Stripper's Guide

A Pinochle Game That Ended on a Handball Court
By T. A. (Tad) Dorgan (Circulation, April 1923)

Back in 1910, when Jim Jeffries was training for his fight with Jack Johnson, the scene of battle was changed from San Francisco to Reno, Nevada, and the mob of boxers, trainers, war corres­pondents and others had to grab the rattlers for a long ride from Frisco.

It happened that I was in Jeff's car, and with him were Jim Corbett, Sam Berger, Joe Choynski, Eddie Leonard, the minstrel, Walter Kelly, the Virginia Judge, and a host of others.

Among the "others" was Billy Jacobs, who was writing stuff for a Frisco paper. I had known Bill in high school. He had been in my class and was noted as an athlete.

After our baggage was stored away, and we got on the caps and had lit the pills, Mr. Corbett suggested a four-handed game of pinochle. He said he and Walter Kelly would challenge any other pair in the car.

I accepted immediately, and knowing that Jacobs was a pip at the game, took him as my partner.

Corbett and Kelly got quite a lead on us in the first few hours, and, as the dough piled up in their favor, Jim would have the scorekeeper announce loudly just what we owed.

There was much laughter and razz as the train rattled along, and, try as we would, Jacobs and I could not break our run of bad luck.

"What do they owe us now, Sam?" Corbett would yell over to Sam Berger, who kept the score.

"Fourteen bucks apiece now, sir," Sam would pipe back, and Jeff and the mob would roar with glee.

Bill and I, of course, felt like a couple of hicks, but we took the abuse and kept on with the game.

Some time later our luck changed and we got even with them.

Berger then announced that the score was even and that we didn't owe the Kelly-Corbett team a cent.

This announcement was greeted with absolute silence. Corbett appeared as though he hadn't even heard it. He was extremely busy lamping his hand.

A bit later Bill and I got the jump on them and were in the lead. We had good hands. We made them and soon had the score so that it was in our favor to the extent of $8.00 apiece.

Eddie Leonard, who was looking on, yelled across to Berger: "Sam, how does the score stand now?" And Sam with a smile said; " Why, right now Corbett and Kelly owe Tad and Jacobs ten bucks apiece." Instead of cheers, there were just smiles around, and Corbett, looking over at Berger, said: "DON'T BE HOLLERING OUT THAT SCORE, Sam. We can't play cards if you fellows are all talking."

We played in silence after that, except when Kelly and Corbett would get to crab­bing about the cards.

The game broke up later on with Kelly and Corbett owing Bill and myself $12.50 each.

As the jack was not forthcoming imme­diately I said to Mr. Corbett: " Well, kid, how about settling up?"

Corbett raised his bushy eyebrows and, in the most innocent way, chirped: "Say, you didn't think we were REALLY PLAY­ING for MONEY, did you?"

Well, you could have knocked me for a goal with a corset lace.

Bill and I both howled and yelled, but it did no good.

Corbett finally made a proposition. It was this:

He said that he'd beat any man I men­tioned in a game of handball next day or pay me double in cash on the spot.

I knew that Jacobs was a curly wolf at that game and I accepted. When I told Corbett he was on I noticed that both he and Jacobs pulled a sneak on us and stayed away half an hour or so.

Everyone on the train heard about the big game, and next morning at 10 o'clock in Jeffries' handball court the game was played. It was the most exciting for me, I'm sure of that.

It was a see-saw game from start to finish, with hair-raising plays, wonderful stops, and a finish that none but P. T. Barnum could have thought out. Corbett won the game by one point, amid the cheers of the mob.

He shook hands with Jacobs, and then, after kidding with the mob, went over to Walter Kelly's cabin to clean up.

Half an hour later I went over to the cabin to tell Jim that I thought he had earned the $12.50. I wasn't a hard loser. A fellow hardly could be after seeing that thrilling game.

When I got near the cabin I heard voices and laughter. Then more laughter.

I walked inside, and there on a lounge were Corbett and Kelly as red as lobsters from laughing. Kelly was about to have a fit he had laughed so hard.

"Sit down," piped Corbett, as he stopped howling for a moment. "I've gotta tell you the joke, now that it's over."

I grabbed an old chair, took a load off my feet and listened to the story:

"You know, after you fellows won that money from us last night, I took your part­ner Jacobs aside and made a proposition to him. I said: "Bill, look here, I've got a good joke to play on Tad, and if you're with me I'll see that Kelly pays you the money he owes you.

"Now, you let me win that handball game, so that we'll skin Tad out of his money; then I'll get Walter to pay you, and we'll all give Tad the razz. Get me? Jacobs fell like a load of brick. He let me win that game and he double-crossed you. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

"Jacobs was in here a few moments ago looking for his money," continued Jim.

"I said to him: 'Billy, we fixed Tad up good, didn't we?' He laughed at me and said: ' Yes, it was a great joke, but where's my jack?'

"I said: 'YOUR JACK? Why, you didn't think I MEANT TO DOUBLE CROSS my partner Walter, did you?'

"'Why, no, Bill, I was only KIDDING.

"'I'd NEVER DOUBLE CROSS WALTER, no matter what YOU DID TO TAD! '"

Now I play my pinochle SINGLE HANDED.

Labels: News of Yore

As awful as The Kerry Patch Triplets is, it's got a pedigree. This is the very first continuing strip in the World Color Printing Sunday section, back when (as far as we know) it was not even syndicated but was produced for and only appeared in the St. Louis Star. The strip was by Melville, of whom I know nothing, and ran from November 12 1899 to April 8 1900. From tiny acorns do mighty oaks grow.

Thanks very much to Cole Johnson who provided these rare samples of the strip.

Labels: Obscurities

Some Inside Dope on a Few of My Fellow "Comickers"
By Jimmy Murphy (Circulation, April 1923)

You all know Billy DeBeck, the guy who draws "Barney Google" and his race horse Spark Plug.

Not long ago Billy breezed down to New Orleans to take in the races. The New Orleans paper that runs the Barney Google Strip played it up big, and Spark Plug was the talk of the town.

One evening while seated in a cafe with some friends, DeBeck was approached by some guy, who introduced himself as an owner of race horses. "I've heard a lot about your Spark Plug," pipes the stranger, "and I'm keen on taking a look at him."

"Sure," said DeBeck, it dawning on him that this bimbo imagined Spark Plug to be a real flesh and blood horse, "glad to let you see Sparky any time."

"Where do you keep your horse?" in­quired the stranger.

"Up at my hotel," answered DeBeck, naming the swellest joint in town.

"A horse in a hotel!" exclaimed the stranger, "surely you're joking."

"On the level," said Billy, "you come up to the hotel tomorrow and see for your­self."

Early the next morning DeBeck was awakened by a knock at the door. It was the stranger. "Well, I'm here to take a look at your horse," he said. "I asked the clerks at the desk and they said you really had a horse up here." DeBeck had put the clerks wise.

Billy and his visitor sat down and chatted a couple of minutes. Then DeBeck excused himself and went into an adjoin­ing room, where he backed himself up against the door and proceeded to kick the panels for all he was worth, yelling "Whoa! Whoa." He pulled a perfect imitation of a horse kick­ing against a barn door.


"I'm sorry," said DeBeck on re­turning into the room, where he had left his visitor, "but Sparky's kind of nervous this morning and can't receive callers."

Then Billy broke the news that Spark Plug is only a horse he draws in comic strips. The stranger admitting that he never looked at comics, swished out of the room and slammed the door after him. Billy, feeling ashamed of himself for letting the joke go so far, called the man back, treated him to a little "tea," and squared himself.

In 1904 Goldberg talked the San Francisco Chronicle into giving him a position as sport cartoonist. Being his first job, naturally, it was with considerable pride that Rube took his place in the art room alongside of about fifteen other artists.

The first two months, although he drew a cartoon every day, not one was printed.

One day there was a football game on across the Bay, and the City Editor, a guy named Ernest Simpson, commissioned Goldberg to cover the game and make car­toons of it. The City Editor was particu­larly interested in this game because his son was among the players.

It was Rube's golden opportunity. The Chronicle being a morning paper, he knew he had to have the cartoon in the engrav­ing room by 6 P.M. He figured the game wouldn't be over until 3:30 o'clock, and knew it would take at least thirty minutes to get back to the office. This left him the close margin of two hours or less to make his cartoon.

He carefully laid out his drawing mate­rial on his desk so as not to have to waste a single precious minute looking for things on his return from the game. He laid out pens, pencils, ink, erasers, and drawing paper, besides considerable scrap, that is photos and clippings of foot­ball players in various poses, from which he could copy action, uniforms, etc.

Promptly at 4 o'clock, Goldberg dashed back into the office from the game. No one was in the office - the boys all being out to lunch.

He raced to his desk and to his surprise the drawing material he had laid out had disappeared. His first impression was that someone had put everything inside his desk, but when he tried to pull the drawers out he nearly fainted. Every drawer was nailed up tight.

He frantically tried to pry them open, but without success. Finally, after he had managed to borrow a hammer, remove the nails and get to his drawing material, it was too late to finish his cartoon for the morning paper.

He felt he was ruined. He wanted re­venge. He got hold of a bag of nails and one by one he securely nailed up every drawer in every desk in the art room.

That night when he returned to the office he fully expected to be fired on the spot.

To his surprise, however, when he walked into the art room, al­though every man was at work, no one spoke or even looked up. He sat down at his desk, and just to be doing something, started mak­ing the cartoon of the game in which he included a drawing of the City Editor's son. When Goldbcrg finished the drawing he laid it on the City Editor's desk.

The following day, the cartoon appeared in the Chronicle, and from then on his work was printed every day.

And the gang in the art room left him alone from then on.

I could write many little yarns about Cliff Sterrett whose "Polly and Her Pals" is loved by comic fans the country over.

I might tell about his musical family - how his wife, his son Paul, his brother, big Paul, and himself all play different instru­ments and form a little family orchestra for their own amusement.

I could spring little wheezes about Cliff's funny little Minnesota line of lingo, or jabber about how his friends are always on pins and needles expecting any time to see his trousers drop, which, owing to the loose suspenders he wears, always seem to dangle at the danger point.


I didn't want any libel suit on my hands by springing some story about him on my own initiative, and not having seen Cliff's smiling face about the office in the last week I mailed him the following note:

Dear Cliff:- Don't forget to slip me data for a little story about yourself for pub­lication in Circulation, will you?

Jimmy Murphy

The following is the reply Sterrett sent me:

Garden City, N. Y.

Dear Jim:- The less people know about me the better they'll like me. I'd be a chump to let the flappers who write me know that I'm fat and forty, can't dance, tennis, or bridge; play a rotten game of golf, and swim like an old woman.

I have to stand on a chair to tie my son's dress tie, and my wife bosses me something terrible; but do not think I'd let the public know it? Not on your life. If you want snappy copy write something about some young squirt like Geo. Herriman. He's the Rodolph Valentine of the "Comickers."

"Folks don't care a hang if I was born in 1883, was graduated from kindergarten ten years later, and darn near got into high school in my eighteenth year.

You know that I've worked at every trade there is (including the Scandinavian) until Mr. Hearst took pity on me, but don't you dare breathe it to a soul, James Murphy.

If you must tell them something, tell 'em that I've got a kind heart, despise every known brand of cereal, wear no jewelry except suspenders, and never had a manicure in my life.

Yours truly,
Cliff Sterrett

Thomas Aloysius Dorgan is the full moniker of the gent whose drawings are signed TAD. There isn't anybody who hasn't enjoyed many laughs out of his "Indoor Sports " and other cartoons.

Tad's a guy who can paint pictures with a pen. Herriman said so. Tad's as much at home with boxing gloves on as he is with a pen in his hand. He swings a wicked right. Herriman said so, and he knows! Tad's a great spendthrift - throws his money away almost as recklessly as Harry Lauder - Herriman said so!

Anyway one day several years ago Damon Runyon borrowed sixty-five dollars cold cash from Tad, which he promised to repay the next day.

Early the next morning Runyon breezed into the office and immediately started out to find Tad to repay the sixty-five bucks. But Tad hadn't shown up yet.


Ten o'clock drew around and no Tad in sight. Eleven o'clock, and still Tad failed to put in an appearance. Twelve o'clock came and Tad hadn't arrived, and when the clock struck one, well it was too much for Runyon. He picked up the phone and put in a call for Tad's home at Great Neck.

Mrs. Dorgan answered the telephone. "Hello, Mrs. Dorgan," says Runyon, "this is Damon talking. I want to extend my sincere condolences on the sudden demise of your husband."

"What ails you! Why, there's nothing the matter with my husband," was Mrs. Dorgan's reply, "he's right here in this room, drawing a cartoon!"

"You must be mistaken," said Runyon.

"Most certainly I'm not," retorted Mrs. Dorgan, "I'll let Tad talk to you."

"Oh, never mind," chirped Runyon. "You see I borrowed sixty-five dollars from Tad yesterday. I told him I'd pay him back today. I expected he'd be at the office at 5 A. M. to collect it, and when noon came and he hadn't shown up yet, naturally I thought he'd been in a railroad accident or something, and I feared for the worst. Goodbye."

[note: Circulation was a marketing magazine distributed by Hearst to newspaper editors. It was filled with articles praising the Hearst syndicated features but also featured interesting insider articles like the one above. Copies of this magazine are ridiculously rare, but comics fan and historian Rob Stolzer has managed to amass photostats of a number of issues and he was nice enough to make copies for me to share with you folks on the blog. We'll be featuring articles from Circulation on a semi-regular basis for awhile. Thanks Rob!]

Labels: News of Yore

In the horse opera mania of the 1950s surprisingly few of the 'classic' wild West characters were revived on the comics pages. The cowboy stars of the silver screen and tube generally seemed more marketable I suppose. One of the exceptions was the LA Mirror syndicate's Annie Oakley entry.

To be fair the Mirror took on the famed distaff sharpshooter only as sloppy seconds. Their Hopalong Cassidy strip, started in 1949, had switched over to King Features and they needed a replacement. I guess they were fresh out of celluloid cowboys at the moment so Annie got the nod, starting on April 2 1951. Doris Schroeder provided the story and Bill Ziegler handled the art chores on the strip. Unlike Hopalong, the replacement strip was only a daily.

