Stripper's Guide

From the pen of the very talented Ed Kuekes we have his only syndicated strip (though a panel, Do You Believe, languishes yet on our mystery strip list). Alice in Wonderland probably takes advantage of the less stringent copyright laws of the day to appropriate Lewis Carroll's world famous character in this Sunday strip adaptation of her adventures. The adaptations were written by Olive Ray Scott, of whom I am perfectly ignorant, and syndicated by United Feature Syndicate.

The original run of the strip seems to have been from July 15 1934 to June 23 1935. However, United only advertised the strip in E&P in 1936-38. I'm pretty certain the syndicate was just marketing the series in reprints then, but why they didn't advertise it in 1934 and '35 is a bit of a mystery.

The strip was accompanied by a delightful topper titled Knurl the Gnome, which as far as I know is not part of the Carroll canon. It accompanied Alice for her complete run.

An Alice in Wonderland book series by Scott and Kuekes was published in France by Hachette in 1937-38. I haven't seen any of the books in person so I don't know if they are reprints of the strips or something different. As far as I know no reprint books were published in the U.S.

Labels: Obscurities

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

On January 20 Herriman contributes a pair of sports cartoons. The first has John McGraw, fiery skipper of the New York Giants, vacationing in LA and holding court with doting fans. Second is a caricature of racer Barney Oldfield, who was contemplating racing his "Green Dragon" Peerless race car at a local event.

On the 21st we switch to politics, and Herriman once again comments on the offer LA Gas is making to sell the city its dilapidated plant.

On the 22nd Herriman is harnessed to contribute a cartoon for a well-disguised ad. The Examiner was touting their exchange ads (exchange = barter) in this new feature, but this was the only one I ever saw. If it continued it was without the cartoons.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Cole Johnson's Strip Collectin' Funnies
Presented for your enjoyment, and entirely without permission, a cartoon from Cole Johnson's latest snail mail missive to me. My better half thought the cartoon was hilarious -- perhaps too hilarious.

Gordon Campbell's Collection
I was talking to Jeffrey Lindenblatt the other night and the subject of Gordon Campbell and his amazing collection of early tearsheets and original art came up. I still don't know what happened to his museum-quality collection after his death. It seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Does anyone have any idea what happened to it?

Bud Fisher Lawsuit
D.D. Degg found information about the Bud Fisher vs. Star Company (Hearst) lawsuit on the web and it's interesting stuff. You can read it here. I find such court documents fascinating for the inside look it gives us to the business of newspaper cartooning. If anyone knows of other available court documents (like the lawsuits for the Katzies, Outcault, Mr. Peewee etc.) I'd love to hear from you.

Edgar Bergen took the American entertainment world by storm as no other ventriloquist has before or since. And yet, bizarrely enough, Bergen wasn't a particularly accomplished ventriloquist (he learned by reading a pamphlet) and his greatest success came on radio, a rather nonsensical venue for a ventriloquist.

What Bergen did have were a pair of memorable characters, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, superb comic timing, and the good sense to never try to upstage his dummies -- Bergen's on stage character was a retiring straight man, never the joker.

Edgar Bergen's creations were heavily merchandised to a welcoming public. That merchandising extended to a McNaught Syndicate comic strip that debuted with much hoopla on July 10 1939 (daily) and July 16 (Sunday). The strip was initially drawn by Ben Batsford who did a superb job of translating the Bergen clan to the funnies. The strips were funny and in character. I'm betting that many of the gags were translated from the hit radio show.

For reasons unknown Batsford left the strip after just a few months -- his last daily was September 30, last Sunday October 22. Was he having deadline trouble? Personal problems? Whatever the problem was, this would be Batsford's last syndicated strip after a twenty year career on the funnies page. I hear he went into comic books in the 40s.

Taking over for Batsford was Carl Buettner. He only signed the Sunday pages, not the dailies, but the art styles look to be the same to me. One website claims that he collaborated with Chase Craig on the strip, though, so maybe Craig did the unsigned dailies. After his short stint on this comic strip Buettner would go on to a career at Disney.

Buettner did almost as good a job on the strip as Batsford yet for some reason the client list was dwindling by the week. I can't imagine why. The feature is already so scarce by 1940 that I can't furnish a definite end date; the latest Sunday I can find is May 12, the last daily May 25. The daily is in the middle of a storyline. Can anyone supply an end date?

The dailies above are the first three days of the strip plus three from a wonderful sequence at the New York World's Fair.

Labels: Obscurities

Yesterday we covered John Held, Jr.'s Oh Margy, so let's follow that up with his better known follow-up, Merely Margy.

Merely Margy is admittedly not nearly as obscure as Held's prior effort, but its appearances were limited mostly to Hearst papers, and even a number of them didn't run it -- despite Held's name value it seems to have been considered one of Hearst's B strips. It was further hobbled by Held's flappers, considered rather risque for newspapers. Merely Margy rarely ran on the daily comics page, considered the domain of kid-friendly strips. Held's efforts were usually printed on women's pages or other more adult-oriented sections of the paper.

Merely Margy started in May 1927, hard on the heels of the demise of the Oh Margy panel, as a daily-only strip. The feature was pretty lavish on space; although it was a standard 6 columns wide it was very tall, probably half again as tall as a standard strip. The extra space was devoted to a typeset story below the artwork. The text stories were penned by Lloyd Mayer who was seldom credited on the strip. The full title of the daily, befitting its jumbo size, was Merely Margy, An Awfully Sweet Girl.

After two years of lackluster sales, Hearst decided to move Margy over to the Sunday comics. The daily was cancelled in late 1929 and a Sunday page was introduced on October 6. The Sunday added a topper titled Joe Prep and dropped the under-panel storytelling. Not to be squelched, Lloyd Mayer continued his wordy ways and the strips was filled to overflowing with overstuffed balloons.

Held, now faced with a strip that was to be featured in the even more kid-centric Sunday funnies, didn't alter his approach. Margy's matchstick gams were still all akimbo, giving peek-a-boo glimpses of anatomical parts normally discreetly covered outside the debased pages of the New York Evening Graphic.

