Stripper's Guide

November 7 1909 -- Another Baron Mooch strip that didn't make it into the Blackbeard book. I got a kick out of  the vendor's prices increasing as the cop and the 'cop' help themselves to freebies.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Here's a Dwig card from Tuck's Series #165 ("Knocks Witty and Wise").

Labels: Wish You Were Here

Bertha L. Corbett was born on February 8, 1872, in Denver, Colorado according to Woman’s Who’s Who of America (1914). Bertha’s father, Waldo, was listed in the Corbett, Hoye and Co.’s Annual City Directory City of Denver from 1876 to 1879. In the book History of Arkansas Valley Colorado 1881, Mr. Corbett was mentioned as a member of the Knights of Honor in Leadville, Colorado. Sometime later, the family moved to Minnesota.

In the 1895 Minnesota State Census, Bertha was the oldest of three siblings. Her mother’s name was the initials C.E. The family lived in Minneapolis. 

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

When Don Wooton was working for the Cleveland Plain Dealer he began producing a Sunday feature titled The Week on Parade in the early 30s. This feature is beyond our purview here at Stripper's Guide since it was a cartoon look at the week's news stories. I classify that as editorial cartooning and take a pass.

However, on January 29 1933, Wooton renamed the feature Personalities on Parade and changed the focus to a combination of straight humor plus lampoons of  local Cleveland personalities. That change puts Wootton's delightful work in our sights, for which we are very glad. The always restless Mr. Wootton, however, did not stick with the feature for long. The weekly half-page color cartoon ran in the Plain Dealer's Sunday magazine section only until July 8 1934.

Labels: Obscurities

Garnet Warren was born very late 1873 or very early 1874 in London, England. A passenger list dated May 30, 1914, at Ancestry.com, recorded Warren’s age as forty years and five months and birthplace as London, England. A profile of Warren appeared in the February 1905 issue of The Arena and said: 

He was born in London thirty years ago, but when quite small the family moved to Australia, where all his boyhood recollections cluster. 

“I cannot remember so far back as the time when I was not drawing,” said Mr. Warren recently. “My first offences were houses with great volumes of smoke pouring from their allied chimneys. From this it was only a short step to drawing the school-masters, and then trouble began. One day when I had just finished an atrocious effigy of the teacher, he caught me red-handed, and I, ‘like a wretch o’ertaken in his tracks, with stolen chattels on his back,’ tremblingly awaited my punishment. On this occasion the master, evidently determined to make the punishment fit the crime, compelled me to make one hundred drawings of a certain face. Well, I can tell you that long before that task was finished all the artistic instinct in me seemed dead beyond hope of resurrection; but such was not the case, as a few weeks later I was again at my old pastime.

“About that time, when I was still very young, the late Phil, May arrived in Australia and was engaged to furnish regular cartoons for the Sydney Bulletin. I remember his pictures were a wonderful stimulus to me, as were also the more broadly funny drawings of the American humorist, Livingston Hopkins, who had settled in our midst. Their pictures aroused a deep interest in my mind in politics, and perhaps exerted more influence than anything else in turning my attention toward journalism. Every week I eagerly looked for the cartoons, and though only about twelve years of age I was quite a politician among my comrades and playmates and was always eager for a discussion with my elders, substituting, no doubt, the assertiveness of ignorance and immaturity for wisdom and logic, as is the way with youth.”

At length the time came when the father wished his son to select a profession. It had been his hope and desire that Garnet should follow in his footsteps and become a physician, but this the boy was disinclined to do, lacking the necessary application. Finally deciding to become a dentist, he took service as an apprentice, but after five months the master declined to have the boy with him longer because of lack of interest and application. Next he became a stenographer in a business-office, remaining in that capacity for four years.

“During this period,” said Mr. Warren, in referring to his early struggles, “my old taste for picture-making led me to join a drawing-class. I was then about twenty. My office-work required my time from nine to five each day, but from seven to ten I spent in the drawing-school; then I would hasten over to the Parliament House to make sketches of the members for one of our weekly papers, working there till two in the morning; so my life at that time was strenuous enough to suit the most exacting American taste, and perhaps too strenuous for my constitution.”

After a time a tempting opportunity was offered Mr. Warren to go to South America on a business venture. He traveled along the whole Western coast and from thence up to San Francisco, California. [A passenger list at Ancestry.com said Warren arrived August 24, 1896 in San Francisco from Panama.] When in this bustling American metropolis of the Pacific, he applied for a position in the art department of the Examiner and was promptly assigned a place; but the well-filled department, with its numbers of young men working away like steam-engines under high pressure, frightened him so that before the morning came when he was to begin his work he had decided to return to Australia instead of remaining in the republic. Arriving home, he secured the position of cartoonist on The Queenslander, which he held for two years, when again his desire to travel and seek more promising fields overmastered him. Accordingly he set out for London, in which city he remained nine months, drawing some cartoons for the Chronicle, and several pictures for The King and other publications. London, however, seemed to promise less opportunity for advancement than America, so he set out for New York. [A passenger list said Warren arrived January 17, 1901 in New York from Liverpool.] That was about four years ago. He soon obtained a place on the New York Herald, though not as a cartoonist. He remained with the Herald for over two years, when he accepted an offer from the New York News, which position he retained until the reorganization of that paper. He then came to Boston and accepted a position offered on the Boston Herald. At the time of his coming to this city he determined to make cartoon-work his life occupation, and into his labors he has thrown much of that heart-interest which Longfellow tells us “giveth grace to every art.” His cartoons are widely copied, and though only thirty years of age he to-day ranks with our best American newspaper cartoonists.

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

Before John R. Bray cemented his place in history as an animation pioneer, his previous success was pretty well limited to a stint on the well-received Sunday strip Little Johnny and the Teddy Bears. When that series ended in 1909 it seems that Mr. Bray used his pay to buy a small farm, and gave his occupation as farmer to a census-taker.

Farming apparently wasn't immediately profitable, and to keep the bank account healthy he penned the series Mr. O.U. Absentmind for McClure starting on October 17 1909*. This series was obviously done purely for the paycheck. The absent-minded character had already been done to death in the early comic sections, and Bray offered us nothing unique in his take. The gags are shopworn when they do work, and often don't work at all. In the above sample, for instance, the florist has been given no direction to send a funeral wreath, so why would he? With two minutes of thought Bray could have straightened out the gag so that Mr. Absentmind gives the wrong impression to the florist -- because, ya know, he's absent-minded.

The art on this feature is actually quite fine, but that's because Bray has swiped all his characters from  William F. Marriner. Granted, that was a common bit of larceny in those days, but Bray had already shown that he could get along just fine in his own style.

The dismal Mr. O.U. Absentmind lasted a long time in one of the secondary McClure sections, proving that the syndicate really didn't care much what they used to take up space. Readers were blissfully relieved of it after November 26 1911*, except when they ran an unused or  reprint strip much later, on February 28 1915**.


* Source: San Francisco Chronicle
** Source: Washington Herald

Labels: Obscurities