Stripper's Guide

Awhile ago I was contacted by Nick Homer, the son of a creator listed in my E&P Mystery Strips. His dad's strip was called The Duke of Manhattan, and it was listed with McClure Syndicate in 1946. Nick said he knew nothing about any McClure connection, but rather that it was created for the New York Sun and syndicated by them to about thirty papers. I'd never heard of the Sun syndicating comics, and I found it a bit farfetched. The Sun was so very conservative; okay, downright stodgy; I couldn't see them doing something as frivolous as producing and marketing a strip.

However, Nick proceeded to tell me that his father had kept some of the material. He showed me photos of some promos which proved that the Sun really was trying to syndicate the strip. This was amazing to me! Imagine the National Review syndicating a strip -- this wouldn't be all that different.

I noticed in all the material he showed me that everything was strictly promotional -- there was nothing there that proved the strip ever actually ran in the Sun or anywhere else. I told the fellow that I smelled a failed attempt to sell a strip here. Why would dad have kept all this promo material but not one single tearsheet of the actual strip running in a paper? It seemed very unlikely. Also, frankly, the strip would have been a hard sell -- the story in the samples was quite badly written. The writer, Delos Lovelace, despite having some major writing credits, didn't have a clue about the rhythm of telling a story in the short daily spurts necessary. Artist Edwin Homer had kind of an interesting Chester Gould-ish style going, but the offbeat look of the strip definitely would take some time to get used to.

I checked with my expert on New York City papers, Jeffrey Lindenblatt, to see if he'd seen it, and he had no recollection of it. At that point I felt that all the facts were lining up and pointing in the same direction. I told Nick that it seemed to me extremely unlikely that the strip had ever run, and enumerated my reasons for thinking so. I volunteered to check the microfilm of the New York Sun the next time I was at the Library of Congress, but that I frankly didn't hold out much hope.

He took my opinion with good humor, but said that he just happened to be going to Washington soon, and that he would check the microfilm himself as long as he was there.

Well, since this post is an Obscurity of the Day, and not a Mystery Strip, you can guess the result. We don't know why artist Edwin Homer hadn't kept any tearsheets of the strip, but the fact is that it ran in the New York Sun (and maybe even elsewhere). The strip ran in the Sun from May 15 to November 11 1946. As far as we know, there was never a McClure Syndicate connection, and it could well be that E&P simply messed up the entry.

The moral of this story, I think, is that sometimes the only people who believe in you are your family, and sometimes they believe in you despite seemingly overwhelming reason not to -- but that doesn't by definition make them wrong. Your family knows you better than anyone in the world, and that's just one of the many reasons they are so important.

Labels: Obscurities