzer U - Kearney Egerton - LA Times Syndicate - daily strip - 1968
Boomers - Kent Whitaker - Kentoons - thrice weekly panel - 1994-97
The Boomers - William Feld - Stuyvesant Syndicate - weekly strip - 1970
Boosterville - Leonard Bruce and Douglas Nelson - Leoleen-Durck Creations - daily strip - 1985-86
Born Lucky - Bruce Plante - Universal Press - weekly panel - 2001-present (found! verified by creator Bruce Plante)
Bossy The Rooster - R.S. Matz - Unique Features - daily strip - 1946
Botony Boy - David B. Wood - Transworld News Service - weekly strip - 1977-78
The Brain Trust - Jack Roman - Press-Craft Features - weekly panel - 1978
Brain Wave - Ed Wilkens - Transworld News Service - weekly panel - 1978
Brass Tacks - Nick Frising - Allied Features - daily panel - 1978-86
Breaker, Breaker - J.W. Lynch and Mike MacCormack - Copley News Service - daily strip - 1977
Brother Simon And Lucas - Pedro Moreno - Transworld News Service - daily strip - 1976-88, 93-94
Brothers-In-Law - Jacquin - Premier Syndicate - daily strip - 1926 just a messed up listing in E&P -- this is an already documented strip by Darrell McClure
Brothers-In-Law - Edward Bryant - self-syndicated - weekly - 1991-92
Buccaneers - Al Ciederman - American International Syndicate - daily strip - 1989
Bucksaw - Randy Muir - American International Syndicate - daily strip - 1987
Bud 'n' Bub - Ed Kressy - Publishers Autocaster - weekly strip - 1931 DD Degg found this strip running in Cass City (MI) Chronicle - thanks DD!
Bud Broker - KmC - Feature Associates - daily - 1984
Buffo - Howard Rands - Al Smith Service - weekly strip - 1989-91
Buford - John Marshall - Syndicated Newspaper Services - daily strip - 1982
Buford's North Forty - Chris Carr - self-syndicated - daily strip - 1986
Bug - Rand Renfore - United Cartoonist Syndicate - daily - 1985-87
Bug Movies - Stookie Allen - EAS - weekly strip - 1930-34
Bugwine - Arthur Akers and Dudely Williams - Allied Features - daily strip - 1935
Builders Of America - George (Jimmie) Smith - Transatlantic News Features - ? - 1942
The Bumbles - Al Smith - Al Smith Service - weekly strip - 1982-83
The Bumpalumpkins - Robert J. Alberts - United Cartoonist Syndicate - daily - 1987-88
Bumper T. Bumper - Robert Laughlin - Transworld News Service - daily - 1979
Bumpy - C.D. Russell - Famous Features - daily strip - 1925
Bus - Woody Gelman - Solomon & Gelman - daily strip - 1947
Bush League - John Bianchi and Ken Shaw - LA Times Syndicate - daily and Sunday strip - 1975
Bush League Barry - Victor Pazimino - EAS - weekly strip - 1930-34
Business Card - Anne and Gene Bass - Cartoonist & Writers Syndicate - thrice weekly - 1992
Business As Usual - Harley Schwadron - Allied Press International - daily panel - 1980-81
Buster - Aaron Bacall - Transworld News Service - daily strip - 1976-77
Buster And Lester - Virgil Maldonado Jr - United Cartoonist Syndicate - daily - 1986-87
Butter And Eggs - Norcross - Wheeler-Nicholson - daily panel - 1926
Butterball - Bill Danch - Select Features - daily panel - 1957-62
Button's Bunch - Ford Button - Dickson-Bennett - daily and Sunday strip - 1980-86
Button-Up - Ford Button - R-GAB Features - daily panel - 1980
Button-A-Day - Ed Moore - United Feature - daily panel - 1972-73
Buzz And Biff - F.H. Cumberworth - Watkins Syndicate - daily strip - 1939
Buzzy - Brian White - Watkins Syndicate - daily strip - 1935-36
By George - George Callahan - Dickson-Bennett - daily strip - 1982
By Murphy's Law - Robert Howell - Journal Syndicate - daily - 1982-86

Labels: Mystery Strips

Here's your chance to rescue some obscure strips from the graveyard of undocumented features. As many of you know, Editor & Publisher, the trade journal of the newspaper business, publishes an annual syndicate directory. They've published them since 1924, and they are a treasure trove of information. In fact, my friend Dave Strickler has published a book wherein he lists all the features that appeared in those directories (his website is here).

Most of the E&P listings are for standard mainstream features, but they have also listed many additional more obscure stuff over the years. Some are from tiny syndicates (including self-syndicators), others are strips that came from mainstream syndicates but ran only for a short time in few papers. Others are true phantom features - strips that the syndicates tried to sell but failed, amateur cartoonists who deluded themselves into thinking their feature was publishable, and so on. Many listings these days are for strips that run only on the web.

The E&P syndicate directories, then, are a valuable source of information, but full of pitfalls if we just assume that all the features listed actually ran in newspapers. And as most of you know, I'm working on a project called the Stripper's Guide Index that seeks to document every recurring comic strip and panel cartoon feature that ran in US newspapers. The most important rule that I have for including a feature in Stripper's Guide is that I have to have seen it for myself actually running in a newspaper. One reason for that rule is the E&P phantom strip listings - some other researchers have fallen into the trap of documenting features based only on that resource with absolutely no additional evidence to support the existence of the feature. I won't let that happen in Stripper's Guide.

A reader recently suggested that I should publish more on the blog about features that are a mystery to me, in hopes that you guys will be able to provide information. Of course I'm only too happy to oblige. So today I'm starting a series of posts listing the E&P information on features that I've not been able to find running in any newspaper.

Here's the deal. What I need from you is documentary proof of the feature's existence. Photocopies or scans of a few sample tearsheets work great (especially if you can provide dates and the name of the paper), but I can also when necessary check out leads, like "sure, I read that one every day in the Splutburg Chronicle back in 1970-71." On the other hand, please cool it on leads like "that sounds vaguely like something I half-remember from somewhere".

So what do I offer in return? Undying gratitude of your peers, of course, goes without saying. Credit in Stripper's Guide for your contribution as well. But let me sweeten the pot. For documentary proof of any feature listed here I will reimburse you with a goodie package of collectible old newspaper tearsheets from my collection. Your goodie package may also include original art, old comic books, reprint books or magazines. Believe me, I'll make it worth your while. Sound fair? Great. Here we go with the list of mystery strips for the letter "A". Each listing shows the title, creator(s) credited, the syndicate, the format and the years listed in E&P.

AC In DC - Edwards De Lon - Future Features - daily strip - 1996
AD-LIBerties - Ney Talbot - N.E.W.S. - daily strip - 1949-50
Abe Martin Junior - E.B. Sullivan - Dille - daily panel - 1938-39 (apparently replaced Abe Martin these two years?)
Academy Of Fame - A.S. Curtis - Curtis Features - Sunday strip - 1946-50 (suspect this might just be “Medal Of Honor” under a different title)
Ace Of The Staff - Leon P. Snowe II - Trans World News - daily strip - 1978
Acme Woods - Dyke Williams - Dickson Features - weekly strip - 1980
Ad-A-Line - Henri Arnold - Editors Syndicate - daily panel - 1955 (FOUND! in Great Bend Daily Tribune)
Ad-Ribs - Bob Poet - Richmond Syndicate - daily strip - 1979
Adam Apple’s Adventures - Don Herold - Dille - daily panel - 1932
Adam’s World - Wayne Phillips - Consolidated - thrice-weekly panel - 1974
Addled Ads - Harry Lutke - Chicago Sun-Times - daily panel - 1950-51 (FOUND! in Lowell Sun)
Addles - Shar Durksen - American International - daily panel - 1993-97
Adventure In Nature - Robert Peterson - American International - daily strip - 1988-98
Adventure, Culture And Humor In Proper English - uncredited - Cartoonics - daily and Sunday strip - 1942
Adventures In Death Valley - Stanley Miller - Matz Features - daily strip - 1940 (probably advertising comics?)
Adventures In Wonderland - Bob Pilgrim - Independent Syndicate - daily strip - 1930 (FOUND! by Bill Mullins in the LaCrosse Tribune and Leader Press - thanks Bill!)
Adventures Of Arsene Lupin - Maurice LeBlanc and Georges Bourdin - Service Cooperative de Diffusion d’Articles - daily strip - 1948 (French - did it run in US?)
Adventures Of Melisse - Melisse - Melisse Syndicate - daily panel - 1950
Adventures Of Mister A. Worm - Charles Sarka - F-Bean Syndicate - weekly panel - 1926
Adventures Of Skuddabud - Columba Krebs - Skuddabud Creations - daily strip - 1936-38
Adventures Of Ted And Jed - Raymon Naylor - Feature Sales Syndicate - daily/weekly strip/panel - 1936
Adventures Of Tiny Turtle - Brint Schorer Jr. - Tiny Features - daily strip - 1968-71 (FOUND - turned out to be a coloring and game page - not qualified for SG listing)
Afterworld - Todd Schowalter - Plain Label Press - daily/weekly strip - 1992-94
Agile Man - Rex Walthall - Dickson-Bennett International Features - daily strip - 1981-82
Agony - uncredited - Interpress of London & New York - weekly panel - 1976-81
Ahead Of Time - Ken Muse - Dickson Features - weekly strip - 1980-81
Air Fair - Dick Locher - Winford Company - daily strip - 1971-73
Air-Sub DX - Carl Burgos - Watkins (Brooklyn Eagle) - Sunday strip - 1939
Aladdin McFadden - Jim Lavery - Arthur J. Lafave - daily and Sunday strip - 1937
Aladdin And Company - Jaime Diaz - Ed Marzola & Associates - daily and Sunday strip - 1976
Alan O’Dare - Carl Pfeufer - Smith-Mann - Sunday strip - 1951-54 (probably topper to “Chisholm Kid”)
Albert - Robert Nunn - American International - daily strip - 1992-95
Alexander Gate - Gene Mora and Frank Bolle - McNaught Syndicate - daily and Sunday strip - 1970-71 (EDIT: existence verified by Jeffrey Lindenblatt!)
Alfonso - Romano Garofalo, Regnal Adams, Charles Russo - Dickson Bennett/American International - daily strip - 1982-91 (Alberto Becattini says this is an Italian strip there titled "Mostalfonso")
Algy - Gene Rowls - Bryl Syndicate - daily strip - 1936
Ali Baba - Ostrup - Select Features - daily panel - 1948
Ali Katt - Walt Trag - unknown syndicate - daily strip - 1958
Alias The Skull - Kevin Miller and David Watkins - Suzerain - Sunday strip - 1993-95
All In America - Tom Ward - Winford Company - daily and Sunday strip - 1972
All In The Family - Bill Murray - Minority Features - weekly strip - 1980-2003
All-American Family - Lesnier - Popular Press Features - weekly panel - 1951
Almighty Dollar - Lo Linkert - Feature Associates - weekly panel - 1980
Along The Rail - John Williams - Community Features - weekly panel - 1980-81
Alpha Ant - Leonard Bruce and the Humane Society - Leoleen-Durck - weekly panel - 1983-88 (presumably a giveaway?)
Amanda y Rocinante - Resurrecion Espinosa and Dorthy Torres - self-syndicated - weekly strip - 1996-present
Amateur Etiquette - Dick Calkins - Dille - daily panel - 1925-30 (FOUND! in Edwardsville Intelligencer - more of an illustrated column, not qualified for SG listing)
Amazing But True - Albert Edward Wiggam - Dille - daily panel - 1931-32 (early name of “Let’s Explore Your Mind”?)
Ambitious Ambrose - Oscar Hitt - Wheeler-Nicholson - daily strip - 1926 (found! in Lowell Sun)
Amby - Dwight Parks - Dille - daily and Sunday strip - 1958 (never ran -- see comment by Ger Appeldoorn below - thanks Ger!)
American Scoreboard - Henry Riddick and Antoinette Leeds - Family Features - weekly panel - 1948
Amos The Analyst - Mick Stevens - Lew Little Syndicate - daily panel - 1966-67
Anabel And Rupert - Reub Allen and M.O.Doyle - Columbia Inc. - daily strip - 1935
And Bob Created Woman - David Watkins and Kevin Miller - Suzerain - daily strip - 1993
Andy Lane - Eustace Adams and Dick Brown - United Feature - unknown format/frequency - 1933
Anggie - Dawn Munson - American International - daily strip - 1992-94
Animal Chatter For A Clean Environment - Emil Abrahamian - self-syndicated - 1995-96 (ran in Arab News - ever is US?)
Animals On Parade - John Meissner - self-syndicated - daily panel - 1939
Another Day Another Doll - Henry Gaines Goodman - Beroth Features - daily panel - 1958-61
Anthracite And Bituminous - Ferd Himme - Lowry Cartoons - weekly panel - 1932 (ad panel for coal??)
Antics Of The Allens - Leonard Merrill - Thompson Service - weekly panel - 1932
Antoinette And Cleopatra - Joanne McGuire - Copley News - daily strip - 1979
Aphrodite - uncredited - Interpress of London And New York - weekly panel - 1985-97
Apple A Day - Richard Gerchak - Community Features - weekly panel - 1980-81
Applesauce - Dick Calkins - Dille - daily panel - 1924
Aram - Piet Wijn - Douglas Whiting Ltd - daily strip - 1959-60 (Dutch - ran in US?)
Ardith - Ken Muse - Dickson-Bennett - daily strip - 1982
Are You A Kopy Kat? - Robert Gill - National Features - Sunday strip - 1980-82
The Aristocrats - Bob Kane - Ledger Syndicate - daily panel - 1967-70
Armadillosaurus - R. Shirley - Famous Features - weekly strip - 1995
Arnaki - Aspro Coolidge - Mid-Continent - thrice weekly panel - 1978-79
Arnie - Arne Stockholm - Singer Features - weekly strip - 1973-99
Around Town - Rube Weiss - Blakely Features - weekly panel - 1970-76
Around The Dial - uncredited - Audio Service - daily panel - 1927
Arty Facts - Ray Fisher - Singer Features - weekly panel - 1983-99
As You Were - Jim Baker - Pioneer Press - daily panel - 1972-99 (FOUND! in Elyria Chronicle-Telegram)
Assignment Top Secret - Bill Barry - Adventure Features - daily strip - 1981-93
The Astronits - Pat Anderson - self-syndicated - daily strip - 1970-79 (found printed a single time in the Cedar Rapids Press - still looking for more evidence)
Astronuts - Dave Berg - Singer Media - weekly strip - 1994-99
At Andre’s - Sandy Brier - McClure Syndicate - daily panel - 1961
Atila - William Grosso - Colombian Comics - daily strip - 1990-96
Aunt Effie - Edgon Margo - Queen Features - weekly panel - 1939
Auntie’s Antics - uncredited - Keystone Features - daily strip - 1938
Auto Comics - Kenny Hall - Avanti Features - weekly panel - 1996-97
Auto Sense - Jack Williamson - Associated Editors - weekly panel - 1925-26 (FOUND! in Oshkosh Daily Northwestern)

