Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Obscurity of the Day: Flora Flirt
Here's an oddball strip that ran in the Philadelphia North American's comic section from 2/23/13 to 4/12/1914. The product of a female cartoonist, Katherine P. Rice, Flora Flirt was a tad racy for the day, featuring as it did a young lass who proves quite amenable to necking with any Tom, Dick or Harry who happens to drop by her panels. Not that romance was a verboten subject in the comics (witness the dreamily romantic panels of Nell Brinkley and her army of imitators), but seldom did those cartoonists allow their star-crossed lovers to get into a wrestling match on the sofa.
Of course, she and he always get their comeuppance for such shockingly immoral behavior in Flora Flirt, but the very idea of a young unmarried woman letting her beau get even half-way to first base in 1913, at least in the otherwise scrupulously chaste Sunday comics, must have raised a few Philly eyebrows.
Labels: Female Cartoonists, Obscurities
