Stripper's Guide

Monday, April 6 1908 -- The Pacific Coast League season has begun, and San Francisco is off to a roaring 3-game undefeated start. Oakland and Los Angeles, however, are having a mixed start due to yesterday's game. After Oakland squeaked by L.A. in the tenth, both teams now have a 1-1 record.

In weazel-skin hat news, Hen Berry now has the mysterious 13th guest right in his hands, but doesn't realize it.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Adam Chase (c) renewed 2013 by Russ Morgan. All rights reserved.

Adam Chase strip #14, originally published September 4 1966. For background on the strip and creator, refer to this post.

Labels: Adam Chase Sci-Friday

Although the Billy Possum series is awfully heavy on typeset text, I figure that the interesting subject matter and background story, and the two cartoonist creators, tip the scales far enough to make it Stripper's Guide material.

If it weren't for Cole Johnson and Alfredo Castelli, though, I wouldn't even know about it. In the microfilm of the Chicago Tribune that I indexed, this series was missing entirely. Obviously some villain with a razor had gotten to the bound volumes before the microfilmers. Luckily, though, the researcher community comes to the rescue once more.

From Castelli's Here We Are Again I learn that the series ran from May 9 to July 11 1909. The dates are significant, because this is no unassuming little funny animal series. No, the creators, Paul West and Horace Taylor, were doing a little bit of backhanded politicking in this series, not to mention putting in a bid to create a new national toy craze.

We all know about the Teddy Bear and the cuddly toy's relationship to President Theodore Roosevelt. However, what is less well-known is that Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, was marketed to the public with his own furry, cuddly toy equivalent, the Billy Possum.

There is conflicting information about how and exactly when Taft was first associated with a possum. One story has it that the possum was picked because of Taft's penchant for falling asleep at innopportune times -- the possum being known as a good snoozer. Another story is that during the Presidential campaign Taft was served cooked possum at some southern function, and was so loud in his praise for the cooked critters that the connection stuck.

In reality, my bet is that Billy Possum began its life more prosaically, purely as a marketing gimmick cooked up by back-room political operatives. Taft did not have the magnetic personality of Roosevelt, and his backers needed to try everything they could pull out of their bag of tricks to make the public like him.

Pulled along on the coattails of Roosevelt's popularity, Taft was elected to office. Many of the votes cast for him were really for Roosevelt, who had let it be known with a wink and a nod that Taft was his man, would do his bidding, and it would almost be like having Roosevelt himself in the White House for four more years.

Although popular with the common folk, Democrat and Republican alike, the Republican establishment was far less enamored of Roosevelt, and when it turned out after the election that Taft and the rest of the party had no intention of being Teddy's puppet, traditional Republicans were relieved.  The Chicago Tribune was stolidly Republican, and undoubtedly was a less than enthusiastic supporter of the Roosevelt administration. When Taft was elected, the Tribune editors and ownership must have heaved a sigh of relief.

The rift between Roosevelt and Taft is where the Billy Possum series originates. After the election, Teddy was surprised and definitely not dee-lighted to find that Taft had somehow grown a backbone. Roosevelt's ideas were falling on deaf ears in the White House, and he was not pleased. While the Taft-Roosevelt rift may not have risen to the level of open battle, it was a simmering feud that lasted throughout Taft's presidency.

Seeing a chance to appeal to Republican papers, Paul West concocted a story wherein the virtuous, sunny and talented Billy Possum, through no fault of his own, becomes embroiled in a feud with all the Teddy Bears. The Teddies are unhappy that Billy Possum could become the next favorite doll, unseating them from their place at the pinnacle of toy success, where the love of all the children showers upon them. The Teddy bears are quite monstrously evil characters, and thus, through any underhanded nasty method they can come up with, they plot to kill poor Billy Possum.

Of course in the end Billy Possum is going to win the battle, and in the second sample above, gets a personal endorsement from none other than Taft himself, who admonishes the possum to "fight to a finish" with the teddy bears.

West and Taylor's Billy Possum may have been intriguing political satire, but it failed in its real mission, to ignite the interest of the nation's children and create a toy craze. The pages were far too wordy, and the action too violent. Although Billy Possum dolls were test-marketed, and other various doodads produced, nothing came of it. The series and the concept sank from sight with hardly a trace ... even on the microfilm.

Thanks to Cole Johnson for the scans!

Labels: Obscurities

Cole Johnson sent me these panel cartoons awhile ago. They are all by Frank Moser and dated in March 1924. He asked me if I had any information about this apparently ongoing feature. I checked my book, and found Moser represented only by a short-lived 1914 feature called Summer Kids. In my files for Moser, however, I found a single panel that had the same sort of look as these, but dated in 1928, four years later than these samples.

I knew then that Cole hadn't just found some weird little try-out thing that lasted only a month. But why no other information? Dave Strickler's E&P listings don't mention Moser, the other standard reference books either don't mention Moser at all or focus only on his animation career, Alex Jay's research for yesterday's Ink-Slinger Profile revealed nothing about it, and both Cole's samples and mine don't even have syndicate stamps, so we haven't even a loose thread on which to start pulling.

I took a shot with Newspaperarchive.com, which I gave up on pretty quickly as it has gotten unbelievably slow  and annoying since their latest redesign. My searches for "by moser" turned up lots of bad results but I found none that actually pointed to these panel cartoons.

Finally I decided to go through my old, badly faded photocopies of the E&P syndicate books. I know Strickler's E&P book did not catch everything from those early listings, because E&P did such haphazard categorization. Perhaps I could find some feature that mentions Moser as the creator.

Here I found success. Poring over those faded, barely legible listings, I struck gold. In the 1924 syndicate book (the first that E&P did), I found a listing:


Ah ha! That explained a lot! First, the lack of a syndicate stamp is typical for Associated, so that ends that mystery. Second, the multiple creators and lack of a series name explains all the rest. Strickler wouldn't have included such an oddball, vague listing in his book, and it also explains why we never seem to find a real run of these Moser panels. It's because this was an early sort of multi-creator series that we wouldn't really see again until the advent of features like Laff-a-Day, This Funny World, and others in the 1930s and 40s. Moser might have appeared once a week or even less. And many newspapers using this series, since it wasn't even really identifiable as a series, would probably not have run it consistently anyway.

Checking subsequent yearbooks, I find the listing show up two more times:


So my 1928 sample is either old material, or Associated Newspapers wasn't even bothering to tell E&P about this oddball feature anymore.

The only missing piece is to find a newspaper that did actually run this 'feature' consistently. As it is, I really don't feel I have enough solid information to add a listing for it to my book. How many others contributed to the series? When did the various cartoonists start and end their association with the feature? Did they contribute consistently, or is the feature a true grab-bag of creators? Was the feature still running in 1928 and possibly beyond? How long before 1924 might it have been running?

Frank Herman Moser was born in Oketo, Kansas, on May 27, 1886. His birthplace was identified in the New York Times, October 2, 1964, and his World War I draft card had his full name and birth date. In the 1895 Kansas State Census, his German-born mother, Alviena, was the head of the household. Of the seven children, he and his twin sister, Martha, were the youngest. They lived in Marysville, Kansas. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (1970) said his father’s name was John Jacob, a farmer.

The 1900 U.S. Federal Census recorded the family of six in Marysville on Alston Street. (The family name was misspelled “Mosher”.) His oldest brother was the breadwinner. All seven siblings were together in the 1905 Kansas State Census; apparently their mother has passed away before then. Regarding his education, art training and early work, the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography said:

...After receiving his preliminary education at public schools in Marysville, Kans., Frank H. Moser studied in 1907–08 at the Albert T. Reid Art School, Topeka, Kans., during 1908–10 at the Cumming School of Art, Des Moines, Iowa, and for a time after 1912 at the Art Students League of New York and the National Academy of Design, the last two in New York City. While attending school in Des Moines, he worked with J.N Ding (Jay N. Darling) cartoonist for the Register, as part-time illustrator and cartoonist, doing general utility sketch assignments. In 1910, when Ding left the paper, Moser replaced him and drew a daily cartoon for two years. He moved to New York City in 1912 and while attending art school had work illustrating for the New York Globe a daily story, “In Our School,” which ran for four years....

A profile of Paul Terry appeared in the Yonkers Statesman (New York), June 20, 1931, and about Moser it said: “…Moser, was illustrating the Sunday supplement of the New York Press….Among the strips created by the quiet, pleasant Moser was a Sunday series known as Fan Fanny in Sport, a cartoonization of a man, his wife and their dog….” [Allan's note: I did not find any comic strip series by Moser in my indexing of the New York Press newspaper]. According to American Newspaper Comics (2012), he produced the panel, Summer Kids, which was distributed by Associated Newspapers in 1914. 

He has not been found in the 1910 census. A family tree at Ancestry.com said he married “Anna Augusta Margareta Hård (Nilsson)” in August 1914. The couple and their four-month-old daughter, Marjorie, lived in Manhattan, New York City at 171 Audubon Avenue, according to the 1915 New York State Census. He was a newspaper artist. In The Educational Screen, October 1939, Arthur Edwin Erows wrote:

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

Harry Mace, who was a prolific magazine gag cartoonist in the 1950s, began to make a concerted switch to newspaper work as the magazine markets started to dry up. He hooked up with the Register & Tribune Syndicate in 1957, and did a kid panel titled Junior Grade for them. It didn't really seem to be going anywhere fast, and was dumped in 1960. However, Mace and R&T seemed to be set on the idea of making a kid panel work, and on September 25 1961, Mace was back with Amy, a daily gag panel about a sassy tomboy. Amy's personality was a mix of Dennis the Menace and Lucy from Peanuts -- comparisons that probably didn't hurt a bit in the feature's marketing. The feature suffered from an overabundance of weak gags in my opinion, but the crisp artwork and aura of other successful comic characters seems to have turned on enough newspaper editors to call itself at least a modest success. The panel debuted with a client list of a little under fifty papers.

Unfortunately for Mace, he was not going to bask in his success for long. After a brief illness of some kind, Mace died at the age of 41 in December 1963. That could have easily been the end of Amy, which was not setting the world on fire, except that Mace's close friend and neighbor, fellow gag cartoonist Jack Tippit, had been assisting on the feature. At first Tippit had supplied occasional gags, but when Mace got sick Tippit took over the entire production. Register & Tribune was so impressed with the perfect match between Mace's style and Tippit's that they saw no reason to drop the feature, and Jack Tippit's byline started appearing on the strip on January 27 1964.  

Tippit, obviously seeing the same writing on the wall regarding the decline of the magazine gag market, readily accepted the assignment and continued Amy. He shepherded the feature to a thirty year run, never in a lot of papers, but enough to make the feature worth producing, ending sometime in 1991. By then the feature had outlasted it's own syndicate, and had been taken over by King Features for the final half-decade of its run.

Despite its long run, Amy was only once collected in book form, an Ace/Grosset & Dunlap paperback issued in 1978.

Labels: Obscurities

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics