Stripper's Guide

(All items from The Fourth Estate)

July 11
Augustus O'Shaughnessy, who until recently was an illustrator on the staff of the Chicago Daily News, has opened a studio in the Fine Art Building, Chicago.

Wallace Goldsmith, a cartoonist on the Boston Herald, made his debut in vaudeville at Keith's Theatre,  Boston, recently in a lightning sketch act.

A.W. Scarborough, better known as "Scar," has resigned from the cartoonists' staff of the New York Globe and joined that of the World.

August 1
John Farnum, cartoonist for the Springfield (Mass.) Union, was married July 18 at Albany, N.Y., to Miss Martha Ferguson. Mr. Farnum formerly was on the staff of the Boston Post, Boston Traveller, Providence Telegram, Albany Times and other papers.

September 12
Walter Saalberg, a cartoonist at different times connected with the New York Journal, Chicago Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner, died recently in Harrisburg, Pa., at the age of thirty-two years. [this cartoonist was in all the same cities as Charles Saalburg but mostly at the wrong papers -- really botched obit or extreme coincidence?]

September 26
F.M. Howarth, one of the best known comic artists in the country died in Philadelphia Tuesday, aged forty-three years. He began work on Puck and later was employed on the Hearst papers, is credited with having originated the comic series using the same characters day after day in the newspapers. Two of his best known series were "E.Z. Mark" and "Lulu and Leander."

October 3
George McManus, creator of the "Newlyweds" series of cartoons appearing in the New York World, has gone into vaudeville. He appeared successfully at the Alhambra, New York, last week, his specialty being making sketches of his cartoon characters on a blackboard.

October 17
The Danbury, Conn., Agricultural Society has awarded a diploma to the New York World for its exhibition, at the recent fair held by the association, of original drawings and plates of the "Newlyweds" series of comic pictures appearing in that paper.

November 14
Peter B. McCord, cartoonist and author, died Tuesday in his home, at 190 South 9th Street, Newark. He was forty years old. For eight years he had been on the Newark Evening News' staff. A book entitled "The Wolf," illustrated and written by himself and dealing with the life of the ancient cave dwellers, is about to be published.

December 5
Charles Tebbs, manager of the art department of the New York World, has been succeeded by T.O. McGill, an artist of that department and originator of the "Jollys' Bull Pup" series of cartoons. Mr. Tebbs' future plans have not been announced.

December 26
George McManus, the New York World artist and creator of the celebrated Newlyweds, Panhandle Pete and other comic pictures, was married to Miss Florence Bergere, the original Mrs. Newlywed, on Wednesday.

Labels: News of Yore

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Friday, January 10 1908 -- the Los Angeles Examiner, and Californians in general, are flabbergasted when former San Francisco mayor Eugene Schmitz's extortion conviction is nullified on appeal. We've discussed these guys on Herriman Saturday many times, but if you need a refresher, here are the Wiki pages for Eugene Schmitz and Abe Ruef.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Gene Carr took a page from George McManus' playbook with Little Darling. This holy terror is strongly reminiscent of Snookums, and the mother is a doting Mrs. Newlywed. Carr shakes up the formula a bit by portraying the father as being more open to the idea that junior might just have a little bit of a behavior problem.

Veteran cartoonist Carr pretty much sleepwalked through this strip ... well, that isn't fair. I imagine he must have had to schlep to the paper's morgue and leaf through those heavy bound volumes looking for Newlyweds gags to rehash. Points for effort there.

Little Darling ran as a chintzy little quarter-pager in the New York World's Sunday comic section from June 12 1920 to February 6 1921.

Thanks to Cole Johnson for the scans!

Labels: Obscurities

Here's Jefferson Machamer's Petting Patty, a strip that may have set itself up for failure due to its rather risque title. For those who aren't familiar with the old-fashioned term 'petting', it's a synonym for necking, but tends to be reserved for the serious variety where things are getting well past first base. The title was suggestive enough that many subscribing papers used the alternate title Patty the Playful, or simply Patty.

The King Features strip, which starred a hep jazz age flapper girl, began on April 16 1928 as a daily only. Machamer was still pretty young, not yet known as one of the successors to John Held, Jr., but his style was already mature. Despite the appealing art, the strip didn't sell very well, but King must have seen a bright future for it. In September 1928 Patty moonlighted in a series of appearances on Sunday magazine section covers (starting either on the 16th or 30th, sources disagree)*. The magazine cover series was initially titled Adventures of Patty, but the final two installments (11/4 and 11/11) used the daily strip title.