Annie Oakley seemed to have a lot going for it. With the whole nation watching westerns in these early days of TV women were probably just as western-centric as their male counterparts, so this strip would seem to have been a welcome counterpoint to all the male-dominated westerns then being offered. The story, at least what I've been able to read of it, is well-handled, and Ziegler's angular and shadowy art lends a lot of atmosphere to the proceedings (although I have to wonder why the syndicate didn't choose an artist who could draw women with a little sex-appeal).

On the other hand I can see newspaper editors looking at their many western strip choices and making safer choices -- Hopalong, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry all had devoted kid audiences presumably ready to devour strips starring their heroes. Annie, on the other hand, wouldn't get the TV treatment until 1954.

Too bad for the strip that it was canceled before the TV show got on the air. It might have breathed a little life into its circulation. Unfortunately it sputtered out well before that. The strip is quite rare throughout its run and I've been able to trace it to at least April 1953. Since it was not listed in the 1953 E&P Syndicate Directory I'm assuming that the official end date was probably in or before August of that year. Can anyone supply a definite end date?

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

Our first cartoon this Herriman Saturday is from April 3 1907. The Shriners Circus (or Sircus as they insist on spelling it here) originated in 1906 in Detroit and this may be the first year that they took the show on the road. The associated article describes dozens of acts, but the standout has to be Oscar Morgan who, it is claimed, commands a troupe of trained seafood. "The great Morgan presents a school of trained fish and lobsters with sand dab clowns. Mr. Morgan has this finny menagerie under perfect control and the work of the sand dab quartet is marvelous in its intricacy." Wow! Sand dabs, by the way, are a flounder-like flatfish.

On the 4th and 5th Herriman pens cartoons about a long-simmering scandal in which Teddy Roosevelt supposedly requested a large campaign war-chest contribution from E.H. Harriman to help the Republicans in the 1904 elections. A letter had just come to light in 1907 in which Harriman made pointed claims about Roosevelt's involvement. You can read an excellent summation of the situation in this 1911 New York Times article. The microfilmed newspaper had a badly discolored patch through the lower half of the April 4 cartoon -- I started in to restore it but then got on my high horse about the anti-Roosevelt stance. TR is as close to a political hero as I've ever had, so I decided to heck with it -- leave it as muddy as the thinking behind it.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

The Sunday version of Grin and Bear It, which I think is the first successful syndicated color page featuring an undesigned grouping of unrelated gag cartoons, might not seem like the likely progenitor of a whole genre. Such features, though, did have something going for them that made them very attractive to newspaper editors. These pages could easily be chopped down to any size or oddball format needed to share page space with an ad, even an oddly configured one. All the editor had to do was drop, resize or rearrange any of the cartoons and voila, a feature configured to wrap around any hair tonic or cigarette ad that needed a home.

Many features copied the Grin and Bear It formula, including this rarely seen one titled Of All Things. The feature was penned by Irving Roir, a successful magazine gag cartoonist and one of the famed Roth brothers, all four of whom were cartoonists of note. It was syndicated by the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate which seems to have only used it themselves in the New York Daily News section, and then not often. According to the Editor & Publisher annual syndicate directories it was offered from 1954 to 1956. The example above, from 1955, is the only one I've been able to find.

Labels: Obscurities

Clifford Leon Sherman, C.L. to his buds, knocked around the edges of the comic strip biz for many years. His first outing with a continuing series was at the Boston Globe where he created Doesn't It Seem Strange and one other series. While the art was nothing memorable, Sherman certainly had a gift for layout, as you can see above. The series ran from July 26 1903 to December 25 1904. Although it was a Sunday feature it usually (perhaps always) ran on an inside page in black or some other single color.

In the teens Sherman did a connect-the-dots feature for newspapers and even had a few books published of his puzzles. It got me to wondering about the origin of such puzzles (I assume they predate the 1910s) but I couldn't find any history online. Anyone know?

Please excuse the scan. This example, the only one in my collection, had a hunk missing from the corner. You can see' additional examples of this feature over on Barnacle Press.

Labels: Obscurities

In the seemingly unending quest to duplicate the success of Doonesbury, Creators Syndicate revived Thatch from college newspapers where it had been running 1988-91. Jeff Shesol's strip was covering much the same ground as Doonesbury had, tracking the lives of a group of college students. The strip came out of Brown University but made claim to running in over 200 college papers.

The strip was a pretty slavish imitation of Trudeau's early work. The characters were doppelgangers; Thatch was Mike Doonesbury, roomie Tripp Biscuit was B.D., Sumner Phillips was Zonker, Kate Stephens was a regendered Mark, even minor character Bernie had a clone in Reed James.

Thatch debuted in its Creators run on October 1 1994. With Doonesbury now going on hiatus on a regular basis newspaper editors, seldom ones to think too far out of the box, were willing to give Thatch a chance in the role of pseudo-Trudeau. Thatch, though, couldn't seem to find its own voice and fittingly never ran in very many papers. It did have one pretty good hook in Politically Correct Person, an alter-ego of Thatch who wore superhero tights and sought to stamp out all he saw as anti-minority, anti-woman, pretty much anti-anything.

In a turnabout on the normal course of events Thatch made its biggest publicity splash when it ended on April 11 1998. In 1997 Shesol had published a book on the feud between Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson titled Mutual Contempt. President Bill Clinton read the book, was impressed, and asked Shesol to come work for him as a speechwriter. Pundits of course had a field day with the idea that a cartoonist was going to write speeches for the president.

A reprint book of Shesol's college strips, Thatch Featuring Politically Correct Person, was issued in 1991 but there were no reprint books of the syndicated strip. You can find more samples of the strip from throughout its run on this site.

Labels: Obscurities

[Editor's Note: I scanned this article thinking this was the Tom Hill who worked on Mark Trail for many years -- turns out it isn't. Can't throw away a perfectly good article, though, so here it is. You can visit this site to see examples of this Tom Hill's work.]

Tom Hill Is Traveling Artist for Chi. Tribune
By George A. Brandenburg (E&P, 1952)

Chicago — Travelin' Tom Hill, six-foot, red-headed artist for the Chicago Tribune, is equally adept with his sketchbook in a GI fox­hole in Korea, or on the banks of the lazy Wabash in Indiana.

When Tom gets an assignment from A. M. (Mike) Kennedy, Sunday editor, he bundles up his sketchbooks, brushes and water colors, and he includes a notebook and pencils along with a small camera loaded with color film. He recently accompanied Wayne Thomis, Tribune aviation editor, to Japan and Korea, for a five-week tour, spending a week at the front with American GI's.

Writes His Own Captions
Tom's black and white sketches, illustrating Wayne's articles, ap­peared in the daily issues of the Tribune. Tom's impressions of Korea and Japan in water colors have since been published in the Sunday Tribune's "Grafic" maga­zine section. He writes his own "captions" for his illustrations.
Young Hill's doubletruck in color dealt in sketchbook style with American GI's in Korea. "These are things our boys are seeing every day" wrote Hill. Then followed his illustrations of Kore­an women washing clothes in a stream, the re-fueling of an Amer­ican jet fighter plane, a Korean farm scene, and American soldiers in an observation post "up front."

His impressions of Japan fol­lowed the next Sunday in the Grafic section in another color doubletruck. The busy street scenes in Tokyo were to Tom's liking. "I prefer to paint the life around me, places and people as I see them rather than any specific sub­ject," he explained. "I'd rather do a street than a house, and the men, women and children walking, working and playing in that street than any individual."