Most editors, faced with a strip that was bound to provoke snitty letters, simply didn't run the strip. Others put the strip on the back page of their magazine sections, a bastion of more adult-themed material. Others, apparently bold or clueless, ran the strip right next to Just Kids and Barney Google in the Sunday comics section.

Held's appearances in the Sunday comics lasted less than a year, ending on September 21 1930. The comics just weren't ready for his adult humor (they still aren't today). Margy would make a few more appearances on Sunday magazine covers in the early 30s, but we'll talk about those some other time.

Labels: Obscurities

Eighty-some years later it might appear as if Oh Margy is yet another attempt to duplicate the success of Ethel Hays' Flapper Fanny. But John Held Jr., famed graphic chronicler of the roaring twenties, actually started his feature a year before Flapper Fanny. Despite the marquee name, though, Oh Margy ran in few papers and made little impression.

Perhaps it was because it was syndicated by the then tiny United Feature Syndicate. UFS was only notable in the mid-20s for its bargain basement production work, sending out badly cast stereotypes of minor features to small papers that couldn't afford better suppliers.

Or maybe it was because Held, already beginning to be recognized as an icon of the age, was unwilling to put a lot of effort into the tiny panels. The drawings certainly appear to be vintage Held, if not particularly imaginative, but the captions have a lot of klunkers. Perhaps Held was already farming out the writing, as he did later with Merely Margy. We do know from Shelley Armitage's biography of Held that the panel was ghosted for awhile by such supremely unlikely replacements as Doc Winner. Why Held signed up with UFS in the first place is a bit of a mystery. Certainly he could have, and eventually did, command the attention of the major syndicates, and he was in constant demand for high-paying magazine cartoons throughout this period.

Oh Margy ran as both a daily and Sunday feature. The Sunday, however, was not of the color Sunday funnies variety, just a larger version of the black-and-white daily. It started on April 6 1924, followed by the daily on May 5. The daily ran in few papers, but the Sunday version is downright rare. The feature ended on May 22 1927, the daily ending one day earlier. These dates are all based on the San Francisco Chronicle's run, one of the few major papers that ran and stuck with the feature over its three year term.

Labels: Obscurities

Five Share $10,000 In UFS Comics Contest
By James L. Collings
E&P 12/24/55

Five gifted artists this week received one of the finest Christmas presents of their careers. They were named winners in United Feature Syndicate's $10,000 Talent Comics Contest.

Thomas Okamoto, 39-year-old freelance advertising designer of El Monte, Calif., won first prize of $5,000 with his "Little Brave," a daily pantomime gag strip about a young Indian boy.

Second-place honors and $2,500 went to Bill O'Malley, 52, ex-newspaper artist now free-lancing out of Carmel, Calif., for "Reverend," a daily panto­mime gag strip featuring a young clergyman.

Third prize ($1,500) was awarded George Booth, 29, of Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, N.Y. Mr. Booth, former Marine who was born in Cains-ville, Mo., created "Spot" for the contest. It's a daily panel concerning a lovable mutt who acts like a member of the family.

Coming in fourth and fifth, respectively, each for $500, were Bob Kuwahara of Larchmont, N.Y., and John Whitaker of Memphis, Tenn.

Mr. Kuwahara, 53-year-old freelance artist who does work for Paul Terry, submitted "Marvelous Mike," a continuity strip centering around a precocious youngster who offers merriment and wisdom to the family circle.

Mr. Whitaker's "Sam's Su­permarket" is a panel focused on urbania's contribution to humanity, the supermarket. Mr. Whitaker, 27, is a sales repre­sentative for Delta Airline.

Contracts for All 5
All five have been signed to contracts, according to Laurence Rutman, UFS vice president and general manager, who said there were 480 entries in the contest.

"We are delighted with the results," he said, "and believe we have succeeded in finding new talent. Yes, we plan to run another contest, say in the next two to three years. It would be impractical to do it annually."

Mr. Rutman added that the syndicate hopes to release the five winning products, individually and not in package form, shortly after Jan. 1. "It all de­pends on when we get their ma­terial," he said.

Mr. Okamoto, is a native of Kent, Wash. After one year at Sacramento Junior College, he attended Chouinard Art Insti­tute in Los Angeles, following with a job as staff artist in the Walt Disney studio.

He then taught art in Colo­rado. In 1943, he served in the Army as a master sergeant in military intelligence, and when he was discharged in 1947, he went to Art Center School in Los Angeles until 1951. After a stint as an advertising agen­cy art director, Mr. Okamoto became a freelance advertising designer. He is married and has two sons, Deems and Eric.

Mr. O'Malley at one time worked on the San Francisco Call-Bulletin and the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune as a cartoon­ist. He has four books to his credit.

Batchelor's Summer Sub
Mr. Booth in 1953 served as a vacation substitute for C. D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News, and while he was a Marine he was cartoon editor of Leatherneck. He got his schooling at the Chicago Acade­my of Fine Arts.

When the contest was first announced on May 7, 1955, on this page, Mr. Rutman said:
"The market is glutted with adventure strips. We want to find new approaches and ideas, with emphasis mostly on humor. Apart from getting upcoming talent, we hope to have an an­swer soon to those who have been criticizing the pulling power of the comics."

Emphasis on Humor
It's impossible at this time, of course, to predict the quintet's pulling power, but at least Mr. Rutman has achieved half the goal: the three strips and the two panels emphasize humor.

"We're happy they do," Mr. Rutman said. "That's what the business needs."

[all five features did indeed get syndicated -- "Reverend" wins, by far, the longevity award with a just shy of six year run; "Spot" ran less than a year. Most importantly, this E&P article proves that I wasn't suffering from early onset dementia about "Marvelous Mike" winning a contest -- well, okay, it didn't actually win. Close enough. Thanks to Jim Ivey who dug this article out of his files!]

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Herriman continues to chronicle the saga of a rainy January 1907, first with a sports cartoon on the 15th. Abe Attel and Harry Baker, preparing for their fight on the 18th, are having trouble getting their training done in the rain. This is Herriman's only cartoon on the fight between Abe "the Fighting Hebrew" Attell and Harry Baker so I'll let the cat out of the bag that Attell cleaned Baker's clock.

On the 16th we have a cartoon that serves to remind us that electric powered vehicles were common in the early days of the automobile. Enough so, in fact, that the auto show put together an electric light display as part of the attraction. But who are J. Hazen Hyde and Leon Tomaso Shettler??

Herriman then takes a couple days off, returning on the 19th with a pair of cartoons. The first is a graphic memorandum of a local fishing club meeting. Not anything terribly interesting here, so I'll take the opportunity to tell a Bible story (no, really!). If you read a lot of cartoons from the early part of the century you'll see the name Ananias bandied about quite a bit, like here. Unless you're well-versed in Bible lore this might be a stumper for you.

Ananias was a fellow who had some land for sale and he promised the apostles that he'd give all the profits to them. Once the land was sold he got greedy and decided he'd like to hang on to a bit of that dough. So he went to the apostle Peter and handed over a portion of the loot, claiming it was all the profit from the sale. Peter smelled a rat and told Ananias that it would have been hunky-dory for him to hold out on the Lord, but he was gonna fry for lying about it. Ananias drops dead on the spot, smited (smote? smitten?) but good.

So when you see these references to Ananias in old cartoons, and they do pop up constantly, translate it to a foolish liar.

Final cartoon continues the story of LA's gas supply woes. This cartoon implies that the Los Angeles Gas Company offered itself up for sale for municipal ownership. I can't find any contemporary news stories that mention this, but it's a definite possibility because a new rival, City Gas Company, was at the moment setting up shop in L.A. The new company, though, turned out to be weak competition even for the fouled up LA Gas Company. I'm sure we'll be seeing more cartoons on the subject from George.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

[from The Cartoonist, Summer 1957]

When I am asked to be a guest on radio or television I am always re­quested to "bring along one of your in­ventions".

The invention phase of my varied career seems to expand with the years, so I now believe that in another gener­ation or two my bust will find a place alongside that of Galileo or da Vinci. But this disturbs me quite a little. I have done other things of which I am not completely ashamed—like using hu­man contrasts in a series (in verse, no less) called "Life's Little Jokes", which I believe furnished the inspiration for the use of queer names for principal cartoon characters and placing them in situations which contradict all the laws of logic.

For instance:


I need not say that any resemblance to Keats or Byron is purely coincidental.

I have also expounded certain general philosophies under the title, "They all look good when they're far away" and "Now that you've got it what are you gonna do with it?," to say nothing about having changed the trend of sculpture, architecture, balloon tires and interior decoration—especially chande­liers featuring acrobats defying the law of gravity.

Which leads me to the confession that for over twenty years I have been doing editorial cartoons. In some I have approached world problems with great reverence and in others have exposed dictators, aggressors, murderers and mil­itary upstarts to withering ridicule. But somehow those who remember my per­iods of insane "art" seem to think this is only a brief period of hibernation until I catch my breath for another go at the wild type of psychopathic car­tooning.

Let me assure these good souls that I take my political cartooning rather seriously and enjoy my identification with the world-shattering events of the day. I am still hoping for the return of the time when a political cartoon can swing an election or send those who abuse the trust of the people to a pro­longed stretch on the rock pile.

At the moment I still wonder how effective the present-day editorial cartoon is. I receive letters commenting favorably and adversely on some of my editorial efforts, showing that somebody reads them. But I regret to say I still wonder whether the political cartoon is largely a decoration for the editorial page- plus something that can be purloined by the Sunday paper around the country and spread over their editorial sections without benefit of remuneration to the cartoonist. It is generally considered an honor for an editorial cartoonist to have his work reproduced in Sunday papers and magazines. Inasmuch as it is uneth­ical to steal a comic strip, I am hoping that some day we editorial men can likewise be rewarded for reprints with a pack of cigarettes or a salami sandwich. We still wonder who reads our political cartoons - certainly not our friends. They are too busy looking at their own work. Let me admonish young cartoon­ists not to expect their friends or fam­ilies to follow their work. These tyros must seek their glory elsewhere.

When I was working out in San Francisco I used to spend part of my lunch hour standing in front of a cigar store with a friend of mine. I finally went to New York, where my cartoons won wide recognition. Five years later I returned to San Francisco for a visit, expecting to be received like a con­quering hero. I went to the old cigar store and I found my friend still stand­ing in his favorite place. He looked at me and said, "Hello, Rube. Have you been sick? I haven't seen you around in a couple of weeks."

Labels: News of Yore

Mother Cod Jingles was an activity, rhyme and puzzle feature that ran in the New York Herald from January 18 to February 22 1903. It was created by Marie Overton Corbin and Charles Buxton Going.

Charles was quite the renaissance man -- he was a nationally known industrial engineer, but he also wrote a number of books of poetry, a few volumes on history, and several childrens books with his eventual wife-to-be, Marie.

My guess is that in this feature Charles handled the versifying and Marie the puzzles. The drawings seem to have been by various hands (in our sample the half-page drawing is by Willard Bonte, the drawings accompanying the poem by someone else who supplied some scratchy initials -- F.I.B.?). How the authors got together with these artists is unknown -- were they Herald staffers, or were they in the employ of Going and Corbin?

Labels: Obscurities

No, this isn't Boondocks, the controversial comic strip by Aaron McGruder. Boon Dock, a self-syndicated effort by George Breisacher, couldn't generate any controversy if it had been trying -- it had a bewildering array of characters that Breisacher didn't really bother to introduce to readers. If these strips above leave you wondering what in the world the strip was about, who the characters are supposed to be, and what their relationship to each other is, join the club. I've read a month of the strip from the first year and I'm no closer to being able to explain anything about this strip than I was before.

Breisacher is best known for his short stint on Mutt and Jeff, where he did pall bearer duty for the strip in its final two years. A shame, too, because Breisacher actually put a spin on the strip that I thought worked pretty well. Breisacher later was president of the National Cartoonists Society from 1997-99.

Boon Dock started sometime in 1972 and I can vouch for it running until at least 1973 -- an obit says that it ran in the Oakland (MI) Press until 1975. It may have been a replacement, or even a renaming, of Breisacher's previous self-syndicated feature, Man on the Street. Does anyone know more about this obscurity? Or for that matter has anyone seen or have samples of the feature he did for the Charlotte Observer titled The First 200?

Labels: Obscurities

[from The Cartoonist, Summer 1957]

My search for the perfect collaborator came to a sudden and successful con­clusion on a lovely May morning in 1954, in storybook Heidelberg. How clearly its details pierce the dimming mists of time! I was at breakfast with a diminutive artist, name of Hasen. Casually I remarked on the excellence of our Spiegel Eier. He wept. My in­terest was piqued. "Why do you weep?" I inquired. "Because the Spiegel Eier tastes so good," he simpered.

That was all. But, it was everything! Here indeed was the understanding heart for which I would have combed the world!

Why should I, famed boulevardier, have such an interest in this sweet, motherly creature? I'm glad you asked that question, Bub. To answer it, I must harken back to the fall of 1952. I was sojourning in the historical Joan of Arc country with travel agents, Posen and Holman. Wherever we went, we were surrounded by hordes of ill-kempt street gamins, the pitiful backwash of war. They pleaded for chocolate and cigarettes.

One small boy attached himself to me." I could no more elude little Fran­cois than outrun my own shadow. In Paris, however, my break came. While Francois bent over to shag a butt-snipe, I hopped aboard a plane for Naples. Of course, my flight was useless. As I stepped off the runway at Naples air­port, there stood Francois grinning as he chomped happily on a second-hand cud of American gum.

Nino (that was now his name) be­came emboldened. He began to call me "Onkel Gus" and demanded I take him to America.

Now, I must confess I'm not made of iron. I've always had a soft spot in my head for kids, and I realized I was be­ginning to weaken. Feverishly I hailed a passing C47 and landed some five hours later in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Yes, you guessed it! There, he was called Kee-Wee, the shoeshine boy. But, now he was my waif!
The die was cast. I became resigned to my responsibility as foster father. Thus began my search for a motherly collaborator who would insure the youngster a happy, gainful life in God's country.

Leaving Morocco in an old djellaba, I headed for Heidelberg and my fateful breakfast with Irwin Hasen.

Little Heinz was wistfully waiting behind a nearby vat of Steinhager. At my joyful signal, he joined us.

With Hasen, it was love at first sight! He is, as you know, somewhat smaller than a dear little waif. So it was with great difficulty he managed to handle the lad on his knee. (Indeed, for a moment it seemed that Heinz would succeed in dandling Hasen.) But, in spite of our difficulties we were most happy fellows.

Then came our most fateful decision. How were we three going to enter the U. S. on just two passports? The full story can now be told because Dondi (his American name) is a citizen by Act of Congress!

We racked our brains to no avail until Dondi, bright little tyke, came up with the perfect plan. It was simplicity itself!

We disguised Dondi as Hasen. Thus, the boy entered the U. S. on Hasen's passport. You ask, "How did Hasen get in?" Easy. I casually carried him past the immigration authorities in an old duffle bag.

One more date in the saga of our collaboration fell on September 26, 1955. An important executive named Moe Reilly gave Dondi a job. "How's he doing?" you ask. Modesty forces me to admit that the kid is getting along so well that Hasen and I are now living the life of Reilly.

In case you care, this is how we col­laborate. I lock myself in a small-type room (you know where). Two days later I stagger out with a whole roll— er, ream of scribbling. These brain squeezings I then boil down into the written material for six daily strips and a Sunday page. Since I can't typewrite, I prepare two clean longhand copies, one of which I relay to Hasen. He takes it from there (and beautifully!). The other copy goes to editor Moe Reilly.

Once a month Hasen, Moe Reilly and I have food and beverages together to discuss Dondi's future plights. We en­joy these bacchanalian revels very much because the Syndicate pays for them.

Labels: News of Yore

I'm utterly fascinated by toppers (those companion features that accompany Sunday strips), and the odder the better. Here's a pretty nifty one titled Wimpy's Zoo's Who. This panel, sort of a topper to a topper, accompanied the main companion strip Sappo to the 'main event' Thimble Theatre (better known as Popeye to the hoi polloi).

This little activity panel featured oddball beastie designs that could be cut out and made into 3-D figures. I bet these fearsome creatures terrorized their share of army men on the living room floor in their day.

Wimpy's Zoo's Who is from a period when toppers were beginning to fall into disuse. After the topper's glory days in the 20s to mid-30s, Sunday sections began to feature more ads and half page strips. These came at the expense of toppers, and they get scarcer and scarcer until many become rare finds by the 40s.

You'll hear historians say that the topper strip was a victim of World War II paper shortages. Don't believe a word of it -- it's the ads that killed full page strips, and that killed the topper. World War II only exacerbated an already bad situation.

Wimpy's Zoo's Who started accompanying Thimble Theatre on November 20 1938 and was replaced by a different panel feature, Play-Store, after December 1 1940. The topper was only included when Thimble Theatre was printed as a full, the tab version didn't include toppers at all.

Doc Winner probably handled the art chores at the beginning and then was replaced by Bela Zaboly sometime in 1939. After Segar's run on the strip ended Thimble Theatre was unsigned until the end of 1939, so exact dates for the artists are unknown.

EDIT: Cole Johnson, whose noggin apparently doesn't leak like a sieve as does mine, reminds me that Bud Sagendorf claimed in "Popeye - The First 50 Years" that he, along with writer Joe Musial, did all the activity panels starting with Wiggle Line Movie (the predecessor of Wimpy's Zoo's Who). Thanks for setting me back on the straight and narrow Cole! You're my very own brain spam filter!

Labels: Obscurities

Order Jim Ivey's new book Cartoons I Liked at Lulu.com or order direct from Ivey and get the book autographed with a free original sketch.

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Leave it to Californians to complain about a little rain. On January 10 (top cartoon) and the 13th (next to bottom) Herriman bemoans the unseasonably wet January they're having. I looked it up (because not even 1907 Los Angeles precipitation is more than a Google away) and they got 7 inches of rain that month. Break out the ark, Noah!

