Stripper's Guide

December 26 1909 -- Herriman offers a look back at the big boxing stories of 1909.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Here's another Dwig card from the Tuck "Knocks" Series (#165). It was postally used in 1910, and the writer had the good grace to apologize for the sentiment on the front. He did point out that it was good advice, but assured Miss Anna Javosky that she was not of such an offending nature.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

Appearance of Miss Clare Briggs' Cartoons in Morning Tribune is Real Homecoming

Daughter of Late Famed Artist is Former Minneapolis Girl -- Will Come Here From Chicago to Visit Miss Helen Curtis in Late September

Labels: News of Yore

[In 1892 the Chicago Inter Ocean became the first U.S. newspaper to print a color section using a high-speed press. It was a watershed event that soon led to a golden age for newspapers, including the invention of the Sunday funnies.

My thanks to Guy Lawley who has given me permission to run this very interesting article from his personal archives. It originally ran in the Inter Ocean illustrated supplement of March 25 1893.]

RAPID COLOR WORK

First Perfecting Press with Color

THE ILLUSTRATED SUPPLEMENT

A Great Advance Made in Printing to Meet the Demands of The Inter Ocean.

 

The illustrated supplement of THE INTER OCEAN is the first successful attempt in America to print in colors on a perfecting press. Until THE INTER OCEAN began the publication of this supplement last June all color work of this character was done on slow presses, running, perhaps, 930 to 1,230 sheets a day. On the other hand THE INTER OCEAN press, which is a new invention, prints 7,503 perfect papers per hour. The Petit Journal of Paris publishes a supplement in colors, for which it also uses a perfecting press, but it has a capacity of only about 3,500 copies per hour.

In explanation, a perfecting press is one that completes its work by one continuous operation. The white paper enters the press at one end from a continuous roll and leaves it at the other end a complete paper, printed, folded, and ready for delivery. This supplement, as offered to the readers of THE INTER OCEAN, leaves the press just as it is delivered to subscribers. The perfecting press superseded the old rotary press in daily newspaper work many years ago, but color work was never attempted on such presses until THE INTER OCEAN undertook it.

THE INTER OCEAN press is the invention of Walter Scott, who was formerly foreman of the press-room of THE INTER OCEAN. and who is now the famous press-builder of Plainfield, N. J. When the proprietors of THE INTER OCEAN desired to publish a paper in color after the manner of the supplement of the Petit Journal, they looked around to find where they could secure a Press that would do such work. Mr. Scott undertook the job of inventing and building such a machine as was desired, and within six months of the time he received the order the press was running in THE INTER OCEAN press-room. It has been at work steadily and without need of repair since June 20, 1892.

The weight of this press is about 18 tons. It is 6 feet wide, 7 feet 5 inches high, and, including folder and roller-stand, about 16 feet from end to end. The heart of the press is the offset cylinder in the center. This cylinder is 48 inches in diameter. About this cylinder are four traveling cylinders, each 14 5/8 inches in diameter. These cylinders carry the plates that impinge with every revolution upon the impression cylinder.

The paper, starting from a continuous roll, gets the first impression from the lower cylinder, which is belted with four stereotyped plates for the four inside pages of the paper, and is printed in black ink. The paper sheet then passes to the cylinder directly above, belted with electrotyped plates for illustration. These plates are inked with yellow, the first color for ground work, and are for the color pages of the paper. The sheet passes directly over the offset cylinder to the top impression cylinder for other plates, which are inked with red, and furnishes the second color. The sheet having received its impress passes directly to the cylinder below, where the ink is blue. From there the sheet passes to another cylinder, and gets its finishing impression of black. The press is so arranged as to print either four or two pages in colors. After leaving the last cylinder the paper enters the folding part of the machine.

The machine is one of the perfections of mechanical ingenuity and construction, and its operations have been viewed with wonder and surprise by many thousands. We give this description of its operations because of the frequent inquiries from readers asking how it is that such color work is done for a daily newspaper.

Labels: News of Yore

Albert Bloch wasn't much of a cartoonist, but he was at least prolific during his short stay at the prototypical World Color Printing comics section produced out of the St. Louis Star. Later on he'd make a pretty substantial mark as a fine artist, but you'd never guess that the artistic muse was so strong in him from this stuff.

Here we have The Owlikins, his second series for the section, which ran December 29 1901 to January 12 1902* (yes, you're looking at the entire series above). The one positive thing I can say about it is that it is not as horrendously awful as his first, Constable Hayrick the Rustic Sleuth. The Owlikins is one of those crummy funny animal strips in which there's not much reason for the characters to be animals ... of course the reason is that the cartoonist couldn't draw a human being on a dare, so there is one really good reason after all.

I did learn something from The Owlikins, and that's the slang term "drunk as a boiled owl." Never heard it before, and sure don't get the reasoning behind it. But knowledge is its own reward, they say, and so I thank Mr. Bloch and The Owlikins for enlightening me. I also thank Cole Johnson for the scans.


* Source: St. Louis Star microfilm.

Labels: Obscurities

In 1907 there debuted a newspaper magazine cover series, one of the earliest on record, called Fluffy Ruffles. The series concerned a gorgeous young debutante who was looking for a job. The gag in each installment was that the girl would get a job, but was such a magnet for men that the boss would tire of the lovesick throngs hanging around the place of business and can the beauteous Miss Ruffles.

That series did well enough that it was turned into a book, which you can see online here.The popular series spawned a satire version, which is our subject today. The satire was titled Muffy Shuffles, it was written and drawn by B. Cory Kilvert, and it ran from March 8* to May 24 1908**. In it the star is changed from an opulently dressed Venus to a rag-wearing ghetto girl.

Now this might seem like a great jumping-off place for biting social satire, but Mr. Kilvert had no such ambitions. Instead he seemed to think that the girl's appearance alone was pretty much all the comedy needed. The situations she gets into are essentially the same except that the jobs she applies for are with the down-and-out employers of her neighborhood. They play out pretty much the same as in the original series except that the merely curious substitute for love-starved boys.

The series was sold to a goodly number of papers; I'd not be surprised if almost as many ran Muffy Shuffles as had taken Fluffy Ruffles.The question, though, is who syndicated it. Kilvert had done some work for the New York World earlier in the decade, and was just about to do some work for Hearst, but I've seen this series in neither of their flagship papers. I wonder if the Philadelphia Press was the syndicate, because they ran the series, or maybe it was distributed by World Color Printing, whose sections it tends to be found alongside.

Thanks to Cole Johnson for the scans.

* Source: Louisville Courier-Journal
** Source: Philadelphia Press

Labels: Obscurities