Obscurity of the Day: Stella and Gertie

Bert Green is better known as an animator (see this post for Green on the animation biz) but he dabbled in comic strips on and off over the years. Stella and Gertie was an odd strip, especially when you consider that it was done for the NEA syndicate, which specialized in rural papers. The strip featured a pair of supposedly pretty girls, though Green wasn't really a good enough cartoonist to provide them with any real sex appeal. The pair were brassy, brazen and loose, what the typical NEA reader would have classified as floozies. This strip might have found a receptive audience at some big-city tabloid, but in Hog Jowl, Arkansas I imagine the strip was considered in bad taste. So it's not too surprising that few NEA clients ran the strip, despite it being part of the package deal.

Stella and Gertie ran from June 21 to September 18 1915.