Obscurity of the Day: Sherlock Holmes, Jr.

Here's another in the long list of Sherlock Holmes parodies that bumblingly sleuthed their ways through the comics sections in the first decades of the twentieth century. This one is notable for two reasons. The strip employed continuity as you can see by the example above, and it was an early outing by Sidney Smith, later to create that mega-hit of the 20s and 30s, The Gumps.

Sherlock Holmes Jr. enjoyed quite a long run in the Sunday section of the Chicago Tribune. It first appeared October 13 1912 and ran until May 31 1914. You may be wondering why I refer to the strip as Sherlock Holmes Jr. when the sample above is plainly titled Pussyfoot Sam. Reason is that Smith changed the name of his strip to the title of our sample on January 25 1914, probably at the behest of Arthur Conan Doyle's lawyers.