Served in Navy
Tom Hill, born 30 years ago in Texas, has been a Tribune artist for the past five years. Prior to coming to Chicago he had lived in California and Hawaii. During World War II the big redhead finally got in the Navy, although assigned to limited service because of ear trouble developed in boy­hood. He served as a Naval visual aid artist in Honolulu, where he held his first one-man show at the Academy of Arts. He has since held seven one-man shows of his work and has exhibited in the Chicago Art Institute, the Nation­al Galleries in New York and other places. His latest one-man show, devoted to his Korean and Japanese paintings, opened at the Chicago Artist Guild's club rooms in late August.

Hill told E & P that he has been drawing and painting since before he can remember. He was going to art school in Los Angeles when the war started. When the Navy first turned him down, he went to work for an aircraft factory, draw­ing illustrative material showing how to assemble aircraft parts. Upon returning from service after the war, he served as assistant art director of the Universal-Interna­tional Art Studios in Hollywood.

A Chicago art broker put the Tribune on Tom's trail. Through a combination arrangement, young Hill was assigned to the Tribune's Sunday staff, but "available" to the Tribune's advertising art depart­ment. Fred Shafer, head of the ad­vertising art department, met Hill when he came to Chicago and as­signed him his modest studio. "Have fun," said Shafer, "and try to come up with something."

Likes Travel Assignments
During the past five years, Tom Hill has not only been having fun, but has "come up" with plenty of good illustrative material. He liked the travel assignments given him by the Sunday editor. These first included New Salem, Dubuque, Southern Indiana and the Ohio River Valley.

He works almost entirely in water color. He explained, how­ever, that while at the scene he often makes quick sketches and uses his color camera "as a tool" to capture the color and detail. When he gets back to the Tribune, Tom functions much like a report­er; he finds out what space the editor has planned and then selects and paints his illustrations to fit the space assigned.

Tom is perfectly aware of the "competition" of the color camera in modern illustrative work. He feels, however, there's no need for illustrations and photographs to be competitive. "The two are entirely different mediums," he pointed out, "and they serve entirely different purposes."

Paintings Can Interpret
"Painted illustrations interpret," he said. "Color photography is a literal translation. An artist can give the illustration a little more interpretation and imagination. While I paint realistically, I don't try to copy like the camera would.

"The camera is impartial. The artist can be selective. His paint­ings can be very interpretive and individualistic in their presenta­tions of scenes and people."

In addition to his art work for the Grafic section, Mr. Hill also does illustrations for the Tribune's travel sections in color. In fact, he likes being an "artist correspondent," going to the scene and com­ing up with "feature stuff that is of news interest."
Doubles in Water Colors
Scheduled for an October issue of the Grafic is Tom Hill's double-truck painting of how Chicago's new Outer Drive extension is go­ing to look. He continues to "double in water colors," dividing his talents between editorial and advertising art. He also does black and white advertising illustrations.

Sixteen of his water colors, de­picting scenes from Guatemala, Canada and the Hawaiian Islands, hang in the Well of the Sea dining room at the Sherman Hotel. His wife, Wanda, is a well known tex­tile designer.

Their baby son, Tom says, has kept them from traveling to "far away places" in recent years. That's why the Northwest Air­lines "press flight" via the Great Circle route to Japan early this spring appealed to Tom Hill, who became an accredited war corre­spondent (shots and all) so that he could accompany Wayne Thomis on a "side trip" to the Korean front. They call him, "Travelin' Tom," at the Tribune.

Hill is also well known for his oil portraits of Chicago Press Club presidents, whose pictures hang in the club's quarters in the Sheraton Hotel.

Labels: News of Yore

One of the better though less well-known of the war strips was Vic Jordan. American publicist Jordan was caught in Paris when the Nazis took over and he became a member of the French resistance. The strip was several notches more realistic and better-written than the standard fare. Vic doesn't defeat a whole battalion at his whim, like many wartime strips, but he did engage in smaller and more realistic assignments like blowing up bridges, smuggling out downed airmen, and, in our story above, help to blow up a munitions factory that has been taken over by French workers. When France was liberated in 1944 Jordan took his base of operations right into Nazi Germany where he continued his derring-do until victory in Europe ended his career.

The daily and Sunday strip started the week before Pearl Harbor on December 1 1941. It was ostensibly written by 'Tom Paine', who was in actuality the team of Kermit Jaediker and Charles Zerner. The strip went through a succession of artists; the first was Elmer Wexler. Wexler went into the military but managed to finish out six months on the strip; his last daily was May 30 1942, his last Sunday June 14. When Wexler left the Sunday was dropped.

Paul Norris then took over the art duties until he in turn went into the military. His stint lasted until July 10 1943. Our samples above are from his tenure. Norris was replaced by a fellow by the name of D.H. Moneypenny who hung on until February 12 1944. He was in turn replaced by someone who signed himself Robinson (Jerry perhaps?) for a two week stint ending February 26. The final artist was the excellent Bernard Baily, better known for his comic book work. He brought the strip to its conclusion on April 28 1945.

The strip was syndicated by the great liberal paper Newspaper PM. The paper was funded by Marshall Field, whose Chicago paper, the Sun, also ran the strip. Few other papers ran Vic Jordan, which is a shame. The intellectualism of PM shows through in this strip, where Nazis are never shown as bloodthirsty monsters as they are in most strips -- they are the enemy, of course, ruthless and efficient in their machinations, but nevertheless human. This alone sets Vic Jordan apart as a higher quality strip, interested more in providing realistic adventure with fleshed out characters than in mindless propaganda.

Labels: Obscurities

This wasn't part of Jim's series, just a strip that he sent me in one of his letters. Jim may not be a computer guy, but he sure does seem to know what people do on the web. Since I can monitor referrals to the blog I can confirm that a surprising percentage of visits to Stripper's Guide are from people googling something other than comic strips. Some of the searches that land people here are rather embarrassingly specific -- the most memorable being "black dwarf strippers for parties in flint michigan". I sincerely hope that our man in Flint gave up his bizarre quest and was content with reading some old comic strips instead. Or perhaps I should take the blog in a different direction...

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

These cartoons were published on March 25, 28 (2) and 31 1907.

The first and third cartoons are referring to the wild and woolly San Francisco graft and corruption trial, of which you'll find an excellent account here.

The second cartoon concerns a road rally from LA to San Francisco. From the fragment of the news story that made it onto my photocopy it seems to be some sort of private bet with the winner taking a $3000 prize. The cars were an Oldsmobile and a Pope-Hartford, and the route was said to be in horrific condition:

The time limit of forty hours which was originally agreed upon has been abolished, and the winner will be the first car to negotiate the 500 miles of rough going up the valley route.

There are not more than 100 miles of fair road on the entire journey, the highway having been completely washed away or badly cut up by the unceasing rains during the past winter.

The final cartoon brings us back to the road graft investigation which has now been sent to a grand jury.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Harry Weinert to Create GFC's 'Vignettes' Feature
(E&P, 1952)

Harry Weinert this week joined the list of distinguished artists who have created the "Vignettes of Life" Sunday color page in the course of its 30-year history as a newspaper fea­ture. He succeeds the late Kamp Starrett, who drew the feature for 12 years until his death in July.