My collection is quite a bit bigger than the norm, so my storage problems are probably worse than the the typical fan or collector will encounter. In any case, I thought you might be interested in how I store my collection. Beyond the bagging and the boxing, if you just store your collection in any old nook and cranny you'll have trouble tracking the stuff down when it's time to reread or sell.

I keep track of all my daily runs, and most of my Sundays, with a database. I use an older version of Paradox because I'm comfortable with it, but any decent database program will do just fine for tracking a collection. For dailies I track pretty much the same information as I write on the bag labels (title, date range, count, and source paper), plus I add the size (in newspaper columns), what I paid for it, and any notes about the run, including condition if there are any problems.

For Sundays I track the title of each strip, the date, the newspaper, the format (full, half, third, tab, etc.), number of colors (in case the sheet is not printed in full four color), the topper strip if there is one, condition problems if there are any, and the strip title that appears on the reverse. I include that last piece of information because I regularly resell Sundays and I want to make sure that I don't resell a strip that has something rare on the reverse, or offer to sell a minor strip for a couple dollars only to find that there's something very valuable on the other side.

In both my Sunday and daily databases I have an additional field that tells me where the given item is stored. As you have seen, I store my Sundays in the boxes described yesterday. On each box I simply write a unique number, then as I buy Sunday tearsheets and put them in the current box I'm filling, I add the Sundays to the database with that box number referenced. Then if I need to retrieve a Sunday I just have one box to check.

You may not like this system because you end up with boxes that contain a mish-mosh of material. And that's certainly going to be the case. Every one of my boxes contains a miscellany of material, usually with something from every decade of the previous century, all rubbing elbows with each other. But I'm okay with this because it would be a huge job to try to keep all of a given title or even era or genre together. In fact, I once tried to do exactly that when I started collecting Sundays, but it became apparent quickly that I could end up spending all my time just doing the drudge work of categorizing and filing material into a vast array of boxes. And it really would be an impossible task, anyway. If you keep a box for your Terry And The Pirates, say, and another box for your Steve Canyons, what do you do when you get a batch of tearsheets that have the two strip together? And if you think the chances of that are awfully slim, let me pass on to you Allan's Rule of Sundays - Sundays of a Feather Flock Together; in other words, junk gets backed with junk, and the rare and collectible get backed with the rare and collectible. It's a rule with exceptions, but it's pretty damnably and eerily accurate.



In figures 43 and 44 you see my Sunday storage boxes all snug in their storage area. I used to just stack the boxes up on top of each other in a big pile, but that was a real pain when I had to get at a box a dozen down from the top of the stack. Luckily I found a storage system that is absolutely perfect, and, believe it or not, absolutely free! These are bakery tray carts from the supermarket. I happened to find several of them out for the garbage behind a local grocery store and immediately saw their potential. You see, where each of the bakery racks can slide on to the cart, I instead can slide a stack of two of my boxes. The typical cart can hold about 30 boxes, and as a further bonus they have wheels so you can move your entire collection at a moment's notice.

Now before anyone accuses me of stealing bakery carts, I swear to you that these were out at the grocery store's dumpster ready to be hauled away. Why I don't know, other than that some were slightly banged up, and some had sticky wheels (fixed in a jiffy with some WD-40). Since my first discovery of the bakery carts, I keep my eyes peeled and am amazed at how often a cart or two is out at the dumpster. What are those people doing to their bakery carts?


Dailies I keep in banker's boxes; the ones that have a drawer that pulls out the front. I recommend somewhat smaller boxes then the ones I use unless you have a really big collection. With the quantity I store, though, the big boxes are more practical. Just like I do with the Sunday boxes, I number the banker's boxes and record that number in my database of daily strip runs for all the dailies that go in that box. Again as with Sundays, I don't really try to keep particular titles together in these boxes. I just fill them as I buy material, whatever it might be. Figure 45 shows the storage area for my dailies, 46 shows one of the boxes. The shelving units are necessary because these banker's boxes are not sturdy enough to be stacked more than four high.

And that's the end of my rather extended series on storing a comic strip tearsheet collection. Hope you've enjoyed it!

Yesterday we did the classroom work on storing Sundays, today we go into the lab and get to the practical side.

Let's start with bagging. I'll be honest and admit that I bag very few of my Sunday comics. I should but I don't. Two reasons; first of all, the bags are very large so they get a bit pricey, especially at the rate I'd be using them. Even cheap polypropylene at the size needed (20" x 30" for full sheets) costs 15 to 25 cents per bag. There's a lot of Sundays that really aren't worth all that much more than the price of the bag. Second, I find that the large bags needed to store full newspaper pages are unwieldy and it is easy to damage the strips when trying to wrestle them into these monsters if you don't take great care.



I do have a trick that makes inserting Sundays into a bag a less risky and acrobatic proposition. All you need is a cardboard backer a little smaller than the size of the bag. Lay your Sunday section or page on the board (figure 23). Then lay the board on a flat surface, and get one end started into the bag (figure 24). Then lift the combination and slide the bag up along the board (figure 25). Now just pull the board back out of the bag, leaving the Sunday inside (figure 26, 27). To make this even easier, use 4 mil bags - they don't cost much more, but they're much stiffer so they're easier to load and they provide good support to the contents.



This trick brings up the question of backer boards for Sundays like we use for dailies. They are available from Bags Unlimited (the size we'd want are marketed as "Rock & Personality Poster" backers - 20" x 28"), but they are quite expensive at about $2 apiece. I reserve these for very fragile and valuable items. Remember, if you're going to use backer boards, make sure to get acid-free.

The real challenge to storing Sundays, though, is not so much the bagging of individual pages or sections, but storing your collection so that you can access the material easily. As have many collectors when they started out, I used to store my Sundays in any old cardboard box I could find that had large enough dimensions so that the sheets could lay flat in the bottom. Trouble is, the boxes you find that can handle a Sunday laying flat in the bottom are usually huge boxes, the sort of thing that a refrigerator comes in.

Tall boxes really don't work well because as your collection grows, not only do the boxes get very heavy, but finding a particular Sunday in such a large pile of material gets to be a major chore. What I wanted were short boxes big enough to handle even the biggest jumbo Sunday page (up to 20" x 30"), preferably with a lid that can be removed (rather than having to deal with flaps). Many moons ago I found the perfect thing. Kodak used to make a lovely thin box of the proper dimensions. They were for storing large scale negatives; the ones used in some printing processes. Unfortunately, even 20 years ago Kodak no longer made the product or the box, so I was stuck with only a few of these perfect storage boxes.

I spent several years looking for alternatives and found nothing. I finally resigned myself to the idea that the boxes would have to be custom made. However, being the cheapskate that I am, I wasn't about to go pay someone to build custom boxes, especially in the quantity I need. Enter my Dad, about as handy a guy as you're ever likely to meet. I challenged him to come up with something that fit my requirements. He did, and now he'll walk you through the steps of building the perfect Sunday comic storage box. I photographed him making one of his masterpieces.

The raw material for the boxes are large pieces of flat corrugated cardboard stock. You'll need pieces that are a minimum of 24" x 32". It takes two pieces of that size to make one box (base and lid). You can get cardboard flats through most shipping supply companies, including Uline. However, the shipping on large pieces of cardboard can get pretty expensive, so if you can find a local supplier you'll probably save quite a bit. Check the Yellow Pages under Cardboard, Boxes, or Shipping Supplies.



The tools you'll need to build your own storage boxes are shown in figures 28 and 29. You'll need a box-cutter, a square or some other straightedge, a tape measure, a medium size Phillips screwdriver, packing tape, glue, a pencil and a set of four (or better yet, eight) clamps. You can substitute clothespins or the like for the clamps in a pinch (ha!).

First you'll need to cut the cardboard to size. Cut one piece to 31" x 24 1/4"and the other to 30 1/2" x 23 3/4". The first one will become the lid, the second the base. Mark the cardboard using your tape measure, then place your square and cut along it (figure 30). If you're the forgetful type, like me, mark the pieces to indicate which is the base and the lid. You'll need to keep that straight while building the box.

Now that you've got the cardboard cut to the correct dimensions, you're going to form the vertical sides of the box.
On the piece that is to become the lid, make marks 1 1/2" in from the edge along all four edges. On the base, do the same, but make your marks 2" in from the edges (figure 31).



Now put your square or straightedge along each of these lines you made and run the Phillips screwdriver along the lines (figure 32). You'll want to press firmly when doing this. You are trying to put a deep score in the cardboard. The Phillips screwdriver will make a rather wide and messy looking score line, but we found that this method works best - a thin score doesn't fold up nearly as well. Figure 33 shows what the scores should look like.



Once you've got all eight scores completed (four on each piece, that is), the next step is to use your box-cutter to cut tabs at each of the corners. Figure 34 shows the cutting of a tab. Make only one cut at each corner. You don't want to cut off those little squares, just free one side of them. Figure 35 shows what you're trying to do. Now this is really important. Cut the scores in one direction on the base, the other direction on the lid. In other words, if you cut along the long edge on the base, cut along the short edge on the lid. If you make the same cuts on both pieces the lid won't fit well on the box.


Once your cuts are made, fold the tabs up as shown in figure 35. Then fold up the entire length of the scores along all the score lines as shown in figure 36. Work the fold back and forth a bit so that it's relatively happy about staying in a vertical position. If you don't make these creases so that they stay vertical, the final result will not fit together very well.




Now take your glue and put a daub on the outside edge of each of the tabs (figure 37). Don't slather on a whole bunch of glue - it's not necessary and will just take longer to dry. After gluing each tab, stick the glued side to the adjacent vertical. Get it nice and square and clamp the two pieces together, as shown in figure 38. You may end up with a little bit of the tab sticking up past the edge of the adjacent vertical. No problem - you can trim that off with the box-cutter after the joint is dry. Figure 39 shows our piece all clamped up. Set each piece aside and wait for the glue to dry - about 10-15 minutes.


Once the glue is dry take the clamps off. For a little extra strength in the corners, tape each edge on the outside (figure 40). Use wide packing tape so that you can fold some of it inside the box. Not only does this strengthen the box, the smooth surface also makes the lid mate more smoothly with the base.

If you don't plan to bag your Sundays be sure to lay a bag in the bottom of the box. We don't want newspaper touching the cardboard. Figures 41 and 42 show the completed box, ready to start storing your collection.



Reading through these instructions you may think building a box is a pretty big job, but it's a lot easier in practice than it is to explain. The whole process of building a box takes no more than a half-hour or so once you've done a few. My dad was able to build the one you see in the photos in about 45 minutes, and that was with me stopping him constantly to take pictures and write down the steps. And of course the process becomes a lot more streamlined if you build a whole batch of boxes all at the same time, which is the way he normally does it.

Tomorrow we'll finish off this series with a quick tour of my storage area plus a few words about how I keep track of the items in my collection. If you have any suggestions or concerns that you think should be incorporated into this series, now would be a great time to let me know. Also, I'd love to hear about and pass along any hints, tips and techniques you use for storing your collection. Unlike most collecting categories, there are no real tried-and-true, set in stone methods for storing a comic strip tearsheet collection. I'm sure a lot of you have developed your own techniques for dealing with the problems of storing tearsheets.

Tomorrow: Part VII - Storing and Tracking a Large Collection

When storing Sunday comics we try to play by the same rules as we do for dailies. Cool, dry and dark are still our top priorities, and limiting air circulation is a close runner-up.

Sundays should be stored flat and unfolded. I've heard of some collectors who like to roll them up and put them in tubes, but I find that comics stored that way can easily get damaged when they are inserted and removed from storage. Long-term storage in a tube also leaves the paper with a permanant curl that is not only unattractive but makes them a real pain to read.

When newspapers come off the press they are folded on the page gutters. This fold goes along with the grain of the newspaper and is the only fold you should allow when storing newspapers. The secondary fold that most full-size papers get for delivery and display on newstands (the one that limits us to seeing the top half of the front page) is across the grain and we want to store newspapers without that fold.

If you're not familiar with the idea that newspaper has a grain, you can easily see it for yourself. Try tearing a piece of newspaper long ways (perpendicular to the lines of type). The paper will tear easily in a straight line. Now try tearing the other way - you get a messy jagged line. Much like the wood that the paper is made from, paper folds and separates with ease along its grain, while cutting against the grain is a much harder and messier proposition.

The secondary fold is made across the newspaper grain, and it damages the internal structure that holds the paper together along that crease. We don't want to perpetuate that fold because as the newspaper ages, the paper along that line, already weakened, gets weakens at an even faster pace. When we handle a newspaper that has been stored using the secondary fold for a long period, that line will tear as soon as it gets any undue stress. I have lots of vintage Sundays that look to be in nice condition, but because they were stored for years doubled over like that (before I got them, of course) I have to use the utmost care in opening them to keep the paper at that fold from just letting go.

Another issue is clipping Sunday strips. It is quite common for collectors and fans to clip a Sunday section so that they can store each different strip title separately. This may be convenient, but from the standpoint of preservation it is an unfortunate practice. You may have heard historians talking about "losing the context" of some artifact. Admittedly we aren't dealing with pottery shards from ancient Greece, but the root problem is the same. By splitting a Sunday section into its component parts we lose some of the intrinsic value of the object.

I have plenty of rare Sunday comic strips in my collection that I bought already clipped, and I have no way to learn more about them. If I had a complete section I'd be able to tell what date it was printed, what city it came from, which paper printed it, perhaps which syndicate supplied the comic strips. An isolated comic strip with no date, newspaper name or other identifying information is the equivalent in comic strip history to Egyptian hieroglypics with no Rosetta Stone.

Now to be pragmatic about this issue, I realize that many collectors only care about certain favorite strips, and they prefer just to buy a run of that title. They really don't want to be saddled with complete sections when they only care about one portion of one page. So, with commerce being king, comic sections are going to be clipped to resell individual strips. However, I can say from watching the market that there is a growing interest in complete sections, and they are fetching better and better prices, sometimes more than the sum of their parts. Fans are starting to recognize that complete comic sections are an interesting and valuable historical snapshot of a time and a place. Early Sunday sections, especially those from before the 1920s, have long fetched much higher prices complete than in parts, and the trend is slowly turning the same way on more recent vintages.

My suggestion, then, is that whenever possible you should keep your sections complete. You may find that somewhere down the road, if and when you decide to sell material from your collection, that the extra storage space needed was a small price to pay for the eventual reward.

Tomorrow we'll start dealing with the more practical aspects of storing Sunday comics.

Tomorrow: Part 6 - Storing Sunday Comics

Yesterday I walked you through the process I use for bagging my daily comic strips. The method I outlined there applies to most situations, but there are some cases that call for a slightly modified procedure.





The first problem situation is shown in figure 11. If I bagged this daily run in the smallest bag I could, I would end up with a small air pocket along the edge. This is a bad situation because we want to get as much air out as possible, and this little void along the edge defeats that purpose. So I dump that bag and go with the next bigger size (see figure 12). This bag has a lot of extra room, but we'll take care of that. I fold over the excess, making sure to make the fold tight against the edge of the strips (figure 13) and then securely tape this fold. I snug the fold up as tight as I can without warping the strips, then tape first in the middle, then tape the two ends (figure 14). I then cut off the excess at the open end and tape the bag shut as usual. While this procedure could probably be done with the smaller bag, I find that trying to fold over and tape such a tiny excess is a lot harder to do and rarely comes out looking decent.

The second situation comes about when bagging either very fragile material or a very small count of strips. If we bag these as normal we end up with a very limp floppy package, and we can easily damage the strips in handling. A typical example of a short run of large dailies is shown in figure 15.
This short run of strips from the mid-1910s are brown and a bit brittle, so I want them to protect them better than just a bag can. Here we take a cue from the comic book collectors and use backer boards. With all the different sizes of strips we might deal with, we may need a lot of different sizes of backer boards. I solve the problem by buying the largest size I might need (18" x 12", which, by the way, works for tabloid Sundays as well), as shown in figure 16, and then cut the boards down as needed (usually I get two or more backers out of each sheet, even with very large dailies).

Since I typically use backer boards with more valuable dailies, I make sure that the boards I buy are made with acid-free coated stock. These cost more than your basic dime-store poster board, but I think it's worth it for the peace of mind that you don't have something acidic touching your strips, slowly but surely burning them into brittle oblivion. I buy my backer boards from Bags Unlimited (http://www.bagsunlimited.com), but similar products are available through artist and framing supply shops. I pay about 75 cents per sheet.

Because I want the backer boards to fit snugly in my bags, I cut them just shy of the size of the bags, not to the size of the strips. I find I rarely need them on small strips, so I only keep a supply of 5", 6" and 7" wide backers that fit into my larger bags. Cutting the boards down to size on a table saw about ten or so at a time works pretty good, and there's minimal fraying to the edges. If you don't have access to a saw, your local printing company has a wonderful cutting machine about the size of an Escalade, and they'll be happy to cut a batch for you for a small price. You may also have to occasionally cut custom sizes, but a ruler and a box-cutter make short work of these sheets. Figure 17 shows the completed job with the backing board in the bag protecting the dailies.


This takes care of all the basics of bagging dailies. However, if you're a real stickler for a professional looking job, and the idea of folding bags just won't cut it with you, there's one more option you can consider - customizing bags to your needs. This is not really quite as big a deal as it might sound at first blush, but there is a pretty hefty initial outlay for equipment. Figure 18 shows a device called a heat sealer. These cost, depending on the size you buy, anywhere from about $50-$150. The size I have (18") is at the high end of that range, and you'll need one that long if you plan to work with large dailies. Heat sealers are available from Bradley's, Uline and other companies that specialize in bags and packaging materials. The one I use I particularly like because it's portable (most heat sealers are meant to sit on a bench, and you bring the work to them), I bought it from Art Marko at National Shrinkwrap. They sell a great product, and their instructional videos do a good job of bringing you right up to speed on the use of the equipment.

The heat sealer is a pretty simple device. Inside the main body of the sealer is a wire, and when you activate the sealer it gets red hot. When you press the sealer down on a piece of plastic it makes a clean cut in it. If you press it down on two pieces laying on top of one another, it not only cuts it but seals the two pieces together. This is the magic that allows you to create bags of virtually any custom size you need.



I don't recommend that you make customized bags from scratch. It is much simpler to take the bags you have and resize them to fit your needs. That way you only have to make one new seal, not three. Let's walk through the process. First I take a bag, preferably a good deal larger than what I need, lay it on the set of dailies and mark the size I need (figure 19). Don't forget that the bag must be a bit larger than the dailies since there is a thickness component to consider. I mark my line with a Uni-Ball micro pen - these thin marker pens mark well on plastic while most regular ballpoints do not.

Then I carefully line up the sealer on my line and press it down to cut and seal a new edge on the bag (figure 20). Never do this with the strips inside the bag - you'll burn the edges. The newly resized bag is shown in figure 21, and you can also see in the background that you get a second small bag out of the process (bonus!). Also you can see the smoke wafting through the picture - this is normal. The heat sealer is burning the plastic off of its wire element.

If you measured and cut well, your strips will fit like a glove in the newly made custom bag (figure 22). Once you've got the strips in, you'll probably feel the urge to use the sealing tool again to seal the fourth side. Don't do it! You can't get a tight fit without burning the edges of your strips, and you don't want to be melting plastic right up against them. Seal the bags as normal with tape. Besides, if you seal it, you'll need to build a new bag any time you get a hankering to reread the strips!

