Stripper's Guide

Wednesday, July 31 1907 -- Two boxers, both characterized as over-the-hill in the Examiner, clash in a 20 round bout in San Francisco this evening. The paper declares that the loser will surely retire. Well, Battling Nelson lost the bout but would go on in the prizefighting dodge for another thirteen years or so! Jimmy Britt, too, would keep on slugging, though only for a paltry three more years.

Friday, August 2 1907 -- Battling Nelson is eulogized in this Herriman cartoon, consigned to the sepulcher of the boxing has-beens.

Saturday, August 3 1907 -- Negro boxer Joe Gans arrives in town to a huge and enthusiastic crowd of well-wishers, the vast majority of whom are black. Sportswriter C.E. Van Loan thinks this is just hilarious and takes the opportunity to write an editorial just dripping with light-hearted fun-loving racism. If Roget's has a need to beef up their list of synonyms for the race they need not look any further -- Van Loan covers all the bases and comes up with a few probably never before heard.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Today Cole Johnson gets the bully pulpit to talk about old time super-collector Ernie McGee. If Cole is less than charitable, the important thing to keep in mind is that I didn't say it! In truth, I'm sure I speak for both myself and Cole when I say that although McGee was definitely a quirky fellow, well, isn't anyone who hoards old newspapers like we do? Huzzahs to Ernie for being the great individualist that he was! Okay, take it away Cole ...

Back in the 50's and 60's, Ernie McGee was considered the go-to guy as far as comic strip history was concerned, primarily because of the size of his collection. As a largely unresearched wilderness, anything McGee said was held in high regard. A couple instances where McGee was a fibber: He told people he was contributing to Philadelphia syndicates and especially the World Color Printing company, circa World War I. Gordon Campbell made a print for me of a 1915 Slim Jim episode, where, sho' nuff', there was McGee's signature. It wasn't too much later, that I picked up another 1915 Slim Jim section in the flesh, again, signed by Ernie -- in ball-point pen!

Another little monkey wrench he tossed, appearing in a few out-dated references, was a mysterious early strip called Hard-Head Harry, cited as if it had some vague importance. When? Where? What? Having come into possession of some of McGee's stuff, it turns out to be something that appeared in a newsletter for paperboys, circa 1930! ("Harry" is a careless dolt who provides a negative example on his paper route! ) McGee's basic cartooning career was apparently a vaudeville lightning sketch artist. He really was a poor cartoonist, as shown by these two blotters he did in 1928 and '29, for his agent. By the mid-30's, he was doing his chalk-talk act for a night club in New Jersey.


Maybe other comic-section collectors have encountered this strange, cryptic writing. This is Ernie McGee, who must have blown out several cartons of #2 pencils scribbling obvious, unnecessary annotations on his collection.


(On a Happy Hooligan, "By F.Opper", on a Slim Jim, "World Color Printing Co.") Once I saw a very rare 1902 Morgen Journal section, on which he decided to translate every word balloon back into English--IN PEN!

A fellow I knew once visited him in the late 60's. He had moved his collection from Philadelphia to a tumbledown structure in a scary part of Gloucester, N.J. McGee was alone now, drinking too much, with not much more than bound volumes in the place. He had a bunch of chairs set up to a lectern, where he stood in a shabby bathrobe and pretended to deliver a talk on comics to his single member audience. His favorite strips were Slim Jim and Marriner's strips. Here's a tracing-paper drawing he did in the 1950's.


And here's a few shots from a photo-essay article about Ernie McGee that was printed in the Cincinnati Enquirer on October 20, 1957.

I love to hear from you folks! Although I encourage you to post your questions and comments publicly by clicking on the "Post a Comment" option that follows each post on this blog, if there's something you'd rather discuss privately you are welcome to email me at strippersguide@gmail.com. To ensure that I get your email and respond, please follow these suggestions:

1. Make Yourself Heard Over The Spam
I receive hundreds of spam emails every day so I'm pretty ruthless about deleting emails that appear to be junk. To optimize your chances of not getting tossed into the trash please include a subject line that will catch my eye. Ideal way to do that is to start your subject line with "Stripper's Guide". I can pretty much guarantee that if your subject line is blank, or something like "Question" or "Hi Stripper" or the like that your email will end up in the virtual circular file.

2. If You Don't Get a Response, Check Your Spam Folder
I generally respond to my email, assuming there's some pertinent question I can answer or to tell you "I dunno" or to thank you for submitted information. Even if I can't answer your question or otherwise don't really have much to say in response to your email, I will likely write back to acknowledge your message. This can take awhile these days; I seem to get farther behind the faster I peddle, if you know what I mean. If you haven't heard from me after, say, a couple weeks, you can assume I did not get your email. Send it again or post it as a comment on the blog. And don't forget to check your spam folder; my response may be lurking in there.

3. Questions I Can't, or Won't, Answer
I get some questions that are beyond my ability or desire to help. Here are some basic categories:

a) I can detect a kid looking for me to write their class paper from a mile away. Not my job, sport.

b) The question that goes something like, "My mom used to have a {insert feature name} strip up on the fridge. The gag was something like {insert vague description}. Can you get me a copy of that strip?" The answer is no. Even if I could figure it out there would be a lot of work involved and you're momentary nirvana of nostalgic joy is insufficient payment for my trouble. If you're really serious about finding that long-lost memento, get on newspapers.com and start searching for yourself.

c) Questions that require expertise on comic books, animation and other cartooning genres. You'll find experts on those other genres lurking about the web, but I'm not the ideal guy to ask. Newspaper comics are my thing.

d) If you have some treasure and want to know how much it's worth don't bother asking me because you won't get an answer. There are very few things in this world that are so unique and rare that you can't get a good idea of their value by checking auction results for similar items on eBay and other sales sites on the web. If, on the other hand, you need a collection appraised for insurance or estate purposes I'll be glad to quote you a fee for that service, but keep in mind that I'm an expert on newspaper comics, not a licensed appraiser. The two are most definitely not the same thing. While I will be more accurate than 99.9% of all licensed appraisers (who know next to nothing about newspaper comics), my opinion may not be of any interest to your insurance company or lawyer.

e) Questions that are answered in my book, "American Newspaper Comics -- An Encyclopedic Reference Guide" will be answered by referring you to that reference.

4. Show and Tell
If you are hoping to have me ID something, please send a good sharp scan of the item in question. Don't bother sending shadowy, blurry, out of focus pictures. If the item is signed, a close-up of the signature is a great bonus. A picture of the reverse of the item can often be surprisingly informative as well. If you are sending pictures that you'd like me to feature on the blog please send minimum 150 dpi scans, and preferably 300 dpi.

5. If You Want To Sell Me Something, Quote a Price
I'm always interested in buying newspaper strips and related ephemera, but don't think you'll con me into doing a free appraisal (see #3d) by asking me to make an offer. It took me awhile to figure out this little scam. Someone writes me asking for an offer on their item, I make one, get no response, and then lo and behold it shows up on eBay, often quoting everything I said about the item and setting my offer as the minimum bid. No more. If you want to sell me something you'll have to quote a price, otherwise no go.

6. A Thank You Is Appreciated
Email has bred a lot of bad manners, and I admit I'm an occasional offender, too. But if I answer a question for you, a simple "thank you" is always appreciated.

As promised yesterday, here's a very interesting obscurity. So interesting that Cole Johnson and I both had the idea to scan some in at the same time. As I was putting a couple into the queue Cole sent me a third, plus a photo of the 'writer' and subject of the strip. Since Cole is the film historian, let's hear what he has to say about The Original Boop-Boop-a-Doop Girl:

The singer Helen Kane was a briefly popular entertainment oddity in the late 20's. She made a few Paramount film appearances at the time, and the animators at Max Fleischer's cartoon studio adapted her persona into the Betty Boop character. Since Fleischer's films were also released by Paramount, it may have seemed initially as good, solid cross-promotion. Unfortunately, Kane's career ran out of steam very soon, her last film being a 1931 short subject. However, "Betty Boop" took off, quickly eclipsing her inspiration's career. Helen Kane felt reparations were in order for purloining her mojo, and sued the Fleischer studios in April, 1934. Somehow the judge in the case couldn't see how anybody could see Helen in Betty, (Maybe the only one in all christendom), and Fleischer and Paramount won the case. They even thought it a suitable publicity event for a jokey segment in the Paramount newsreel!

The Betty Boop comic strip started in July, 1934, for Hearst's King Features Syndicate. Behold this item, "The Original Boop-Boop-a-Doop Girl by Helen Kane", by Ving Fuller, from the August 12, 1934 issue of Hearst's N.Y. Mirror. (The only one I have-can you supply the dates on this?) Why was this out-and-out rip-off of the Betty Boop strip that Hearst also ran? Did this run in any other papers? This is a classic example of a pre-fab promo strip. Really too little too late for the sadly stalled Helen Kane. (Hmmm-Just this one example seems more fun than the dismal stiff that Counihan and Seeger put out.)

The New York Mirror (and only the Mirror) ran this strip from August 5 to October 21 1934. According to one historian, this strip was running while Hearst waited to get the rights to the real Betty Boop. Well, obviously t'ain't so because Hearst started running the daily version of the Betty Boop strip a month before the debut of this competing version. In fact both strips ran in Hearst's New York papers -- the 'real' one in the Journal, the fake one in the Mirror. Really kind of fitting that the sleazy tabloid got the knock-off, don't you think?

The strips shown above are the first, second and last episodes of the strip. As you can see the early ones were drawn by the always goofy and delightful Ving Fuller, but later on they got the janitors and office boys to produce the thing.