Others who have handled the feature since Charles D. Mitchell founded it are Frank Godwin, who now draws "Rusty Riley" for King Features Syndicate, and the late J. Norman Lynd. The feature was distributed by the Ledger Syndicate, Phila­delphia, for many years, but has been a General Features Corp. property since 1949.

Mr. Weinert has studied at the Corcoran Art School in Washing­ton, D.C., and at the Pennsylva­nia School of Industrial Art. He has contributed freelance work to the Philadelphia Record, the In­quirer, Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post. For a time he was on the art staff of the old Phila­delphia Ledger.

Mr. Weinert hopes to modernize somewhat the style evolved for "Vignettes" by his predecessors, without interrupting the feature's gently satirical nature or otherwise alienating the fans it has gathered in its long history.

[I question one part of this article -- it states that C.D. Mitchell originated Vignettes of Life, but according to my research Mitchell created Follies of the Passing Show in 1918 for the Ledger and left it in 1920. Lou Hanlon continued the feature until 1931. While Hanlon was continuing the feature, which lost its title in the 20s, Godwin started Vignettes in 1924. The features were essentially identical in subject -- the only real difference is that Vignettes was a full color page, Follies was a black and white half. I could very well be missing something here but I think they were two distinct features, but perhaps there is some connection between the two that I'm missing. Anyone else have an opinion on this little mystery? -- Allan]

Labels: News of Yore

As far as I can tell Gene Ahern didn't serve in World War I, but that didn't stop him from doing a strip about a doughboy in the trenches.

His screwball NEA strip Squirrel Food had been running since 1915, often featured a dimwitted nut named Balmy Benny. The strip was retitled in his honor on July 25 1918 when the little fellow and his faithful companion George the dog were inducted into service in Europe. In order to be somewhat respectful of our boys in uniform Benny's lunacy was toned way down for the newly refocused feature, a change that definitely dampened the hilarity. Ahern's writing on this strip is tentative, searching for gags in a war zone of which he had no first-hand knowledge. Real soldiers like Percy Crosby, Wally Wallgren and Bruce Bairnsfather could serve up wartime gallows humor, but Ahern had to content himself with derivative gags, most of which dropped like lead balloons.

Luckily for Ahern the war ended mere months after Benny arrived in the trenches. Our screwball hero got to come back stateside and resume his screwball ways. The strip was renamed back to Squirrel Food on February 3 1919.

Labels: Obscurities

We hardly ever seem to discuss topper obscurities here on the Stripper's Guide blog and that's odd because I really enjoy researching Sunday topper strips. Anyway, this one, History Repeats It's-Self, was the first topper of Rudolph Dirks' Captain and the Kids. It started on April 11 1926 and was only used through the May 9 episode. In it Dirks has his little hellions reenact scenes from history in their own inimitable way.

Next Dirks used an untitled topper featuring the kids for awhile before he settled on his first long-running series, Have You a Little Cartoonist in Your Home?

Sorry about the awful scan. Just couldn't seem to get the scanner to behave well with this strip.

Labels: Obscurities

In the 1920s the game of bridge became popular in the burgeoning middle-class. In the new suburban tracts popular entertainments like movies and nightclubs were a long train ride away, so many residents took up bridge as a pretext for socializing. Inevitably the comics began commenting on the fad, with H.T. Webster's bridge cartoons leading the way in popularity.

In the depression bridge became even more popular -- an evening's entertainment at no cost became a very attractive substitute for going out when money was tight. It was then that The Finesses debuted, a daily strip designed to capitalize on the fad.

The strip was syndicated by McNaught and credited to "Kaydell". My guess is that the 'Kay' portion refers to art by Ken Kling -- Kling was producing the syndicated version of Joe and Asbestos for them at this time. I haven't even a guess who was hiding behind the "dell" portion, though.

The strip debuted on June 4 1934 and the creator(s) seemed to recognize trouble from the start. A strip that everyday shows a foursome seated around a card table isn't at all visually arresting (though Penny Ante traded on just that concept for years), so 'Kaydell' added some lighthearted adventure elements to the plot. Result, of course, was that bridge fans weren't happy (not enough card-playing) and others weren't happy either (enough with the bridge already!). The strip was doomed and less than four months later McNaught decided to fold; the strip ended on September 22.

The samples above include both the first and last strips; it was one of the few series that was given a chance to say a formal goodbye to its (few) loyal readers.

Labels: Obscurities

Leading Cartoonists of America - Clifford K. Berryman, of the Washington Star; Grant E. Hamilton, of Leslie's Weekly
By Robert E. Heinl (E&P 7/5/13)

William McKinley paid Clifford K. Berryman, the Washington Star car­toonist, his highest compliment. "Your pictures," the lamented President said to him, "never bring a blush nor leave a stain."

Berryman got his start in a way not unusual for those who have made a name at drawing. When a small boy he sketched a picture of his teacher, representing him as Old Father Time. Then he cautioned the other little boys not to tell the teacher who had made the drawings on the blackboard. When the veteran teacher returned, he took one look at the chalk outlines, and the next minute he was warming the seat of Young Berryman's pants. It was a marked but painful recognition.

While still a lad Berryman made a rough sketch of the then Senator Joe C. S. Blackburn, who hailed from Berryman's home town in Kentucky. The work was executed on the back of a cigar-box lid. Then the boy cut out the figure with a scroll saw. He put a piece of leather behind the likeness, so that it could be made to stand up for a desk ornament. One day Senator Blackburn noticed the little ornament in Berryman's uncle's office.

"Who did that?" the Senator in­quired.

"My brother Jim's boy," was the re­ply.

"Well, sir," was Blackburn's reply, "I used to go to school with Jim. He could draw better than any boy in the class, but never had an opportunity to develop his talent. I am going to take this boy to Washington and give him a chance."

Senator Blackburn was as good as his word. He secured a job in the draft­ing division of the Patent Office for the promising youth. Berryman went to work harder than ever. He reached his stride and became the leading cartoonist of the Washington Post. Afterward he accepted an attractive offer made to him by the Washington Star, a position he has held nearly seven years.

Berryman's chief fame came to him when he originated the "Teddy Bear." It was at the time of President Roose­velt's first bear hunt in Mississippi. Col­onel Roosevelt had been informed that there was great sport to be had in that vicinity. In the face of this he had gone eight days without a sign of any­thing worth shooting at, to say nothing of bear.

The natives made frantic efforts to chase something up. One evening a guide rushed into camp breathless to announce big game a short distance away. President Roosevelt grabbed his gun and scrambled up the road with the rest of the crowd as fast as he could go. To his amazement he encountered a great, bulky negro leading a tiny cub bear. The negro was dragging it along with a huge rope. He was about to re­lease the little animal, so that the President might have at least one shot at a bear, when T. R. raised his hand in protest.

"If I had shot that bear," he re­marked afterward, "I could never have looked my boys in the eye again."

Berryman depicted the releasing of the diminutive bear, and captioned it "Drawing the Line in Mississippi." The original of that drawing is highly prized and now hangs in the National Press Club in Washington. It is a pic­ture of the first "Teddy Bear."

Nobody was more pleased with the creation than Colonel Roosevelt. He dedicated a photograph to the artist with the inscription: "To the creator of the Teddy Bear who always has a call on the Roosevelt family." Like his distinguished predecessor, President Roosevelt took occasion to notice Ber­ryman's work in fitting terms.

"You have the great cleverness com­bined with entire freedom from mal­ice," was Mr. Roosevelt's written senti­ment. "Good citizens are your debt­ors."

GRANT E. HAMILTON'S CAREER

Fecundity and his work in developing artists to the point of popularity are characteristics for which the art world is indebted to Grant E. Hamilton, aside from his own rare attributes as an art­ist. Many pictures in Judge are drawn after ideas Hamilton has developed. His work as art director of Judge and as supervisor of the art work on Les­lie's, and of organizing ideas for other artists to work from, has taken him lately somewhat from actual work on pictures, although he is more able and versatile to-day than ever before. Ham­ilton is a many-sided man, a prince to work with and, although still devoted to his art work, an enthusiastic farmer. Two or three days a week Hamilton spends with his family on his farm near Alstead, N. H., where he has live­stock of the best breeds, and where, when the notion takes him in season, he can hunt game in his own forest.

Hamilton is a prodigious worker. He has been the life and soul of Judge. He once told John A. Sleicher, the present owner of the publication, that in the old days of Judge there were times when he drew all the colored cartoons, including the first page, and the back page, and the double page, and all the black sketches in more than one issue. In addition to this he wrote paragraphs and stories. In other words, in those days he was all that was visible of the entire working force of the paper.

Hamilton was about nineteen or twenty years old, a good-natured, smooth-faced boy, when he first came to New York from Youngstown, O. He was the son of a furnaceman, and him­self had entered that business, but was determined to become an artist. He called upon Mr. Goodsell, the proprietor of the Daily Graphic, in which his ear­lier artistic work had been published, and said he had come on to take a place that had been promised him. The publisher looked him over for a mo­ment, and then said: "I do not want you. I want a man, not a boy."

Hamilton's heart failed within him, but his pluck did not desert him. He said: "You have sent for me, and I have come on at your invitation. This is not any way to treat me. I am in the city, with little money. You sent for me, and I have come here."


Mr. Goodsell hesitated a few minutes and said: "Well, you can report to the head of the art department, and see what he can do for you, but I can't pay you more than five dollars a week." "It is all right," replied Hamilton. "With me the money does not matter, so much as getting a place. All I want is to get a hold where I can show you what I can do, if you will give me a chance."

So Hamilton went to the head of the art department who put him at work, He was with the Graphic but a short time when he was receiving fifty dollars a week. He was a tireless, energetic, brainy worker, indefatigable and indus­trious to a marvelous degree. After a time Hamilton was invited to become a cartoonist on Judge, which had been leading a precarious existence, but which, in the hands of W. J. Arkell, was becoming well known and prosper­ous.

Hamilton was anxious to learn the art of lithographic work and of colored cartooning, and foresaw that in time a great field would develop for the col­ored cartoon periodical. He, therefore, jumped at an offer, even at a sacrifice in salary, which to him at that time was of large moment. Subsequently in his association with Bernard Gillam, the fa­mous cartoonist, Hamilton was taught colored work, and he was an apt pupil and finally became a master of the art. His colored work in after years was stated by Mr. Gillam himself to be the most perfect done by any artist in the country.

When Mr. Gillam invited Hamilton to remain on Judge, and act as his chief assistant, Hamilton realized the jeal­ousy of feeling that naturally exists among competitive artists. "I fear that you will not be able to get along with me," he said. "Never mind that," re­plied Gillam, "all I ask is that you do your work, and we will get along well together." He urged Hamilton to ac­cept the place, and the latter reluctantly consented, insisting to the last that the association could not be congenial and that it would not last longer than ten days or two weeks.

The fact is that in the ten years' inti­mate connection of the two men, up to the time of Gillam's death, there was never occasion when the slightest cool­ness existed between them, never a word of censure was heard from the lips of Gillam, never anything but praise from the lips of Hamilton. It was a beautiful association, and brought the two artists into such intimate relation­ship that each seemed to supplement the best there was in the other. Hamilton became the successor of his beloved partner on Judge after Gillam's death. The same comradeship exists after years of association between Mr. Slei­cher and Hamilton. The two friends are inseparable.
Hamilton's extreme modesty as an artist has kept from him much credit that is his due. He is not one who loves to see his name exploited, and his reticence as to his own work is pro­verbial. He stands to-day the dean of American cartoonists, while his work and judgment as to contemporary mag­azine art are shown in the great popu­larity of Judge on its modern lines as a humorous and satirical journal.

Labels: News of Yore

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

The first cartoon, published March 23, 1907 continues coverage of the graft investigation. The Examiner seems now to be quite sure they're going to get the ringleaders into jail. We shall see..

The second and third are from Sunday the 24th. The first of the two commemorates the horse-racing practice of "getaway days". I'd never heard of this but it seems that it was standard practice, at least back then, to have the last few weeks of the racing season include a lot of races for the lesser horses. The idea was that the owners, usually small outfits, needed at least a win or two to get purse money to pay for their trips home. Races would be stacked up with these 'also-ran' horses so that everyone had a decent chance to make the purse. Some bettors loved these races because the field was wide open and 50-to-1 shots might very well win the race, Others, those who fancied themselves scientific bettors, disdained them.

The letter being written in the small panel is pretty hard to read. It says "Deer Mister Gole Dollar -- kin i have the ole job on the shootin' gallery this summer".

In the final cartoon Herriman appropriates Fred Opper's famed mule and farmer (without even an "apologies to" line -- tsk, tsk) to comment on the coming era of using automobiles for farming work. My wife, a country girl, had to explain to me the phrase "old dobbin scented the gravy" -- it means that when the horses smelled supper cooking back at the farmhouse they knew it was time to quit work for the day and headed on home.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

I sometimes buy old scrapbooks of clipped cartoons on eBay -- they tend to go cheap and sometimes I find a jewel among the cartoons some kid or grandma clipped in the old days. Paging through my latest acquisition of this type I found something in amongst the hundreds of Off The Record cartoons (this clipper REALLY liked Ed Reed's feature) something that almost made me kack up a hairball.

James Thurber, one of the greatest American humorists of the twentieth century, was also an amateur cartoonist. His cartooning abilities were so primitive that it never occurred to him that they were worth publishing. However, his friend and collaborator E.B. White was so tickled by his doodles that he secretly submitted them to Harold Ross at the New Yorker. Ross, too, was taken by them and published a few in the magazine. Readers expressed their delight with the off-kilter captions which seemed to suit perfectly the naive cartooning and Thurber had thrust upon him a secondary career as a cartoonist.

By the 1940s Thurber was all but blind, but continued occasionally to produce his cartoons, now drawing them on huge sheets with his bedimmed eyes hovering just inches from the paper.

After the initial amazement of finding the above cartoons in the scrapbook, being a Thurber fan familiar with his history I realized that there was definitely no way that Thurber was producing a daily newspaper cartoon in 1944. All became clear once I did a little checking and found that Thurber's book of cartoons titled Men, Women and Dogs, was published in 1943. Apparently the book publisher devised the scheme of offering newspapers a very short-running daily sampling of Thurber's work to promote the new book. In amongst the hundred of cartoons in the scrapbook there were only five of the Thurber cartoons, so the feature may have run for as little as a single week. What's odd is that this is the first time I've encountered the series -- apparently the promotion (I'm assuming the publisher gave the series away free) didn't succeed very well because very few newspapers printed them.

Labels: Obscurities

Farouk Has 'Harold Teen' To Console Him in Exile
E&P, 8/9/52

A few weeks before his abdi­cation from the throne of Egypt, former King Farouk requested and received a set of cards bearing drawings of characters in the "Harold Teen" comic strip, syndi­cated by the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate un­der the pen of Carl Ed, the artist.

Like millions of American youngsters, Farouk collects cards that are distributed from time to time with candy cigarettes. A few years ago characters of the comic strips marketed by CTNYNS were stamped on cards distributed with candy bars manufactured by a Cambridge, Mass., candy company.

Lacking from Farouk's collec­tion was a set of "Harold Teen" cards, including Harold, Lillums, Shadow Smart, Pop Jenks and other characters.

In mid-June Farouk's private secretary asked a collector in Bris­tol, England to supply the set for him. The collector did not have the set and forwarded the request to Col. Robert R. McCormick, edi­tor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune. Col. McCormick turned the request over to the syndicate managers and Carl Ed. A set of cards was assembled and sent to Egypt. With them Mr. Ed sent two original drawings.

A note of thanks from Farouk was sent to Mr. Ed and the syndi­cate by H. Husny, the then king's private secretary. Whether former King Farouk has taken his cartoon collection with him into exile, Mr. Ed hasn't heard.

News and Notes
E&P, 9/27/52

Prime Minister Nehru of India told the All-India Newspaper Ed­itors' Conference last week that he "couldn't stand what are called comic strips. I am supposed to laugh, but I feel very gloomy." He said he would "even pay money to escape from them."

Labels: New of Yore

The Prince Valiant Page

by Gary Gianni
Flesk Publications, 2008
ISBN 978-1-933865-04-1
Hardcover, 12.5" x 9.25", 112 pages, $29.95

I order most of my books online. When I saw a Gary Gianni Prince Valiant book pop up in a search I confess I didn't even bother to read the description, I made a beeline straight for the Order Now button.

My quick trigger finger on the book ordering button often makes books show up in my mailbox that don't live up to expectations. Especially when doing research I tend to just order everything that could conceivably be of interest and sort the wheat from the chaff as it arrives. It can be a rather expensive indulgence, but on the other hand occasionally I end up with some really great books that vastly exceed expectations.

So it is with The Prince Valiant Page. I ordered it assuming that I was going to get a reprint volume of Gianni's work on the Sunday strip. Though that's not what I received, and that's a book I still would be delighted to have, The Prince Valiant Page is one of those unexpected delights that will keep me hitting those Buy Now buttons.

What we actually have here is a combination art book, instructional book and history of Gianni's involvement with the strip. The book is full of reproductions of Gianni's pencil sketches, working drawings and finished pages (in glorious black and white), all of which are lovely to behold -- far more beautiful than the postage stamp size color versions I see in my local Sunday paper.

Gianni does a great job of explaining his working methods and those of his predecessor on the strip, John Cullen Murphy. Many model photos are reproduced along with the drawings that were produced based on them, an invaluable peek at methodology for aspiring artists and fascinating too for those of us with no such ambitions.

There are a few color Prince Valiant pages reproduced, mostly on foldout pages so we can see them in glorious full tabloid format, a size that isn't used by one newspaper out of a thousand. These are just glorious, and confirm for me the reason that while I really love Gianni's version of Prince Valiant I just can't bring myself to read it in my local paper reproduced in that abominable quarter-page format.

The history of the strip, which focuses mostly on Gianni and the elder and younger Murphys, reveals a lot I didn't know about the working relationships. For instance, I had no idea that Gianni was ghosting selected pages before he began taking credit, or that John Cullen Murphy finally handed the strip over to him in such an abrupt fashion, very much unlike Murphy's extended tutelage under Foster.

Gianni shows several of his early PV pages along with Murphy's comments and corrections. Murphy's corrections are heart-rending in their constant admonitions to Gianni to drop details and shading that would turn to mud in the printed form. If only these damn newspapers would give strips like Prince Valiant some space! What a glorious page Gianni could produce for us if only they'd give him some elbow room. As it is Gianni's work on Prince Valiant is terrific, but oh, what it could be!

While we continue to ponder newspapers' wanton disregard of producing a Sunday comics section that could actually sell papers I suppose we'll have to get our fix of great art from books such as these. So thanks Gary Gianni for this wonderful peek into what is and what could be. Now get busy and find a publisher to produce reprint volumes of those superb tabloid Prince Valiant pages of yours. We can't get them in the newspaper so we're all chomping at the bit to read your Prince Valiant any way we can.

Labels: Bookshelf

Here's some samples from the second series (or third if you count a 1918 reprint series cited by Alfredo Castelli which I still haven't gotten around to verifying) of American Old Bill cartoons by Bruce Bairnsfather. Rather than rehash old news, I ask you to skate on over to this post for a discussion of the Old Bill series that appeared in the U.S. All the American Old Bill series are quite rare, this King Features strip series of 1923-24 probably the most common of the three, yet still extremely scarce.

Labels: Obscurities

Judge Wright was a short-lived strip that never really found its identity. This strip about a city judge who gets personally involved in his cases flounders around between the soap opera and adventure genres. Apparently the police and prosecutors in Judge Wright's domain were all utter idiots because the judge felt it necessary to constantly go out and track down the real miscreants, because it seemed the suspects brought before him were all wrongly accused.

Judge Wright had its roots in comic books -- all the creators involved were funnybook vets. The strip was credited during most of the run to Bob Brent and Bob Wells, neither of whom actually existed. The writer was actually Robert Bernstein who had worked on the Crime Does Not Pay comic book. The first artist was Bob Fujitani, whose Japanese name was perhaps wisely unused since the strip premiered on September 10 1945, a scant few months after the end of the war.

Fujitani's art might have been fine for comic books, but on the comics page his oddball camera angles, film noir inking and often mangled anatomy looked out of place. It probably didn't help that, as Ron Goulart tells us in The Funnies, Fujitani was unhappy with the pay -- which is saying a lot when you figure the slave rates paid at the comic books.

Fujitani called it quits in December 1946 and was replaced by Fred Kida, another comic book artist. Kida soldiered on with the strip, also lending the proceedings a decidedly comic-bookish air, until June 10 1947. I guess his experience on Judge Wright really soured Kida on newspaper comics -- his next credited appearance in the medium would not be for another thirty-five years, when he'd do a stint on the Amazing Spider-Man strip.

George Roussos replaced Kida, yet another comic book guy. He lasted until February 21 1948. The last few months of the strip, which ended on April 3, had no one taking credit for the art, but whoever did it was able to do a plausible, if rush-looking, simulation of Roussos' distinctively chiselled characters.

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

This Saturday's cartoons were published on March 18, 20 and 22 (2), 1907.

The top cartoon commemorates a visit by British boxer-turned manager Jimmy Lowes, who was representing Jack Palmer, a not very impressive looking young Brit who was the British Heavyweight champion at the time.

Next up we have what probably came off Herriman's drawing board as a really great editorial cartoon, but the paper printed it way too dark so the names and the outlines of the fish are barely discernable. The cartoon comments on an absolutely amazing trial that was going on in San Francisco at the time -- read the details here.

