Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Dell Publishing's "The Funnies" Part 7
Just slightly more youthful than Foxy Grandpa, Percy and Ferdie made their debut in 1904 under the title The Hall-Room Boys. H.A. MacGill, who had shortly before caused a minor sensation in New York newspaper circles by producing the very first true sustained daily comic strip, followed up with this rather less interesting feature starring a pair of would-be gay rakes. Percy and Ferdie were always on the prowl for ladies and they usually tried to attract the fair sex by pretending to be well-off, a tactic that invariably blew up in their faces. The strip was reasonably funny, but suffered from a ridiculous surfeit of dialogue (a problem MacGill seemed finally to remedy in this incarnation).Percy and Ferdie has much the same history as Foxy Grandpa as a matter of fact. MacGill jumped syndicates pretty often, usually taking the boys along with him. But they'd not appeared for half a decade before being revived one last time in The Funnies.
Labels: Dell's The Funnies