King Features may have gotten encouraging feedback on the magazine cover series, because a Sunday page was soon added to the strip. I can only verify this starting in January, but I wouldn't be surprised if it actually began a little earlier, maybe right after the magazine series ended.

The now Sunday and daily strip continued until September 5 1930. The strip had never sold very well, even with the addition of the Sunday. Machamer, who was now becoming a hot property, probably tired of the grind of a seven day a week strip when he could make more money by freeing up that time for other cartooning and illustration work.

More Petting Patty strips can be seen over at Barnacle Press.

* Carl Linich has since provided proof from the series appearing in the Chicago American that is a good indication the Sunday magazine series began on the 16th -- thanks Carl!

Labels: Obscurities

We learned that Roland J. Scott did an early feature titled Mr. Lose-Out in this post by Alex Jay, and my plea for a sample or more information about this feature, of which I was previously unaware, was answered by Terence Hanley, who sends this undated example that ran in the Indianapolis Sentinel, presumably circa 1903.

Information about the running dates of this strip, penned by Scott while still a teenager, is still sadly lacking, but at least we now know that it really did exist. A tip of the hat to Hanley, who has a website about Indiana cartoonists.

For those who haven't had the pleasure of dealing with newspaper microfilm and are unaware of the challenges involved, here's an exhibit that can give you some idea -- the original photocopy from microfilm of the strip above:

Labels: Obscurities

I have no idea who Benjamin P. Elliott is, but I have to thank him for creating one of my favorite oddball comic strips. Adventures of the Stranded Dime Museum Freaks was Mr. Elliott's only comic strip series as far as I know, drawn for the Philadelphia North American from March 9 to May 25 1902. Ah, if only he had stuck to the gig. He had all the tools -- good drawing ability, sense of humor, goofy imagination.

For those unfamiliar with dime museums, they were entertainment venues, where, for a mere tenth part of a dollar, you could marvel at all sorts of wonders and freaks of nature. Mermaid skeletons, devil babies, two-headed cows, medical oddities ... you name, they had it. I imagine around the turn of the century you'd find at least one operating in any major American city. Most of the exhibits, of course, were fakes, or at least fancifully represented, but hey, whaddya want fer a dime, buddy? Here's a brief introduction to them from Wiki, and here's a page about Hubert's Dime Museum in New York City, and below (if the link works) is a Youtube video of some of the exhibits at the American Dime Museum, probably the last of its kind and recently shuttered. I am surprised at how little there seems to be online about dime museums, a great (if not necessarily all that proud) part of American history:




Thanks to Steven Stwalley who provided the scan!

Labels: Obscurities

 [Alex Jay contributes this piece about cartoonist Cy Long who was killed by a lightning strike shortly after the syndication of his first newspaper feature, Mose Bones, began. While Mr. Long was no budding cartooning genius -- his embarrassingly bigoted strip does nothing to enhance my opinion -- this is some very rare and interesting material about a beyond-obscure strip and a creator who seems to have gotten some early success based mostly on chutzpah and enthusiasm. 

Note that all the samples are from microfilm sources, so the quality is low, but the best we can do. Also, notice that one sample includes a different comic, Who Stumbles Most Dances Best by someone named Acker -- so having learned about one obscure cartoonist, in the process we find another unknown. Isn't it always the way... (see comments at bottom for info Alex has since gathered on this oddball item).
Thanks Alex!]








Thomas Cyril Long was born in Old Fort, North Carolina on December 29, 1897, as recorded on his death certificate. He was the only child of Luther, a life insurance agent, and Theresa. According to the 1910 U.S. Federal Census the family lived on Main Street in Newton, North Carolina.

Cyril was the preferred name as recorded in the censuses and the Charlotte and Greensboro newspapers. Beginning in 1914 the society pages of both papers reported on his violin playing, travels, college comings and goings, and other activities. He signed his World War I draft card on September 12, 1918; he was a student at the time. In the 1920 census the Longs still lived in Newton, at 1306 North Main Street.