Labels: Obscurities

The New York Hearst papers became quite the hotbed of Fleischer Studio activity in 1934. At the same time the New York Journal began running the Betty Boop Sunday comic strip they also started this considerably more obscure Fleischer product, Out of the Inkwell. Since the sample of this rare strip came from Cole Johnson, and he knows his animation history about a hundred times better than me, let's hear his take:

Here's an example of an oddity. Out Of The Inkwell is based on Max Fleischer's brilliant silent animated series of the same name. In each episode of the animated series, the character of Koko the clown would emerge from an inkwell, in effect a cartoon character playing the part of a cartoon character. Koko usually enjoyed tormenting Fleischer himself and causing all manner of chaos, superimposed on live-action "real world" footage. Each film's coda had Koko being brought back into the inkwell, of his own accord or otherwise. The last of these cartoons was released in 1929, but Koko appeared in some of the studio's cartoons from 1931-34, usually with Betty Boop. Apparently, with the introduction of the Betty Boop strip, they felt it the right time to launch a second effort. Both the Koko and the Betty strips were drawn in a corner of the Fleischer studios in mid-town Manhattan. They were drawn by down-on-his-fortunes, alcoholic cartoonist Bud Counihan, and written by the teen-aged future comic book artist and animator Hal Seeger (perhaps best known for the "Milton the Monster" cartoons). This is from the N. Y. Journal Saturday comic section, Dec. 8, 1934. I don't know if it appeared anywhere else, or how long it lasted-probably not long! Can you fill in the dates, Allan?

You bet, Cole, and thanks! Out of the Inkwell ran in the Journal, and almost certainly no other papers, from November 25 to December 15 1934, a grand total of just four episodes. I'm pretty sure about that crack about no other papers because I don't believe Hearst had any of his other papers outside NYC try out the tabloid comics section experiment until well into 1935 (or am I wrong?). By the way, if you want to read more about that tabloid experiment be sure to pick up the current issue of Hogan's Alley and read Bill Blackbeard's article.

And if you think this is a real oddball, tune in tomorrow for another strip with a decidedly bizarre Fleischer Studios connection.

Labels: Obscurities

Boots Kept Step Through Her 25 Years
(E&P, 2/26/49)

Change, the kind of wholesome change that marks a good life, has come to "Boots and Her Buddies," in the 25 years since Artist Edgar E. Martin first created her. NEA Service, the distributor, claims Boots is now syndicated to more than 500 dailies and half as many Sunday newspapers. When Boots celebrated her silver anniversary last week, she was still the star, yet little "Pug," the freckle-faced girl she brought home from a summer resort in 1939, is growing into something of a beauty, and a prime figure in the strip.

Boots began as one of four girls about town. Two of them soon dropped out of the community circle, leaving schoolteacher Cora and Boots. Cora remained true to type, married Professor Tutt. The Tutts boarded Boots, who became a glamour girl. She was successful in the role.

In 1926, after monied brother Bill gave her a trip to New York, she got a new haircut, the "Boots Bob," which clicked nationally with hairdressers. She was, in 1939, honored guest, in sketch form, at the Yale junior prom, and her glamour brought artist Martin several assignments as judge of beauty contests.

Boots Matured
Boots picked up a chum, Babe in these days, and they had a strong following among the students. But as the original audience grew older, Boots matured. She was courted by numerous swains. It's like ticking off calendars to recall their names — Ronald Ross, Prince Franz of Grandalia, Jonathon Marlsboro Jones, Handy Andrews, the wealthy Cecil Livingston, and Rod Ruggles.

Boots' audience had apparently reached a new stage when Ruggles appeared on the scene. They liked him. They sent a cascade of letters asking for wedding bells, and Boots and Rod went to the altar, Oct. 2, 1945. Boots became a family comic, and a baby boy was born, July 4, 1946. Out of a welter of name suggestions, Martin chose for the boy, "David."

Recently, Professor Tutt was ill, so Pug moved in with the Ruggles, and became an established member of the family when her father, long absent from the strip, was lost at sea. So it is legal now. From now on, Boots will have Pug's romantic adventures to remind her of her own school days.

As for Martin, who for many years lived in Cleveland, he now makes his home in Clearwater, Fla., still attends style shows and occasionally judges a "Boots" contest, but prefers spending the time with his wife and daughters in the Florida sun.

Martin landed with NEA in 1921 when he was 23. He drew several comics without much success until 1924 when NEA asked several artists to submit strips for a girl comic. Martin in off hours created Boots, submitted the idea, unsigned, and the board of judges picked her.

Labels: News of Yore

Jim Ivey's new book, Graphic Shorthand, is available from Lulu.com for $19.95 plus shipping, or you can order direct from Ivey for $25 postpaid. Jim Ivey teaches the fundamentals of cartooning in his own inimitable style. The book is 128 pages, coil-bound. Send your order to:


Also still available, Jim Ivey's career retrospective Cartoons I Liked, available on Lulu.com or direct from Jim Ivey for $20 postpaid. When ordered from Ivey direct, either book will include an original Ivey sketch.

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics