Stripper's Guide

We all know the old tale, first spun by Moses Koenigsberg, that the Yellow Kid was originally colored yellow in order for pressmen to have a large space in which to test troublesome yellow ink. We also know that the story is almost certainly just that, a story. Two facts indicate that the story is false; first, that newspapers were printing yellows with no apparent problem before the advent of the Kid; and second, because the kid was initially colored blue, not yellow at all.

But most stories do have a grain of truth about them, and I wonder if I might just have stumbled across that grain. Below you will find an article from the June 1893 issue of American Pressman, in which a correspondent is complaining that they are having trouble with blue ink. The problem described is exactly that described by Koenigsberg, just not the color he claimed. And the date is telling, because this is just the time when the New York World was starting to print in color (albeit long before the Yellow Kid would make his appearance).

Did the World's early troubles with blue ink somehow get mixed up with the story of the initially blue Kid, and ended up combined as a single, somewhat mangled, tall tale? No way to tell, but interesting nevertheless.

Working Colors on Each Other (American Pressman, June 1893)

How to work a job in two, three or four colors, on top of each other, and keep the colors true, so that there shall be no amalgamation, is a problem that has so often puzzled pressmen.

We have before us an anxious inquiry from one who has a large cut on the press in three colors—certain shades of yellow, red and blue. He worked his yellow first, after striking his key-form; then he put on his red and ran that off. These two colors seemed to go all right, and to "stay put" but when he got on his blue the trouble showed itself, and he found he was stumped because, as he says himself, "the impression showed up with a fatty or mottled look, especially after it had lain for some time; and the color wasn't true, wasn't what was wanted."

The remedy is an easy one. Have your sheets thoroughly dusted over with powdered magnesia, in the same way as you use bronze powder, and you will find the trouble disappear, for the reason that the inks will be prevented from amalgamating.

This is precisely the same treatment as you would give either a black or colored form, whether cut or type, on top of which you had to print in gold bronze—powder it with magnesia dust. By this means you can print anything that goes on a press on top of a dozen colors.

The secret of the trouble of working colors on top of each other is that the oil of the fresh ink softens the oil of the ink that has already been worked, and which is supposed to be dry. There is life in oil, as there is life in water (though neither has affinity for the other, yet both work in many respects in the same way). As soon as the under ink is set free by its fellow, the fresh ink, both begin to caper about and spread and run together, and of course they carry with them the coloring matter they hold, which now also partially released, breaks up into particles and presents the "fatty or mottled look" which our correspondent complains of.

Blue is a hard color to work sometimes, even alone, as many pressmen have experienced, especially with type of heavy face or cuts with solid surfaces. If the operator would stop to consider, he would find that there is grease somewhere, on his rollers, on his form, or on his distributing plate. Blue ink of all kinds, and certain blues more than others, rebel against the slightest suspicion of foreign grease, and instantly show their dislike for the stranger by assuming a mottled or spotted character. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty from dirt and everything else that injures. Keep everything clean.

Here's a delightful little strip, one of many that have tried to give a starring role to a cop over the years. Few of these ended up being particularly successful, I guess because of the public's ambivalent feelings toward the profession. I must admit that since I got a ticket yesterday in a speed trap in Ridgeway South Carolina my admiration for the profession is at a lower ebb right now.

Go-Go was syndicated by the International Syndicate of Baltimore, a syndicate whose only real comic strip success in papers came with the long-running Scoop The Cub Reporter back in the teens. The syndicate's real bread-and-butter product was their one-column 'he said-she said' gag cartoons, which they supplied in bulk to newspapers. These fell out of favor in the twenties, though, so International tried a number of strips, most of which never really got anywhere.

Go-Go was well drawn and many of the gags hit, but yet the strip never got going. It ran in 1924 (sorry, I don't know specific start and end dates) in very few papers. The strip was signed by someone named Gibbs.

Labels: Obscurities

M.T. "Penny" Ross essentially ripped himself off with Beatrice and her Kid Brother Bill, a strip that is really just Mamma's Angel Child with boys instead of girls, and an older sister instead of a mother. And yes, they are boys, though they're rather androgynous looking. Ross took less time on the art of this strip -- where Mamma's Angel Child was always graphically innovative, this strip, though drawn exceedingly well, wasn't one to make your eyes pop out like Ross' bread-and-butter strip.

What's amazing about Ross, to me anyway, is that he was able to get away with cartooning in, if I may be excused for being impolitic, a flamboyantly feminine manner. It's no surprise that many fans have assumed that 'Penny' was a woman. We're talking 1910s Chicago here, not San Francisco today, so I have to wonder how he got along with the rest of the boys in the bullpen. Do I give the folks of those long ago days less credit for openmindedness than they deserve?

Beatrice and her Brother Bill ran from January 11 through May 31 1914, syndicated by the Chicago Tribune.

Labels: Obscurities

So It Seems looks and reads like nothing so much as a Mad magazine feature. Perhaps if it had appeared in Mad, rather than the daily comics page, we'd still be reading endless reprints of it, like The Lighter Side Of. As it is, the feature may not have even completed its first year. So It Seems was initially credited to Lou Cameron when its run started on March 3, 1952, but was signed by Sy Grudko starting on September 15 of that year. The feature lasted until at least February 1953, but not much longer (anyone have an end date?)*.

The paper from which these samples were taken continued displaying the Lou Cameron credit after 9/13, but I'm assuming that they just failed to update their boilerplate text.


* Update 3/6/2019: Art Lortie supplies a definitive end date  of 3/21/1953 based on the Brooklyn Eagle.

Labels: Obscurities

Albert Levering was a very well-respected illustrator and cartoonist. His work appeared regularly in Puck, Harper's Weekly and other high visibility venues. He only did two newspaper comic strip series, though, and Artful Arty and Alec Smart was by far the more successful (but, yes, it's still very much an obscurity). Levering did a year's worth of the strip for the Philadelphia Press, which never really succeeded particularly well in syndicating their Sunday section.

The strip ran from 10/15/1905 to 10/14/1906. I sat down to read a strip or two before writing this post so that I could summarize the plot. Well, I ended up reading all that I have on hand, a half-dozen or so, and honestly I'm still not sure what exactly the theme was supposed to be. Either I'm pretty dense or Levering just didn't have his heart in this half-baked strip. I don't understand the rummaging angle, which recurs, in particular.

Labels: Obscurities

Here's a strip that came and went, well, like a whizzer. Bashful Bob (aka Schooldays of Bashful Bob) ran from May 31 to June 28 1908 in the Philadelphia North American syndicated Sunday comic section.

The strip was by a fellow who signed himself P.S. Tyre. I don't know that you could call him a good cartoonist, but he certainly did have a style about him. I really like how he labels the wind in this strip. Not so crazy about the way he couldn't seem to fit his dialogue in the word balloons. This is the only series I know of by Tyre. I might think it was a pseudonym, but the signature is way too studied to be just a nom de plume -- no one would put that much design thought into being anonymous, right?

Labels: Obscurities

After I made my post on A.L. Jansson's Odd Folks With Odd Ways (here) I was contacted by a fellow named Fred Anwari who is a huge fan of the artist's work. He sent me a batch of photos of some of the very cool Jansson items he's collected and very kindly allowed me to share them with you. Some very cool stuff, too -- that Jansson fellow really got around. Fred asks me to tell you that he and his wife Barb would be happy to correspond with other Jansson enthusiasts, and especially anyone who knows of additional Jansson items or, even better, has any for sale. You can email them at anwari@earthlink.net. Thanks Fred and Barb!