Friday, December 12, 2008
Obscurity of the Day: Signor de Pluro
Here's Sidney "The Gumps" Smith's second comic strip (his first was covered in this post waaay back in 20005). Signor de Pluro ran from May 3 1903 to February 7 1904 in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The title was changed to Hector and Geraldine for the last two episodes.
Cole Johnson, who supplied these samples, describes the strip thusly: "Signor de Pluro was another of the countless strips about wacky immigrants. The title "Signor" is Italian, of course, but Sidney Smith made things a bit ambiguous by a lack of any accent for his character, and have him come from a place called "Plunk". Rather than being propelled by fussy politeness and exaggerated good manners as Opper's gentle Europeans Alphonse and Gaston, DePluro was motivated generally by revenge. His efforts were aimed against his romantic rival, Hector, for the hand of the beautiful (?) Geraldine. Things seemed to finally go the Signor's way, with his girl accepting his proposal, but Hector managed to swipe her away at the last moment."
Labels: Obscurities
Comments:
Note that ”Signor de Pluro,” containing the trope of a villainous character in competition with a rival for a fair (?) maiden, appeared (in episodic form) three years before Kahle’s more well-known, serial strip, “Hairbreadth Harry.”
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