The final two cartoons provide updates on the local graft case and it's heating up. The Examiner, at least to hear them tell it, has forced the DA to bring charges against some in the group. How this road graft brouhaha has come to involve a pair of telephone companies and the "boxing trust" (see bottom cartoon) I'm afraid I'm at a loss to explain.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Here's a special obscurity for July 4th. Usually these darn holidays sneak up on me and I'm caught with my pants down running something totally inappropriate. Well, it happened yet again but luckily I just happened to have Heroes of Democracy sitting in the pipeline.

This World War II patriotic strip tells the stories of real American heroes, including that of Arthur Wermuth whose story would only become more and more incredible as the war raged on (visit the link). This daily strip was an oddball, published by Hearst but not syndicated; it apparently only ran in the Hearst-owned papers. The strip ran March 9 to August 29 1942, a period when Americans needed all the heroes they could come by. A 1943 Big Little Book titled Fighting Heroes collected material from the series.

Stookie Allen, the creator of the feature, is a fellow I'd sure like to know more about. From the thirties through the fifties he created mostly fact-based features like this one; he also worked in pulps and comic books producing the same sort of material. Most of his features seemed to tout his name as if he were a celebrity though none of his newspaper work appeared in many papers. Did he have some claim to fame that merited the star billing or was he simply a good self-promoter?

Labels: Obscurities

Here's a title that's a mouthful, but it certainly does a fine job of summarizing the plot. Jack Farr would pick a famous person from history, drop him or her into the present and see how they'd fare. Not well it seems. Farr imbued the proceedings with a fine sense of screwball humor, a trademark style that should have served him better in the newspaper strip world. Yet he always seemed to be jumping from paper to paper, and in the 1920s ended up providing bulk lots of comic strips to the US Feature Service, a company that mostly dealt in buying up old stock from other syndicates. What the problem was for Jack I dunno. He always seemed to be one great idea away from making the bigtime.

This series ran in the Sunday New York Herald from March 17 to August 11 1918.

Labels: Obscurities

Willie and Joe - The World War II Years
Edited by Todd DePastino
Fantagraphics Books, 2008
ISBN1-978-1-56097-838-1
2 hardcover volumes in slipcase, 692 pages, $65

When we talk about editorial cartooning we often indulge in the discussion of the 'importance' of a given cartoonist. We all know that Thomas Nast was instrumental in bringing down Boss Tweed, for instance. We say, then, that Nast was important, most likely the most important cartoonist of the 19th century, because his cartoons had a direct measurable effect on the world.

In the 20th century we had a number of editorial cartoonists that typically get the 'important' tag -- Rollin Kirby, Robert Minor, Herblock, Garry Trudeau, Arthur Szyk, and so on come to mind. But if we're really honest and admit that all these cartoonists did much less to shape popular sentiment but rather are celebrated for their skillful reflection of it then we are left with just one name.

Bill Mauldin changed our world. There's just no getting around it. Mauldin showed America the reality of war, and we've never thought about it in the same way since. Until Mauldin war was a star-spangled adventure, brave young men donning dashing costumes to go off and make the world safe for democracy. Yes, some of those young men died, but we knew they sacrificed themselves willingly, joyfully, for the greater cause. War was about great battles, derring-do, flag waving and chest beating.

Mauldin showed us that the reality of war is dirty, cold and wet, and there's damn little romance in being shot at. War is about incompetent officers, getting drunk, and the inglorious and very messy deaths of your buddies. The legends embodied by Sergeant York and John Wayne were liars.

To be sure Mauldin wasn't a lone voice in the wilderness. There was All Quiet on the Western Front, there was Ernie Pyle, there was newsreel footage. But Mauldin somehow made it all seem so much more real. He was literally drawing cartoons in a foxhole. His cartoons were the product of a dogface, not a reporter at the sidelines, not an artful statement on war made from an armchair. There was no wiggle room, no dissenting opinion -- it was reality and it wasn't pretty.

What's perhaps most amazing is that Mauldin's cartoons made it into our daily papers at all. Other G.I. cartoons appeared in the papers back home, but they were all heavily sanitized, like Sad Sack and Private Breger. Mauldin's cartoons, hated and actively suppressed by military brass, frequently off-color, often featuring the blackest of black humor, should by rights have never made it to the American public. But they were just that good -- like manifest destiny there was just no stopping them.

This impressive two volume set reprints all of Mauldin's wartime cartoons, or at least all that the editor has been able to find. Some of Mauldin's work, especially the early stuff, is extremely rare, in some cases perhaps no longer in existence. Much excellent material, often in the form of original art, was gathered from the Library of Congress.

A short and lively introduction begins volume one, but the vast majority of the whopping 692 pages are Mauldin's cartoons. And what cartoons! I was certainly familiar with the later material, the cartoons that saw print in the States, but had no idea that Mauldin had this quantity of cartoons published earlier on. Mauldin's early work uses a somewhat slicker style that his later, grittier, cartoons. It was a surprise to me that Mauldin was an absolute wizard with zipatone, a technique he later abandoned (perhaps out of necessity -- how do you get a supply of zipatone in an obscure Italian village?).

His earlier stateside work, focusing on barracks life and going on maneuvers, is of course not as interesting as the later material. It has a charm that bespeaks his own innocence, soon to be dashed in Europe. The later work is powerful far beyond my skills of description, and it is fascinating to see Mauldin's gradual growth.

The reproduction of the cartoons is, by necessity, very uneven. Cartoons reproduced from cheaply printed base newspapers are, of course, sometimes a bit of a mess. Luckily editor DePastino had phenomenal luck in finding many originals from which to reproduce, so while some cartoons are a muddy mess we can see originals of many others from the same period for comparison. Even many of the cartoons printed from published sources are presented in amazingly great shape. I don't know if we have an accomplished restorer to thank or if DePastino just got incredibly lucky with his sources.

I was surprised, though, to see a few of the later cartoons also printed from bad source material. Better sources are definitely available, a fact I can vouch for based just on my own collection. I was also a little disappointed that the cartoons end on July 30 1945 when there was three months left to go in the saga of Willie and Joe. Mauldin officially retitled his cartoon at the end of October -- why not finish off the run?

One nice feature that could have been presented far better are the editor's notes on the cartoons. Providing valuable background information, they are almost all quite short so there's no obvious reason why they weren't printed on the same page as the cartoon on which they comment. Instead they are printed near the back of each volume. Not at the back of the volume mind you, which would have been at least reasonably convenient, but preceding a final section of miscellaneous Mauldin art that closes out each volume. Every time you go searching for a note there's a whole lot of unnecessary page flipping involved. Most readers probably won't bother which is a shame because the notes supply some very interesting context.

The presentation is delightful. The slipcase and two volumes are clad in that famous olive drab colored cloth, and the overall design is meant to evoke an old military manual. A great deal of thought and care obviously went into this presentation and it succeeds completely. The hefty price on the two-volume set, which made me think twice before placing my order, seemed downright cheap once I actually got to see the product.

If you want to see the work of a man who truly did change the world, a man who finally made Americans think twice before supporting war (though apparently that lesson has faded considerably of late), this is the best and only reprint volume of his wartime works you need.

Labels: Bookshelf