Weekend's over, time to return to The Funnies. Today we have Foxy Grandpa, Carl "Bunny" Schultze's classic strip that first appeared in the New York Herald way, way back in 1900.Foxy Grandpa was the Whack-a-Mole of comic strips. Schultze produced it for syndicate after syndicate, and every time a syndicate editor gave it the axe it would, sooner or later, pop up elsewhere. This, however, would be it's last appearance in anything approaching a newspaper. Schultze lived until 1939, though, and supposedly worked for awhile in the fledgling comic book industry -- I wouldn't be at all surprised if Foxy Grandpa made its last stand in the funnybooks.
Hello, Allan---Maybe one reason Schultze was constantly bounced by editors is his tedious inability to produce anything interesting. He has one story---the old dude pulls a swifty on the two young dopes. The tricks shown are always very small, dull things using costumes or balloons, nothing very wild or dangerous, ala Dirks or Knerr or anyone else making any kind of agressive attempt at humor. Schultze's idea of bringing novelty to his strip was introducing a new character, like an Uncle or a baby or a puppy----and then doing the smack-same things all over again. Foxy never goes anywhere, he never goes courting, he never has a business, he never tries social climbing, He never does ANYTHING beyond dressing up and briefly shaking his two mollycoddle grandsons. It's like it's target audience was four years old. Schultze was lucky in that he created a popular character in stripdom's paleolithic era, when people were still enthralled by the ability to tell a story by using subsequent pictures. (One of Schultze's other early features was a magician doing tricks!) The title "Foxy Grandpa" became well-known enough for him to keep selling it for thirty years, but i'll bet the dull results kept these runs short. Schultze never learned how to tell a story, or how to be funny. Take those elements out of your strip, and you have the FOXY GRANPA experience.-----Cole Johnson.
ReplyDeleteNow don't hold back Cole. Are you saying Foxy Grandpa isn't your very favoritest strip?
ReplyDelete--Allan
PS - Hope this isn't a dry run for a certain HH essay! Ooh, bad bad....