Tomorrow: Part 5 - Storing Sunday Comics

Daily comic strips come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, so I keep a supply of a lot of different sizes of plastic bags on hand. For bagging daily runs I keep all the following sizes:

2" x 18"
3" x 18"
4" x 18"
5" x 18"
6" x 18"
7" x 18"
8" x 18"

I buy the longest bags I can (18"), then just snip off the extra that I don't need. That allows me to use the same limited assortment of bags to store newer small dailies and the gargantuan ones from the 1910s. I can also store panel comics, which can be as small as the one column variety at less than 2", to giant 4 and 5 column panel cartoons.

There are many companies that sell plastic bags. Some specialize in servicing collectors and they charge a premium. I buy mine from one of the many bag companies that caters to businesses. Businesses, especially manufacturers, buy polyethylene bags in bulk for packaging their products. The bags are made out of the same material as the ones you would buy from a collectors' supply house. There are three differences between a 'manufacturer' bag and a collector's bag. A manufacturer bag typically does not have a flap at the top - the two sides are cut flush. This makes no difference to me because I will be cutting off one end anyway, so I'd lose the flap if it was there. Second, manufacturer bags often have a short plastic tail below the bottom seal. Collector bags are usually cut flush to the seal. A meaningless difference in my opinion. Third, manufacturer bags are most readily available in 2 millimeter and 4 millimeter thicknesses, whereas collector bags are typically 3 millimeter. I actually prefer the 2 mil to the 3 mil because of the way I seal my bags (more on that shortly). The 4 mil thickness, while it may offer more protection and perhaps durability (?), I find too stiff to work with using my method for daily strip storage.

I buy my storage bags from Uline (http://www.uline.com) and from Bradley's Plastic Bag Company (http://www.bradleybag.com), but there are plenty of other suppliers. Just to give you an idea of how cheap the bags are priced, the latest Bradley's catalog lists the 2 mil 4" x 18" size at $1.87 per hundred. Obviously keeping yourself supplied with bags will not break the bank.


In figure 1 you see an assortment of the storage bags and other materials I use for bagging dailies. Nothing exotic or expensive here. One item of special note is the sheet of labels. I label every bagged daily run with the title, the dates, the count and the source newspaper. Figure 2 shows a close-up. The labels I use are 2 5/8" x 1" and come in sheets of 30 labels. The sheets come blank, of course, and I just run them through my printer to add the text to all the labels on the sheet. Then I hand write the specifics about each daily run as I bag it. Of course, there's no need to use a special label, you can just write the information on a scrap of paper and insert it in the bags with the strips.

Okay - let's bag a typical run of dailies. Here I have a run that I bought from another collector, a 2 month run of Jane Arden dailies. I start by counting them (figure 3) - even if the previous owner provided a count, I always verify it. You'll find when counting newspaper dailies that your fingers will quickly get loaded up with gunk, which makes it hard to separate the sheets. I put a little bit of SortKwik, available at office supply stores, on my fingers (figure 4). It makes them a bit tacky and separating the sheets is much easier. I admit that I worry about the residue, minute though it might be, that I may be leaving on the tearsheets. However, I find that I just can't be sure of an accurate count without it. A safer alternative are the little rubber 'condom' things that you can put on your fingers - these would be safe, but with my big ham hands they don't fit very well.

One quick aside before we go on. Notice that the strips I'm bagging in the photo are cut so that there is a reasonable gutter area outside the strip itself (kind of chintzy along the bottom, actually). If you are clipping strips yourself, be sure to leave some room around the strips - never clip them right to the panel borders. Many collectors, myself included, won't buy strips that have been clipped without a gutter. This is not just because of our delicate aesthetic sensibilities. Paper, as noted earlier, ages most quickly along the edges, so if a strip is clipped right at the panel borders aging results in the edges of the strip turning brown, and eventually brittle. With a gutter around the clips, even if they age badly we will still have the strips themselves in decent condition - the gutters will bear the brunt of the aging process. Okay, back to bagging...

Once the strips are counted and I've filled out the label, I next determine which bag they'll best fit in (figure 5). A simple matter of checking sizes and picking the smallest size. I try to get a tight fit (remember - we're trying to get as little air in there as possible), but if I can't get a good tight fit with the bag sizes I have, I may actually go up one extra size over the minimum. I'll expand on this point in part 4. The Jane Arden strips fit snugly in a 2" bag.

Once I put the strips in the bag I cut off all the excess plastic except for about an inch or so (figure 6). I then press out as much air from the bag as possible, and fold over the cut edge. I do a 'Christmas present' fold (figure 7) because I find that this seems to seal the bag better and keep air from seeping back in. Note that I have a piece of tape at the ready on the end of a finger. This way I can immediately seal the bag, not giving that darn air any chance at re-entry (figure 8).

Here's the final product, from the front (figure 9) and the back (figure 10). I always put the label on the back so I can see the whole top strip.

Tomorrow: Part 4 - More About Bagging Dailies

In addition to minding the 'big three' factors discussed yesterday, there is one more thing you can do to help your newspaper keep its youthful complexion. Newsprint that is kept away from circulating air seems to age far slower. The less exposure to air the better. If you look at an old bound volume of newspapers, or just an old book printed on cheap pulp paper, you'll find that the outer page edges are much browner than the page bodies. The difference seems to be that the middles of the pages weren't exposed to air. In a tightly closed book, everything except the page edges gets no air circulation - apparently this is an environment hostile to the agents of paper deterioration.

So to give your newspapers an even longer life you can eliminate, or at least limit, the amount of air circulation to which they are exposed. The basic way to do this is simplicity itself - just stack your newspaper tearsheets in a pile. This protects them almost as if they were bound like a book.

You can very easily go one better than the 'book' method of storage, which still leaves the outer edges exposed to air, by tightly bagging your newspapers to eliminate the air circulation all but completely. But once we consider bagging our newspapers, we hit the $64,000 question - which materials are suitable for bagging newsprint? If the bagging material reacts chemically with the newspaper, we could be causing much more harm to our precious cargo than we are trying to avoid in the first place.

Archivists tell us that the ideal material for bagging newsprint is Mylar. We are told that it is totally chemically inert and thus cannot react with the contents. I don't doubt that they are right. There's just one little problem - the stuff costs an arm and a leg. I suppose if you are trying to protect some rare and valuable 1890s Yellow Kid pages that it is reasonable to shell out the big bucks for Mylar. But 99.9% of newspaper comics are simply not worth that kind of investment. They're scarce, yes, valuable ... not so much.

Instead I use good old reliable polyethylene plastic bags. They cost mere pennies per bag and come in a practically infinite variety of sizes. Now I've read the reports (mostly from companies selling Mylar ... hmmm) that claim the plastic 'outgasses' nasty chemicals that will supposedly destroy my precious collection, but I can only tell you what I have learned from personal experience. I have plenty of newspapers that I placed in polyethylene bags as long as thirty years ago, and to my eyes the paper inside has not aged one bit in that period.

I will admit that I have seen old polyethylene bags that have not aged gracefully - some have a tendency to get a bit cloudy or yellow, and I've even found a few that have gotten slightly tacky to the touch (but on the outside only). When I find one of these I just remove the newspaper, toss the bag and substitute a new one. I've never seen the bag yet that has actually done any visible damage to its contents.

Before we go on, a few words on other storage methods. First of all, please don't paste or tape your comic strips into albums. The glue that comes in contact with the newspaper will usually turn it brown. Besides, if and when you decide to sell your comic strips you'll find that most collectors won't buy strips that have tape or glue on them. Same goes for laminating - most collectors want nothing to do with laminated newspapers, and rightly so. Lamination is irreversible, and the process, which involves high heat, is terribly damaging to newsprint. Not only that, but studies have shown that lamination does pretty much nothing to protect newsprint - it continues to age unabated inside that plastic shell.

It's also probably not a good idea to put your comic strips in those photo albums with the sticky clear plastic overlays. While I don't have any personal long-term experience with the effects of this storage method on newsprint, I have seen photos in such albums that have been damaged through a reaction between the photographic emulsion and the plastic overlay. If those albums can hurt photos, they can probably hurt newsprint too.

It is also a bad idea to store unbagged comic strips in cardboard boxes. Most cardboard is highly acidic, so much so that it can chemically burn paper that touches it. Cardboard is fine if the the strips are bagged, or if the cardboard is lined with some more innocuous material.

Tomorrow: Part 3 - Bagging Daily Comics

One of the questions I get asked a lot is "How should I store my comic strips?" In this series of posts I'm going to endeavor to answer that question as best I can, but first a caveat. Although I have a huge collection and I do my best to store the material so that it will not deterioriate, I am admittedly not a professional archivist. Some of what I do might well make a serious preservationist give me the ol' "tsk, tsk", but I'll tell you on the points where I know that my methods are less than optimal.

For this reason I'm titling this essay as seen above. I don't want to give the impression that I'm expounding on anything more scientific than my own philosophy of newspaper storage.

The basic answer to the newspaper storage question is quite simple. All newspaper should be stored with three basic elements in mind:

* Cool
* Dry
* Dark

Heat, humidity and light are the enemies of newsprint. High temperatures and high humidity accelerate the aging of the paper, first turning it off-white, then eventually brown and then brittle. The first two factors, though, are lightweights compared to the aging power of light. Light can turn newsprint brown and brittle in practically no time. If you find that hard to believe, leave your daily newspaper out in the sun for a few days. Even that much exposure is enough to start the yellowing process. Give it a few weeks and you'll have a newspaper that looks like George Hamilton after a month on Waikiki beach.

So the first and foremost rule is that you should keep your comic strips out of light - direct and even indirect. Newspaper that is put on display may be a joy to behold, but the joy is fleeting. Soon that lovely Little Nemo Sunday tearsheet that you paid out the nose for will look like an old grocery bag. And not only have you lost something of beauty, but you've reduced the number of surviving examples, of which there are precious few to begin with, by one more.

In addition to keeping your newspaper out of light, you should also avoid storing it in places that have hight heat or humidity. Newsprint that is stored in the temperature extremes of an attic will just as surely turn brown and brittle as if it were sitting in the sun, albeit at a much slower pace. Basements are almost universally humid, and that not only ages the paper quickly, but it also stimulates the growth of mold, which considers damp newsprint a gourmet delicacy. We've all found old newspapers stashed in these places, and rarely have they survived in decent condition.

For temperature and humidity, the best place to keep your newspaper comic strips is in the same environment that you prefer to live. Moderate temperature and humidity do not halt the aging process, but they do make it about as slow as is practical for the fan and collector. Assuming you don't have the facility or wherewithal to keep the material in an ideal environment (which is more like 50 degrees F and about 40-50% humidity), the living areas of your home will do just fine. The only other requirement, then, is to keep them out of the light. A closet or cupboard or a closed box work fine.

Tomorrow: Part 2 - Another Enemy of Newsprint

What an image it conjures in my head. It's late summer 1925. A little girl, let's guess about 12 or so, living in a dilapidated Brooklyn tenement, and her one escape from grim reality is on Sunday, when father brings home a copy of the Brooklyn Eagle. He settles in to read the paper and hands the little girl the funnies. She pores over Buttons And Fatty, Hairbreadth Harry and the few other color comics, then delves into the Eagle's Boys And Girls section to work the puzzles and read the stories. She looks at the cartoons submitted by other kids, and she knows she can do better. She's always had a gift for drawing - she covers her school composition book with cartoons, and the kids at school all gather around to enjoy every new creation.

Mother went marketing on Friday and asked the butcher for a bit of extra wrapping paper. She carefully rolled it so that it wouldn't be full of creases, and presented it to young Jewell Levine on Sunday morning. This isn't the first time Mama has brought her drawing paper, but this Sunday Jewell resolves not to just doodle all over it. This Sunday she will create the next great comic strip. She'll send it in to to the Brooklyn Eagle, and surely they'll see that it is worthy of publication.

Jewell sits at the kitchen table. She can hear the sounds of the city wafting in from the street. Among them she hears the newsboys barking out the headlines. That's a natural, she thinks - surely the Eagle would have a special interest in a comic strip about a newsboy. And thus Ned The Newsy is born.

The Eagle did indeed find the comic strip worthy of publication, and not just once. Ned The Newsie (the spelling was changed after the first week) ran in the Brooklyn Eagle's Boys And Girls section almost every Sunday for the next five months.

I'd love to think that young miss Jewell Levine went on to greatness in some artistic pursuit. History, unfortunately, records no such fate. I wonder what happened to her...

One of the mostly unexplored, yet treasure-laden, aspects of newspaper comics are the Sunday magazine covers. Until the mid-1940s, when Sunday newspaper magazines all morphed into low-rent versions of Life and Look, most Sunday magazines were full-size newspaper sections with fabulous full page artist-drawn covers.

Many of these covers were strictly illustrations, but it was by no means a rare occurrence for them cross over into cartoons and even comic strips. The comic strips that graced the covers of Sunday magazines were seldom of the ruled panel and word balloon variety, though. Because the page was designed as a whole, with no need for the artist to worry about reproduction in various different formats, the pages were typically artfully done as a series of floating vignettes with numbered captions to guide the reader.

Sunday magazine cover comic strips almost universally share two properties - pretty girls and poetry. Many of the greatest glamor girl cartoonists plied their specialty on these covers, and one of the most often seen is our artist today, Russell Patterson. He is paired here with another Sunday magazine cover regular, Carolyn Wells. She supplied verses for Sunday magazine covers as early as the 1900s, and her byline was a Sunday magazine fixture for the better part of 40 years. She was a famous 'pop' poet in the days when there was such a thing.

Today's sample is the first of the series titled New Adventures of Flossy Frills, and it ran in the Hearst-produced American Weekly on January 26 1941. The series ran on the magazine covers for ten weeeks, ending on March 30 1941. Seldom did these series run for more than about 12 weeks at a time.

This is actually the second of a total of four Flossy Frills series that ran on the covers of the American Weekly. The first was titled Flossy Frills and it ran 11/12/39 - 1/21/40. The third series was Flossy Frills Helps Out which ran 3/16 - 7/19/42, and the last was Flossy Frills Does Her Bit. This last series substitutes Percy Shaw's verse for Wells' (Wells may have died - she would have been 74 that year), and it ran starting 9/12/43. I don't have the end date for this series.

The 1943 Flossy Frills series is the very last Sunday magazine comic strip series that I've been able to document. Anyone know of a later one?

Labels: Magazine Cover Comics

A perennial also-ran on the comics page are the strips that relate stories from history. Perhaps the most successful was J. Carroll Mansfield's Highlights of History, but there have been many others, including The American Adventure. This strip, a product of the small Lafave Syndicate, debuted on January 10, 1949, with writing credited to Bradford Smith and art by Dan Heilman. Smith was a writer of history books, mostly for the juvenile audience, so this was right up his alley.

The American Adventure was a Sunday and daily feature that, as do most of the history strips, try to bring history to life in the guise of a comic strip adventure story. Kids are seldom fooled by this ploy and skip the strip realizing that the comics page is committing the sin of trying to teach them something.

With the strip not selling particularly well, Dan Heilman, soon to be the first artist on the Judge Parker strip, bailed out in October 1950 and was replaced by Edwin Haeberle, of whom I know nothing. In a desperate bid to save the strip, the history aspect was dumped near the end of the run and it was made over as a fictional adventure strip.

Definite end dates for the strip are unknown to me, best I can say is that the daily lasted until at least 10/23/50, and the Sunday until 4/1/51. Does anyone have anything later?

Albert Herbert Hawkins (subtitled The Naughtiest Boy In The World) is a long-running British strip, still popular in the UK. The creator, Frank Dickens, is a successful syndicated cartoonist, illustrator and writer. Unfortunately his one shot at American syndication fell flat. Field Enterprises added the strip to their lineup in late 1979 (12/2/79 is the earliest I've found), but it was gone within a year (my latest example, the one shown here, is 11/2/80). Does anyone have any earlier or later examples?

Frank Dickens has a pretty extensive website of his material, at this link. His syndicate can be found here.

This is my sole example of a panel feature titled, obviously, The Doonks. It's by Walt Scott and from 1933. Unfortunately the tearsheet I have doesn't 'fess up with the name of the newspaper, and the copyright is to Scott himself, so I'm at a reseach dead-end.

Does anyone recognize this series? I'm guessing Scott was doing it either for a particular paper or was trying to self-syndicate it. If someone can identify a paper it ran in, I can probably take things from there with a microfilm request.

Walt Scott was a workhorse in the NEA bullpen starting around the mid-30s. His best remembered feature is The Little People. He also did many of NEAs closed-end Christmas strips.

Here, last but not least of the goodies I found in the 1903 San Francisco Bulletin, is a comic by none other than Russ (Tillie the Toiler) Westover. He would have been about 17 when this was published. Perhaps his first newspaper appearance? His early, pre-Tillie style is already pretty mature here, so he was definitely ready to be put in harness.

This nice piece was used as a heading on the Bulletin's Sunday kids' page, where most of the art was submitted by readers.

Here's the other series that ran in the San Francisco Bulletin in 1903. The 'official' title, the one used most often, was The Adventures of Ping and Pong. This one's by a fellow named R.O. Yardley. He not only did this series but a lot of the one-shot color comics that ran in the Bulletin that year. This series ran from February 1 to March 15, missing only one week in that interval.

Tomorrow we'll have one last 1903 Bulletin item - probably the very first newspaper appearance by a cartoonist whose name would appear on the nation's comics pages daily for the next half century.

I have some good news today from the exciting world of comic strip research.

A month or so ago I reported to you that the San Francisco Bulletin ran their own 'homegrown' Sunday comic strips in 1904 - I knew this because of some auctions for a few pages on eBay. However, I ordered the microfilm of the 1904 Bulletin and found no evidence of the strips. That led me to assume that those pages had been stolen out of the bound volumes before they got filmed (unfortunately not that rare an occurrence). I bemoaned the apparent conclusion that the Bulletin's strips were probably lost forever.

But hold on there, all was not lost. I ordered the Bulletin microfilm for 1903 just to see what was going on that year, and lo and behold, the Bulletin's comics are all there, including the very ones I saw advertised on eBay as being from 1904. That just goes to show you why I have to see things with my own eyes (or those of trusted advisors and researchers) before information goes into the Stripper's Guide index.

Most of the 1903 Bulletin material is one-shot strips, but there are two series. The one shown today, Race Track Expressions by the great Tad Dorgan, ran three times between 2/22 and 5/24/1903. I'll show the other tomorrow.

Please excuse the image quality, it's the best I can do from microfilm.

Elza Poppin, though supposedly written by the comedy team of Olsen & Johnson, was more likely written by the cartoonists who drew the feature. The first artist on the strip was Ving Fuller, a cartoonist who drifted in and out of syndicated newspaper strips on several occasions. His more famous strip, Doc Syke, was definitely straight out of the screwball school, so Elza Poppin was a good outlet for his talents.

However for reasons unknown Fuller left the strip after just six months, and his replacement was another cartoonist noted for his screwball strips, George 'Swan' Swanson. Swanson created one of the first, and best, screwball strips, Salesman Sam for NEA in 1921. He handled the strip until 1926, then switched over to the Central Press Association where he started the daily panel Nonsense and the comic strip High-Pressure Pete. Both features folded in 1937 after respectable runs. In 1940 Swanson returned to a byline on the comics page by taking over Elza Poppin, a perfect fit for his talents.

In 1943, with the pay for Elza Poppin probably slipping, King Features had him start The Flop Family, a Sunday only at the beginning. The new strip added a daily when Elza Poppin finally burst its bubble in 1944. The Flop Family continued on a monumental run that ended in 1982

The zany comedy team of Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson began a successful vaudeville career in the 1920s, parleyed that into a string of successful Hollywood films in the 1930s, and then set Broadway records in 1938 with their madcap stage show Hellzapoppin. Known in their heyday as the biggest competition for the Marx Brothers, the screwball duo had about the same career arc as their better-remembered rivals. The 1940s brought a string of lackluster films and a television show in 1949 fell flat. The 1950s found them in Las Vegas, where they both died in the early 60s.

One of the more obscure souvenirs of their career was a comic strip supposedly penned by them and named after their hit Broadway show. The H-E-double hockey sticks was considered too risque for the comics page, so the strip was instead titled Elza Poppin. To explain the name change, a goofy girl character was featured by that name.

It's pretty doubtful that Olsen and Johnson ever penned a gag for the feature, but their names were enough to put the strip in a pretty respectable list of papers. However, as their fame quickly waned after the Broadway show and a 1941 film version didn't do the show justice, the circulation of the strip plunged. Starting on June 19 1939, the strip gets harder and harder to find after the release of the movie in 1941. Amazingly enough, it held on through April 29 1944, though by then it was only being run by a few papers, like the New Rochelle Standard-Star.

You'll find some good material on the Olsen & Johnson team at this website, and here at Wikipedia. An interesting discussion on Hellzapoppin can be found on this blog.

Tomorrow we'll have a few more samples and discuss the cartoonists who worked on the strip.