Obscurity of the Day: The Chubbies

 

The Brownies, the Ting-Lings and other bands of diminutive troublemakers were popular denizens of the Sunday color sections in the early days of comics. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat tried out their own race of impish wee folk back when their comic section was a homegrown affair. 

There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about DeVoss Driscoll's The Chubbies, a gang of egg-shaped small fry, but they go about their business in the cute and rascally manner that we expect of our little folk. Driscoll, who was drawing pretty much the whole G-D section, took a lot of care with this feature. He cranked up the art to maximum quality, better than his adequate but not outstanding typical fare. He must have been pretty proud of this work because he bothered to copyright the first page to himself, something he did not do with any of his other many series.

The Chubbies might have proved too much work or failed to set the world on fire as hoped, because Driscoll dropped them very quickly. The series only ran from December 25 1904 to February 26 1905.