Long's interest in baseball was noted in the Charlotte and Greensboro newspapers in the spring of 1922; he was an umpire. June saw the publication of his comic strip, "Mose Bones". On June 6 the Charlotte Observer picked up the announcement from The Hickory Record:

The newspaper public in various parts of the South will be introduced today to "Bones," a new comic strip prepared by Cyril Long of Newton. Some of Mr. Long's friends realized that he was a genius at drawing, and their pleasure will be increased by the publication of his strips. The Record is glad to be able to run "Bones" and it trusts that its readers, many of who know the young author personally, will remember that they were not done in New York, but in Newton. It's good work as Mr. Palmer, sketch artist of The New York World, remarked when shown the advance copies in this office the other day. Here's hoping that "Cy" will sell every paper in the country.

Long drew about a month's worth of strips, each of which were dated consecutively beginning with June 1, but they were printed out of order in the Charlotte Observer and Greensboro Daily Record. For example, the Observer printed the June 2, 3, and 5 strips together on June 4th; the June 1 strip appeared the next day. The Daily Record printed the June 24 strip on the 19th. The Observer published the news of Long's sudden death on the front page, July 2, 1922.

Thomas Cyril Long, better known, especially among newspaper men of the south and east, as "Cy" Long creator of the comic cartoon strip of negro characters, including "Mose Bones," was killed by lightning while participating in a baseball game at or near Newton, N.C., his home town, Saturday afternoon, according to information received from Newton by telephone.

The body will be taken to Wilmington, N.C. former home of Mr. Long's mother, where funeral services will be held Monday morning according to information received in Charlotte.

Mr. Long was about 24 years of age, was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Luther F. Long, of Newton, his father being a well-known insurance man of that town. Deceased was an alumnus of Catholic university at Washington, to which institution he went after completing the course at Belmont college, Belmont, N.C. He was a young man of high ambitions, energetic, of pleasing address and manner, and very popular among those who knew him.

Only the past week he returned to his home at Newton for a few days after completing a tour of the southeast and as far north as New York City, introducing his new comic, to which he had devoted most of his time and thought during recent months and on which he had been working several years. He was enthusiastic in his belief that his comic, the first in the country based upon the dialect and character of the southern darkey [not by a long shot-ed.], would prove a great success, and he had received much encouragement from newspaper men throughout the southeast and in larger cities north.

He had made arrangements with a publisher at Cumberland, Md., to prepare his cartoons for his newspaper clients and was just conducting a campaign to place his comic in the larger papers of the south and east generally. He was in The Observer office Thursday night and had a conversation with the managing editor about his cartoon, which had been recently published at intervals in this paper. The Observer has a number of the comic strips on hand for publication.

The first news of Mr. Long's death to reach Charlotte came by long distance telephone in a message from his father to O.A. Williams, Jr. of this city, a close personal friend and former school mate of the deceased.

On July 5, the Observer printed this tribute:

Of a verity it was a case of genius nipped in the bud when Cyril Long, of Newton, made answer to the sudden summons. This young artist had developed a talent for cartooning and The Observer is moved to happy reflection that it was the first paper to which he made advances and that it received him cordially, seeing in the character of his product a case of native talent which called for encouragement. He gave promise of development in the illustrated field to position similar to that held by Joel Chandler Harris in the dialect field and his "strips" were developing a popularity of the sort that has been accorded the older established cartoons of Mr. Jiggs and publications of the kind. His talents had become recognized by the newspapers in general and he was on the way to closing contracts which would have extended his fame throughout the land. The tragedy of his taking off was of the sort that could not fail to arouse painful contemplation.

Final strip, published posthumously, July 15 1922

Labels: News of Yore

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Sunday, January 5 1908 -- Herriman apparently can't settle on an idea for today's cartoon, so he gives us four, all stating the same point about the same subject. The point being that boxer Abe Attell's supremacy in the featherweight class, previously considered absolutely unassailable, has been shaken by this draw with the little Brit Owen Moran.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

You wouldn't think that orphan children would exactly be a ripe subject for comedy, but there have been a number of comic strips that chronicle an orphan's quest to find new parents (or just a home to get them off the street!). I don't know if Coffee and Sinkers is the first of the genre, but I can't think of an earlier one. One thing I'll say for certain, though, is that hands down the funniest is Dwig's Home Wanted By a Baby. I'll cover that one of these days when I'm feeling very warm and indulgent toward y'all.

Coffee and Sinkers is a McClure Syndicate entry that ran from June 7 to July 26 1903. It was created by the great illustrator Robert Carter, who slummed in the Sunday funnies on a few occasions. Another of his series, Just Little Ones, uses something more akin to his straight illustration style.

Oh, by the way, if you're not up on your semi-antiquated jargon, 'coffee and sinkers' is slang for cheap coffee and donuts. 'Sinkers' because if the donuts are overly dense or stale they'll sink to the bottom of the coffee cup when you dunk 'em. Mostly a Britishism, but apparently popular on our side of the pond a hundred years ago.

Labels: Obscurities

You may recall that last week we ran some rare Sunday versions of Muggs McGinniss and High Pressure Pete, strips that were previously known only as dailies. We wondered why these 1931-copyrighted Sundays mysteriously appeared in the New York American of October 1 1933.

Well, we have an answer to the mystery courtesy of research by Jeffrey Lindenblatt. He hoofed it down to the New York Public Library to see if he could solve the mystery, and by gum, he nailed it!

First of all, he found that there are two additional High Pressure Pete Sundays that appeared in the October 8 and 15 sections (as alluded to by Grizedo in a response to the original post). Muggs McGinniss appeared only the one time.

He also found that the American increased the page count of it's Sunday section from 14 pages on September 24 to 16 pages on October 1 and 8, and then to 20 pages on October 15. After that the page count was scaled back to 16. To fill the extra pages, they not only used those old Muggs McGinniss and High Pressure Pete strips, but also ran Buck Rogers and Joe Jinks starting on the 8th, and some regularly appearing strips that were usually run as halfs were run as full pages.

But that leaves the central mystery -- why did the American suddenly increase its page count when they were obviously not well-prepared to fill that space? Lindenblatt has the answer to that, too. It was on October 1 that the New York Daily News, the American's main competitor, upped the page count on its Sunday section, adding the new features White Boy, On The Wing (soon renamed Smilin' Jack), Sweeney and Son, Little Joe and the new series of Teenie Weenies. The American had to try to keep up.

Major kudos to Jeffrey Lindenblatt for solving this mystery!

Here's a challenge for you wordsmiths out there. For years I've been trying to come up with a term to describe a daily panel cartoon or comic strip that uses multiple recurring titles. You know the type I mean -- the Clare Briggs, H.T. Webster and Gluyas Williams features are the most famous examples of the genre. For instance, Briggs had in his arsenal When a Feller Needs a Friend, Real Folks at Home, It Happens in the Best Regulated Families, Ain't it a Grand and Glorious Felling and so on. None of these titles was a feature unto itself, they were each just used regularly on his otherwise untitled daily feature. Some purveyors of  this type of feature would add and drop titles over the years, others stuck pretty much to the same ones, and others (T.E. Powers comes to mind) were like a shotgun, adding and dropping recurring titles constantly.

I've called these 'revolving title' or 'multiple title' features, but those are certainly not terms that come trippingly off the tongue. I often wonder what term the creators themselves used, but in all my reading about the form I've never come across a pithy term for the genre. So does anyone know the proper term for these, or failing that, have a suggestion for a term that properly describes them and is elegant and succinct?

Anyhow, while you're grinding your mental gears on that, take a look at this multiple revolving title (ugh!) comic strip series by Milt Gross. Gross' short-running series boasted a mere three recurring titles -- The Meanest Man, I Did It and I'm Glad, and Draw Your Own Conclusion. Considering it ran for just six months I guess Gross didn't need to invest in more.

When Milt Gross left Pulitzer's Press Publishing for Hearst's King Features around September 1930, he was faced with creating new strips to replace his then-current series; this daily-only strip was the successor to Looy Dot Dope. The new strip probably began on October 6 1930, though the Wisconsin News, one of the few papers to run it, ran it ROP, so that date could be a week or two off. The strip ended on March 28 1931, replaced by Milt's new daily (and soon to be Sunday) series, Dave's Delicatessen.

Thanks to Cole Johnson for the samples!

Labels: Obscurities

Herb "Hype" Igoe was primarily known as a sports writer, but he was also an excellent cartoonist. But rather than flap my gums about him, I refer you to Yesterday's Papers, which offers two biographical posts on the guy; part one and part two.

Igoe concentrated primarily on his writing, but seldom let his drawing nibs migrate to the back reaches of his desk drawer. He contributed both serious and funny sports cartoons to the Hearst papers, and did quite a few spot illustrations, too. What he rarely did was draw a series of comic strips -- in fact he only did so once in his career that I know of (actually he has two series to his credit in the Guide listings, but the other was a panel cartoon).

Here is Mr. Dwindle, that one series. It ran in the New York American from December 16 1909 to January 10 1910. It ran as a replacement for the vacationing Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff.

Labels: Obscurities

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Friday, January 3 1908 -- You might find it hard to believe, but Hollywood was once a town of teetotalers. Or rather, it was supposed to be. They had some of the toughest anti-drinking laws around, but Philo Beveridge, the second husband of the founder of the town, flouted the laws with his parties at the Hollywood Hotel (in the story called Hotel Hollywood). Here's a capsule history of the prohibition laws in old time Hollywood.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

From grocery clerk to one of the most influential cartoonists in America is the condensed story of the life of Charles Nelan.

Born in Akron, Ohio, Charles Nelan went through the usual course of schooling and then, able to read and write, went to work for a grocer at a small but sure salary. It is said that he spent most of the salary and much of the grocer's time in making sketches of the customers who patronized the store. And it was this early work with the pencil that gave birth to his ambition to become an artist.

Confident that he could draw, the young man saved enough money to take him to New York, and as soon as he set foot in that city he asked the first person he met to direct him to the National Academy of Design. There he was enrolled as a student. He proved such an apt pupil that at the end of the first year he was awarded the Elliot medal.

The end of his first year in New York found him without money and he was forced to return to his parents' home in Akron. His father objected to his continuing his art studies and insisted that the young man return to the grocery wagon. For the following six years young Nelan worked as a grocer's assistant, but all of this time he was saving his money and was making a close study of human nature. In after years he said that the many odd characters he had met while a grocer's clerk aided him in his work as a cartoonist.

After his six long years in the grocery Nelan was able to return to the art field and he went to Cleveland, where he obtained a position on the Cleveland Press. This was in 1888.

While in Cleveland he was offered the opportunity to draw cartoons for the Scripps-McRae chain of newspapers and in this way he won fame in the middle west.

In 1897 Nelan was called to New York to take the place of Charles G. Bush, who was leaving the Herald to go to the World. It was on the Herald that Nelan began to make his big hits.

He was a new man on the Herald when the war with Spain broke out and the many stirring days that preceded the declaration of war gave him his opportunity. A book of his Spanish war cartoons was published and enjoyed a large sale.

Following this the Philadelphia North American offered him a splendid inducement to go to the city of brotherly love and he accepted the offer. This was in the fall of 1900.

Factional politics in the state of Pennsylvania was boiling over at the time and Nelan flung himself into the turmoil with great energy. From that time on until the spring of 1904 there was not an issue of the North American without a cartoon by Nelan.

Nelan was especially fond of drawing the character Uncle Sam. He had studied this character until he regarded one of his drawings of Uncle Sam as one of his best pieces. The same might be said of the attention he devoted to the characters John Bull and the G.O.P. elephant.

Nelan's associates in the North American office remember him as a kind, gentle, big hearted man with none of the disagreeable eccentricities so often found attached to a genius. He was charitable in his judgment and upright in his personal relations, called no man his enemy and tried always to help others.

He died, after a short illness, at Clay Springs, Ga., December 7 1904.

Labels: News of Yore

If you know your strip history, you know that the features Muggs McGinniss and High Pressure Pete were dailies only -- they were never Sunday strips. Well, Cole Johnson says different and he has proof. Here, from the Puck section in the New York American of October 1 1933 are Sunday versions of both.

Before you start writing marginalia in all your reference books, though, it should be mentioned that the pair of strips you see here appear to be the only Sundays of these strips ever to see the light of day.

If you look closely, you'll see at the bottom of each that they are copyright 1931 and include a scrawled-in "No. 1".  The most likely explanation is that back in 1931 the Central Press cartoonists Wally Bishop and George Swanson were asked to come up with Sunday versions of their respective strips and these were the results. Languishing in the files for two years, for some reason they ended up, out of the blue, printed in this 1933 Puck section. It is unknown if they were printed in all Puck sections that week, or only in New York..

EDIT: Mystery Solved -- See this post.

Back to Hans Horina today. We just introduced him on the blog the other day in connection with Absent Minded Aunt, and I figured since Hungry Tommy often co-starred in the same strips with the muddy-minded matron we should give them both some blog-time. So here are some examples of Hungry Tommy by Hans Horina, which ran in the Chicago Tribune from May 6 1906 to September 15 1907, same running dates as Absent Minded Aunt.

Thanks once again to Cole Johnson for the scans!

If you like Horina's stuff go take a look at the portfolio of his Tribune work on display at Barnacle Press.

Labels: Obscurities

Roland J. Scott's humorous art appeared frequently in The Indianapolis Sentinel in the early 1900's. Not only did he draw front-page political cartoons, but he also frequently tried his hand at humorous sketches of the various sporting events of that day in the Hoosier capital On Sundays, the Sentinel featured his comic strip, Mr. Lose Out.

He studied with George Frink, staff artist of The Chicago Daily News. Early in his career he was employed by the Indiana Illustrating Company for a year. Following that, he worked briefly for The Anderson Herald and the Chicago Daily News before coming to the Sentinel.

Roland Jack Scott (1886-1968), professionally known as R. J. Scott, was an American cartoonist and creator of the comic strips Scott's Scrap Book and Sally's Sallies.

Originally from Indianapolis, Scott began his cartooning career with the Indianapolis Star circa 1900. In 1921 he made his way west to Phoenix where he worked as a cartoonist for The Arizona Republican (later renamed The Arizona Republic). After stints with papers in New York and Cleveland, Scott eventually signed with King Features Syndicate in 1931. He returned to Arizona the following year where he remained producing his syndicated panels until his retirement in July of 1967. R. J. Scott died April 4, 1968 at the age of 81.

•  Sally's Sallies actually started a bit earlier, on March 1 1926. 
•  I did not know that Just Among Us Girls started as an illustrated column -- it outlasted Ms. Kenney's text contribution and became a regular panel cartoon under the helm of Paul Robinson.
•  Has anyone seen this Mr. Lose Out feature in the Indianapolis Sentinel?

As the story goes, in 1905 a representative of the Chicago Tribune (James Keeley is most often cited) traveled to Germany and recruited some cartoonists to provide fodder for the Trib's comics section. I discussed this arrangement in a long ago post for Hans, another strip from the German invasion. Today we focus on one member of that German troupe who seldom even gets mentioned amidst all the excitement over Lyonel Feininger, the big star of the bunch.

Hans Horina may not have the hoity-toity appeal of the artful Feininger, but of the group he was the only one who really tried to adapt to the way American comic strips were done. Horina's work fits right into an American Sunday funnies section just as if he was sitting in the same bullpen with a group of American cartoonists. Granted, an occasional "wha---?" moment sneaks in (I have no clue what that giant spooney looking thing is in the top strip) but he made a serious effort to blend in, and thus was more popular and lasted longer than his fellow Teutons in the Trib. Today we have examples of one of his longest running series, Absent Minded Aunt. In this series a daft old lady gets into trouble due to her weak eyesight and even weaker gray matter. This could have been a real snoozer because the basic plot had already been done to death in the funnies, but Horina's outrageous gags, deadpan execution and trust in the reader to get the gag without a lot of blah-blah-blah elevate the strip to a higher level.

Absent Minded Aunt ran from May 6 1906 to September 15 1907 in the Tribune, and often had cross-over appearances from another Horina regular, Hungry Tommy.

Much thanks to Cole Johnson for the scans of this rarity!

Labels: Obscurities

And I second the motion -- Keith Knight's The Knight Life, thInk, and K Chronicles are some of the best comics out there. Every time a new book comes out it gets bumped right to the front of my reading list. Do yourself a favor and sample Keith's work if you haven't yet had the pleasure --Allan

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Thursday, January 2 1908 -- the top cartoon shows the result of the Abe Attell - Owen Moran featherweight title fight of the prior day -- a draw. Atell and Moran would have a rematch later in the year, and the result would be the same. Not until 1910 would Attell finally defeat the spunky Briton.

Herriman's other cartoon accompanies a rave review for the Belasco Theatre's presentation of Charley's Aunt, which was originally put on the stage in 1892 and has been a fixture pretty much ever since. Note another appearance by Charles Ruggles, later a noted film actor, who oddly enough had the lead in the first talkie film version of the play. Florence Smythe, too, rates a short Wiki entry.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

No, not a new feature of the blog (did I hear a collective sigh of relief?), just a cute piece of doggerel that I happened upon and it gave me a laugh. This uncredited poem originally appeared in the Emporia Gazette in 1908.

The Boston Herald, of which William E. Haskell is publisher, announced editorially in its issue of Sunday last that it had abandoned the use of the comic supplement, saying:

"We discard it as we would throw aside any mechanism that had reached the end of its usefulness, or any feature that had ceased to fulfill the purpose of attraction.

"Comic supplements have ceased to be comic. They have become as vulgar in design as they are tawdry in color. There is no longer any semblance of art in them, and if there are any ideals they are low and descending lower.

"But while relinquishing this feature of the Sunday paper we add others. The quantity of matter provided is not diminished, but the quality is improved. The pages remain, but are otherwise and more fittingly occupied."

The New York State Assembly of Mothers Clubs at its final session in Saratoga, N.Y., last week placed itself on record as condemning "Yellow" newspapers and the Sunday comic sections of newspapers.

[Allan's note: Pretty strong words from Mr. Haskell about a comic section produced right under his own roof! If Haskell was so disappointed by the quality of the material his cartoonists were producing he certainly had the power to do something about it. Of course, the reality is that the Herald wasn't successful in syndicating its lackluster comics and that's the real reason for its demise. Follow the money...

The date of Haskell's editorial, which would have been October 25, comes well after the homegrown comic section disappears from the Herald (or the microfilm, anyway) on August 18. The syndicated section has been found as late as August 30.]

Labels: News of Yore

Once again I turn to that seemingly endless source of obscurities, the Boston Herald. Today we'll cover Stumble-Toe Joe, which was sort of Bert Cobb's B-feature, his headliner act being Ambitious Teddy. The plot of Stumble-Toe Joe was pretty basic -- the tall skinny consumptive-looking kid has two left feet and hilarity ensues (well, barely) when he missteps. Krazy Kat it ain't.

Stumble-Toe Joe ran in the W.E. Haskell-copyrighted Boston Herald Sunday comics section from April 21 to August 18 1907.

More about the Boston Herald tomorrow...

Labels: Obscurities

Labels: News of Yore

An unusual syndicate offering, Speed Spaulding retold in somewhat revamped fashion the story of the famous science fiction novel When Worlds Collide. The 1933 novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie was a real page-turner about a pair of 'rogue planets' that are hurtling toward Earth and the mad race to save the human race from the imminent destruction of the whole world.  The comic strip version injected a handsome young two-fisted hero and love interest, Speed Spaulding, into the storyline.

The series was advertised by the John F. Dille Company starting in 1938, but the comic strip did not begin appearing until January 8 1940, so apparently it took a long while to line up enough clients to make the strip a paying proposition. The strip was numbered so that papers could start the series late, and many did.

The strip was unusual in that most novel adaptations tend to adapt either classics (like Dickens and Poe) or current hot off the press properties (like Book-of-the-Month). Another unusual aspect is that Speed Spaulding was a daily and Sunday strip; for whatever reason this is a rarity for adaptations. The Sunday began on January 14 in papers that started the strip on time.

Speed Spaulding, even with two years of advertising behind it, was by no means a strip that ran in a lot of papers. As Ron Goulart points out in The Encyclopedia of American Comics, the plot about global catastrophe "wasn't as fresh as it had once been" and the story was quite depressing and bleak. In the original novel mankind doesn't exactly comport itself nobly in the face of extinction, and the authors focused on that aspect in the original story. That dim view of humanity is if anything enhanced in the strip, which is supposedly adapted by the original authors (take that with a grain of salt), and makes for a very dark read.

The art by Marvin Bradley, later to spend almost forty years associated with Rex Morgan MD, is pleasant enough if a bit stiff. Bradley seems to have been trying to emulate Caniff in this series, but only succeeded in drawing Terry and the Pirates-style faces -- he didn't even make a half-hearted attempt at the chiaroscuro technique. Alberto Becattini says that Dille syndicate regulars Len Dworkins and Bill Juhre ghosted some of the art.

In the original novel, a spaceship does end up getting away from Earth just in time and succeeds in landing on one of the rogue planets. The small band of survivors finds the new world reasonably welcoming and ends on the encouraging note that humanity has a chance to start over. In the comic strip version, which took 384 numbered daily strips (and presumably 63 or 64 of the rare Sundays) to come to its conclusion on March 29 1941, we get no such closure. In the final daily strip the spaceship lifts off, the Earth explodes and we never learn whether our hero and his entourage will live happily ever after. Perhaps there is a final Sunday after that daily that wraps up the story, but I haven't seen it.

Labels: Obscurities