On the 12th (second cartoon from the top) Herriman makes the case for Los Angeles annexing the community of San Pedro. In 1906 LA had annexed a long strip of land adjacent to the community, and it seemed only a matter of time until San Pedro would be gobbled up. And it was -- the community was annexed in 1910.

On the 13th, in addition to the comic strip about motoring in the rain, Herriman produces an unusual boxing cartoon in which the faces of the two boxers' portraits are pasted-in photos. The cartooned body on Abe Attell is so misshapen I could hear Herriman calling to me from on high to please omit this cartoon. Not believing in an afterlife I chose to ignore his pleas. Sorry George.

Finally on the 14th Herriman continues his crusade for a safer LA gas supply, now suggesting that the city should take over the service and build a new plant.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

The crossword puzzle was invented by Arthur Wynne, debuting in the New York World in 1913. It wasn't the most demanding brainteaser ever (a sample clue -- "the plural of is") but it found an appreciative audience. The crossword craze was a slow builder, really taking off in the 20s, as did all sorts of diversions that helped people cope with the lack of readily accessible booze.

In 1924 the New York Times derided crossword puzzles as "a primitive form of mental exercise" and went on to predict that the public would quickly tire of them. But even that bastion of sane and sober journalism finally waved the white flag, and the toughest crossword of them all debuted in the Sunday Times on February 15 1942. Now if only they'd come to their senses and add a comics section they'd really have something.

A certain species of newspaper comic strip creators are always on the lookout for new trends that they can ride to syndication success. Here's a good example, Art Helfant's Cross Word Charlie. Created purely in response to the popularity of crosswords, it stands along strips about radios, bridge, manga, even mullets, subjects that momentarily cross the public's fancy. Like most of these cash-in projects, the strip was a pretty miserable effort, with Helfant taking the most obvious plotline (a guy who's crazy for crosswords) and for some reason often aping Rube Goldberg's style (his own, in my humble opinion, was better -- the first strip is more in Helfant's native style).

The strip was syndicated by the P.C. Eastment Syndicate. Eastment had been in charge of the McClure Syndicate in the teens and apparently had struck out on his own come the 1920s. The syndicate seems to have concentrated mostly on fiction, also an Eastment specialty at McClure. Cross Word Charlie seems to have been their only foray into comic strips, and it may have been their death rattle, because it's the last newspaper feature I can find bearing their copyright. The longest run of Cross Word Charlie I've been able to find is in the Boston Globe where it appeared from December 29 1924 to January 31 1925.

Thanks to Cole Johnson for the samples of this rare strip.

Labels: Obscurities

In my ongoing attempt to gain much needed storage space, not to mention some dough, I am once again selling comic books on eBay. This first round of auctions is for all the Disney comics in my collection. There's a whole batch of auctions for more recent issues (from the Gladstone/Disney Comics years) plus some beautiful copies of earlier material. The highlights are nice copies of Uncle Scrooge #1 and #2 (Four-Color issues 386 and 456) and a set of the rare Cheerios giveaway series Y that includes the much sought after "Donald Duck's Atom Bomb". Here's a link to the auctions:

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcomicstrip

and here's pictures of what's up for sale. Anybody winning my auctions who mentions Stripper's Guide when they pay will get some free bonus stuff with their shipment:

[from The Cartoonist, Summer 1957]

Writing, talking and singing about America and freedom—these are the component parts of the spirit of seven­ty-nine-year-old Carl Sandburg. Across guitars, between sips of Old Bushmill's and snatches of songs, Sandburg and I discussed cartoons one night last Spring. It was easy to draw him out; several re­laxing pre-prandial drinks had already produced a glow; our songs were be­ginning to sound good even to us; and our guitars were so embraced as to be­come parts of us. It was a good time to talk. The questions came easy. Sand­burg's answers came easier.

The cartoon is a form of expres­sion which can survive only in an atmosphere of freedom. It is therefore a subject upon which Mr. Sandburg can speak most eloquently. 'There are going to be cartoons as long as there are hu­man issues ... I like to talk about car­toons; all my life I've been talking about cartoons.

"I like the word 'cartoon.' If I were dying and had a choice of words like 'painting,' 'etching,' or 'cartoon,' I would choose to die with the word 'car­toon' in the air."

Though he has views on cartoons and cartoonists, Sandburg has never become the addict one sees in the railroad car or the subway, who gives a cursory glance at the front page and then turns eagerly to the comics. "There are many things in life that I'd like to have as part of my life, but they take time. Why do these people turn anxiously to the comics? I've asked them. They say 'Well, I've got the habit.' "... But addict or no, Sandburg's judgment of the comics is canny.

Two weeks before the annual Cartoonists'Award of 1956 (which went to Charles Schuhz's "Peanuts") Sand­burg happened to mention to me that there was one cartoon that he actually looked for in any paper where he hap­pened to be, and that was "Peanuts." When reminded of his prophetic pref­erence and informed of the Society's subsequent affirmation of his judgment, Sandburg went on to say: "Yes, there's something about 'Peanuts' that reminds me of "Krazy Kat." I used to read "Krazy Kat" regularly and I had it in mind years ago that I'd like to look in on Herriman sometime, to see what kind of man he was . . . but then I thought, Hell, he can't tell me any more than what it says there in his work."

What of other cartoon forms — edi­torial, panel, continuity strips? "I'm sure that across most of my life," he said, "I've looked more at the editorial car­toons in newspapers ... McCutcheon— forty years a cartoonist—forty years of integrity! Of later years I've missed very few of Fitzpatrick or Herblock— and of course, I've. seen hundreds of those of my friend C. D. Batchelor, whose bust of Joseph Medill Patterson stands in the lobby of the Daily News Building—a superb piece of representa­tional plastic art." Some editorial car­toons that stand out in Sandburg's mind: "The unforgettable cartoon of the Titanic going down—all but the tip showing above the icy waters of the North Atlantic — bearing the word: 'Unsinkable.' Then there were cartoons of Nast's Tammany Tiger and T. R.'s Rough Rider hat. Speaking of hats, nowadays you don't see the square hat made of newsprint to symbolize Labor, that sturdy figure of a man with a ter­rific 5 o'clock shadow."

The symbols employed by the editorial cartoonist stay with Sandburg. "I've al­ways liked cartoons where there's a huge hand that has under it a lot of crawling, slithering creatures that have been caught in some dragnet; but I think I've lived long enough to have grown tired of those New Year's Day cartoons in which the New Year is a baby ... I don't know what to do about it, but I still resent it. And as for Father Time with his scythe—that is also a rather hackneyed symbol. The old figure of Mars which cartoonists have enjoyed drawing for generations to represent War must now, in an age of the atom and the hydrogen bombs, be gone for all time. The man of war now is that silly, ridiculous little figure—the man with the brief case, specs and bald head—the professor.

"Then there's the anxious looking little fellow, who, in cartoons, represents The People, or John Q. Public or The Con­sumer; sometimes he gets mad and raises Hell. He has a majesty and a ter­ror about him. He is the author of revolutions. If I had time, I would make a collection of cartoonists' representations of him. I did a book, "The People, Yes," that shows this fellow as very meek, humble, helpless, and I mention the times when he's terrific, overwhelming ... when he's both the irresistible force and the irremovable object!"

Years ago, when Sandburg was a young newspaperman in Chicago, one of his constant singing, drinking and storytelling companions was the biogra­pher, the late Lloyd Lewis. The phenom­enal new field of the comic strip fasci­nated Sandburg and Lewis. They were impressed by the vast audience created by the comics and the big money that could be made from them; and they spoke often of doing a comic together but it never progressed beyond the talk­ing stage. Ideas, they found, were not so easy to come by, and there was no time, for both were wrapped up in other dreams.

Can a great author, a producer of words as pictures, produce ideas for a depicter of words? Suppose he were your editor, Mr. Staff Cartoonist, would you fly to your drawing board, eager to draw up these ideas that Sandburg thinks worthy of publication? "Jimmy Hoffa," Sandburg submits, "Strutting, swaggering . . . all of a sudden, for the first time in his life, he finds his feet in a mess of banana peels labeled 'Senate Rackets Investigating Committee'—and down he goes!" Or another, a verbal cartoon which Lincoln liked to tell: "It might go as one of those pantomime series," Sandburg suggests. "Two gentle­men who fought themselves out of their overcoats into each other's."

I asked Sandburg about the continu­ity strip—what does he think of it as a cartoon form? Is he a follower of any particular one or more? "Not one of them has ever stopped me," he answer­ed. "I suppose for the same reason that I've never followed any radio soap opera for more than two or three days, mainly because of the story. Those wordy balloons atop the strip discourage any at-
tempt I might like to make to even start reading one. My eyes would have to struggle too much."

Panels sometimes engage Sandburg's interest. The ones that stand out in his mind are those which appeared in the old "Life," "Puck," and "Judge." He was a great admirer of Charles Dana Gibson. "A great social satirist." A special favorite of his was one which appeared in "Life" when Sandburg was barely 14 years old. "It showed a lady arrayed in fashion and splendor," he recollects, "reaching the street and heading for her carriage. She's saluted by a ragged bum - a tattered outcast, holding out his hand for any funds she might choose to deposit in it; and she remembers that it was the annual charity ball she'd just left - and so, without helping him to any funds, she gaily drops a few words: "Why, I've been dancing for you all night!'"

I told Sandburg that the cartoonists now had a society - that, in fact, it was eleven years old, and had grown from a mere handful to 375 members, as of recent count. He was glad to hear that we had joined together. "I like to see people who do the same work in some kind of an organization or society. You should have fellowship, discuss your craft, see each other's faces . . ." Then
his eyes twinkled and I knew that a typical Sandburg serio-comic whimsy was on the way... "When I was a boy in Galesburg, Illinois, I swept out a large real estate office and emptied the spittoons. If, at that time, there'd been an Amalgamated Spittoon Cleaners of North America, I would have joined it if only to look upon the faces, occasionally, of other spittoon cleaners."

Labels: News of Yore

Adventures of Mary Ann is a real oddball mystery. It ran for over twenty years, only in the Boston Post, by a mysterious cartoonist who signed him (or her) self only as M.H.

The strip ran in the Boston Post's Sunday comics section, always an oddball section in general. The Post always reserved at least one page for locally produced strips, of which Mary Ann was the longest and most faithfully appearing.

Adventures of Mary Ann first appeared on February 6 1921, initially as a half page strip. Two years into the run the strip was demoted to about quarter page size, a format that worked perfectly well for the simple, slightly amateurish art. By the late 20s Mary Ann was further miniaturized to the format seen above, about the size of a daily strip.

I know that the strip lasted until at least 1942, the last samples I have on hand, and it may well well have lasted a few years longer. I doubt that it made it past the war. So I have a little more research to do on this oddball, but the important question that I've been unable to answer is who the heck is M.H., and why did s/he remain anonymous all those years?

Labels: Obscurities

Order Jim Ivey's new book Cartoons I Liked at Lulu.com or order direct from Ivey and get the book autographed with a free original sketch.

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Herriman is working hard these days, so we're scanning hard in solidarity.

On January 6 Herriman does two cartoons; the first is about the Interstate Commerce Commission finally taking a hard look at Union Pacific railroad magnate E.H. Harriman's wheelings and dealings. Today the news is broken that Harriman did a stock dividend manipulation in concert with Standard Oil.

The second cartoon is a huge full page width boxing extravaganza; Jim Jeffries still looking for takers on his $30,000 purse offer is surrounded by all the possible opponents and various managers and hangers-on.

On the 7th Herriman comes across with a cartoon commemorating the last day in office of Los Angeles mayor Owen McAleer. As Herriman indicates, McAleer had done an excellent job of running the city -- his replacement, Arthur Harper, will definitely not be eulogized in so fine a fashion. Note that Herriman must have been unhappy with his original drawing of McAleer's face -- there's a pretty clear square that's been redone.

On the 8th Herriman comments once again on the Harriman stock irregularities; Stuyvesant Fish, recently ousted from the presidency of the Illinois Central railroad by Harriman, is rumored to be able to shed some unflattering light on his business dealings. Apparently nothing ever came of it, at least I can find no evidence that he testified.

Our last cartoon serves as an introduction to some personalities in the new Harper-led administration in LA.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

1898 was a busy year for Richard Outcault. After spending 1897 at the New York Journal he spent the new year jumping back and forth between Hearst and Pulitzer no less than four times. Somehow in the midst of all this paper-hopping Outcault found time to strike out in a completely different direction, having two series printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The samples above are from the first series, originally titled The Country School but later renamed for the sometime main character, Johnny Jones. Later in the year another series, titled The Barnyard Club, also ran in the Inquirer. The Country School ran from January 2 to February 20 1898.

Although the only paper known to have printed these series is the Inquirer, Outcault may have been trying to syndicate them to other papers -- there's a rumor that a Pittsburgh paper also ran the series. Also interesting is the copyright on the feature, to "Connor & Outcault". Who is this Connor? No one seems to know. I checked my newspaper histories and can't find a likely Connor that might fit the bill.

Thanks very much to Cole Johnson who supplied me with a beautiful sharp set of photocopies of this series (twice since the first set got lost in the mail!).

Labels: Obscurities

Cartoonists Came First— So Manning's Mural Says
E&P, 4/19/52

The first newspapermen were cartoonists, period.

Some members of the craft might be inclined to argue the truth of that flat statement by Reg Manning, McNaught Syndi­cate editorial cartoonist whose work is distributed to more than 125 newspapers, but he's willing to take on all comers to convince the doubting Thomases.

In a monumental mural now adorning the walls of the Phoenix Press Club, the Pulitzer prize win­ner for cartooning in 1951 has documented his pet theory that prehistoric man carved news pic­tures on rocks long before he learned to write squibs for the Paleolithic Pioneer Press.

There­fore, reasons Mr. Manning, the first newspaperman was not a writer but a cartoonist.
To date only club members and a few visiting firemen, such as the aviation and travel writers who flocked to Phoenix early this year for "quickie vacations" as guests of the local chamber of com­merce, have seen Mr. Manning's masterpiece of newspaper humor depicting the first news stories of mankind tapped out on stone.

All visitors to the press club in the Hotel Westward Ho have been wowed by the mural. Be­cause it has a potentially wide appeal to all newspapermen who might be curious to know how their profession started thousands of years ago, Editor & Publisher has obtained permission to repro­duce one section of the mural and the key to the primitive petroglyphs portraying the first news stories of the stone age - and how they were covered by the first cartoonists.

All told, 81 news stories and newspaper situations are depicted. Four months were required to complete the mural at Mr. Man­ning's home, in between his weekly stint of six cartoons for the McNaught list and a local one for the Arizona Republic. Reg dreamed up all the situations and gags in the mural and its key.

Originally nine feet long, as ex­ecuted in tempera, the mural was enlarged and reproduced in exact color and detail on three walls of the club dining room by Art McFair, a Phoenix artist. It was completed a year ago.

Mr. Manning, whose cartoons have appeared in the Republic for a quarter of a century, evolved his theory about the origin of the newspaper business while roaming about Arizona's canyons, study­ing cavemen's pictures he found carved on the walls. He sums up his theory this way: Arizona's first news reporters were cartoonists, whose first edi­tions, tapped out on stone, may be seen in the files of a thousand canyon walls. Depicted at the left of the mural (see cut) is one of the first newsmen.

"Arizona's original broadcaster who came ages before the micro­phone is portrayed at the right extremity of the mural (not re­produced here). He is the Town Crier of the Pueblos. In the Hopi villages of northern Arizona, town criers still announce news daily, as they have for centuries past.

"The primitive petroglyphs shown present paleolithic picturization of peoples and plights, phil­osophy and phrases, peculiar to press and radio, as our prehistoric predecessor might have pictured them."

Thus does Mr. Manning, with a thousand canyons to back up his theory, stand pat on his statement that the first newspapermen were cartoonists, as shown in his mural. Other sections not reproduced here depict the original comic strip, the first "love nest" story, members of the world's first press club gathered around the bar and "the first political column (grapevine and a little bull)." His favorite of favorites among the cave char­acters he created is "proofreader catching arrers." It shows the first proofreader on earth catch­ing arrows flying in his direction.

If any newsmen are unconvinced about Reg's theory, let them come to Phoenix to see his pictorial evidence of the world's first scoops achieved by the primitive cartoon­ists. If they're still unconvinced, then Reg's ready to eat the biggest cactus Arizona can produce.

Symbolism in one section of Phoenix Press Club mural:
1. Man bites dog.
2. The only two kinds of birds you meet in this business: (A) The bird who wants to get his name in the paper; (B) The bird who wants to keep it out.
3. Which came first, (A) the thunderchicken, or (B) the egg?
4. The very first news story-Weather; (a) lightning, (b) clouds, (c) rain.
5. A usually reliable source-the horse's mouth.
6. The stone axe-a weapon so horrible it was going to end war.
7. The Original Big Story.
8. A reporter and his by-line.
9. Cut line.
10. Off the record.
11. Filler.
12. "Don't quote me, but..."
13. X marks the spot.
14. Eternal triangle story.
15. Headline, with three sub-heads.
16. Increase in circulation.
17. Handout.
18. Scoop.
19. The M.E., who else?
20. Newshawk. This symbolism is really deep stuff . . . note the nose for news, looking at both sides of the question . . . note the target he frequently is ... note equipment for leg work . . . note also he hasn't sprouted wings.
21. The spear-a weapon so horrible it was going to end war.
22. "Here I am on my first real assignment. Imagine ME, a rough, tough, glamorous reporter." 23. "Why wasn't my story in the paper?"
24. Evolution of punctuation: The Question Mark, (A) Woman has always been a puzzle to man, so she was first depicted in the center of a maze, with man, below, amazed. (B) Later and lazier artisans simplified the picture. (C) In this form the mark is used today.
25. Evolution of punctua­tion: The Exclamation Point.
26. Follow up.
27. Exclusive.
28. The bow 'n' arrow - a weapon so horrible it was going to end war.
29. Dotted line indi­cates where the body fell. or was pushed.

[Anyone know if this mural still adorns the Phoenix Press Club? - Allan]

Labels: News of Yore

Here's Vic Forsythe, future creator of the long-running Joe Jinks, showing in no uncertain terms that he was no women's libber. I'm Falling in Love with Some One! ran in the New York Evening World from January 7 to February 7 1914 during a extraordinarily prolific period for the artist. Forsythe practically squeezed everyone else out of the Evening World, which had formerly been a revolving door for practically every cartoonist who set foot in New York City.

Forsythe was, intentionally or not, instrumental in changing the Evening World's cartoon make-up into the more modern mode of having a standard set of, if not comic strip titles, cartoonists appearing daily. While this particular strip didn't last, Forsythe's Flooey and Axel, and later Joe Jinks were among the longest running strips that appeared in that paper.

Labels: Obscurities

[from The Cartoonist, fall 1957]

It seemed pretty ironic to me that Jim Williams died in Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. I once did a short stretch in Huntington and a rather longer one in Pasadena myself. Both the institution and the city can be described as somewhat posh. They are also somewhat dull. Since Jim Williams wasn't dull and wasn't at all posh, I've wondered what the hell he was doing in that neck of the woods. He should have died out on the lone pray-reee.

Every once in a while a real original comes along and when he bows out, something goes that will never be re­placed. Jim Williams was such an orig­inal. He had lived the sort of life that Americans don't live any more—college football ringer, boxer, railroad fireman, pre-World War I cavalry­man, machinist and finally cartoonist. Today they take a job with Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborne at age seventeen, get married and settle in New Rochelle for life, where with other dullards they practice together­ness. I never ran across the word "to­getherness" in any of Jim Williams' cartoons. I think the word would have made him upchuck.

I saw my first Williams cartoon about 1925, when I carried a paper route for the San Francisco Daily News. It featured "Out Our Way", which was then about three years old. I thought they were great cartoons. I've thought so ever since.

What made them great, I think, was that Williams was so much a re­flection of what the thinkers call the American culture. The American isn't much like the happy, smiling, busy guy we see in the advertisement. His humor, when he has it, isn't the kind of jokebook juke we see on television. The Yank is really a very sad, rather wry-humored guy. His wit, at its best, is close to tragedy. Above all, he's nostalgic. Everything, he fondly be­lieves, was better when he was young­er, poorer, when he lived in the small town with the tree-shaded streets, when life was simpler, when the com­plications were fewer. He is oppressed, periodically, with a burning desire to take everything on his desk, throw it out the window and go live forever on a raft in the Mississippi, floating through the lazy, endless American summer with Huck and Jim and the King and the Duke.

But the poor guy is trapped in his get-ahead, H. T. Webster-Mamaroneck kind of world, and he can't do anything about it. In my mind, inci­dentally, a relationship exists between those two cartoonists, Webster and Williams. Webster showed the Ameri­can the kind of life he has, and by laughing at it, made it bearable. Wil­liams showed him the kind of life he had, or likes to think he had or wants —a life in the saddle with Wes and Curley and the big colored man and the Chinese cook, and talking about everything under the sun. He also showed the American working in the machine tool plant with manly, hon­est guys who make things with their hands, and conspiring openly for the downfall of the Bull of the Woods. I think the Bull got punched in the nose a couple of times by his unpol­ished underlings, but it's interesting to note that he never got stabbed in the back. Jim Williams never did un­derstand big city ways.

Guys like me, who read Williams pretty faithfully, liked to imagine that as kids we were a great deal like the Worry Wart. In many cases, I think we were. At least, neither the Worry Wart nor myself when young ever gave the impression of having been turned out by Brooks Brothers. We were frankly and unashamedly, slobs. We gloried in our slobbiness. We were eager at all games and completely inept. Nobody wanted us on their team. In some corkscrew way, the Worry Wart always made me happy, because he'd remind me of the times the other kids chose up sides and I was the last man picked, with vast re­luctance, to play right field. The first time a fly came my way I would trip over a dangling shoelace. (There goes the old ball game!)

This, I think, is what Jim Williams did for his country. With wry, gentle and sad humor, he recalled for each of us the warm and happy past. It was said of someone (and with ad­vancing years I forget who) that he was America's conscience. Jim Wil­liams filled a parallel role. He was America's memory.

Labels: News of Yore

In The Muggles Bob Casper had such a striking simple yet stylish art style it's a shame that nobody told the guy the only missing ingredient was a good gag writer. Three of the four gags above were old when they were carved in the vomitorium walls of Rome, and I had to dig through a couple month's worth to pick these as the best of the bunch. Every dog has his day, though, and the last strip is pretty good, but then I'm a sucker for self-referential gags. Too bad the paper from which these were clipped ran The Muggles on a classified page -- the dog was actually looking down on Apartments To Let.

The Muggles was syndicated by General Features from February 2 1959 to January 28 1961.

The only other credit I can find for Bob Casper is in the late 90s with one of those crummy internet-based syndicates that specialize in 'syndicating' amateur work to a non-existent client base. What a shame. Anyone know what Casper was up to in all those intervening years?

Labels: Obscurities

Order Jim Ivey's new book Cartoons I Liked at Lulu.com or order direct from Ivey and get the book autographed with a free original sketch.

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Happy new year 1907! On January 1st Herriman covers the on again-off again Jim Jeffries comeback fight. Things aren't looking good, as the headline confirms. So Jeffries gets comfy while a couple of pigs get busy. Slipped that one past the editor, eh, George?

On January 3 we witness what may be a truly singular occurrence in American newspaperdom -- the Examiner prints a sports page cartoon about a Sumo match! Perhaps more amazing still is that Herriman doesn't take the low road -- the humor is observational, not over-the-top racist as with most everything printed about Asians in the west coast papers of this period.

On the 4th Herriman goes after the gas companies again. The gas service in San Francisco at the time was very undependable, and unlike when the electricity comes back on after a power outage, an open and unlit gas jet become an insidious instrument of death when the service is restored. Chilling stuff, no pun intended.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons