Stripper's Guide

February 22 1910 -- Southern California is experiencing the greatest influx of winter heat-seekers from up north in its history. Herriman somehow equates this with the cartoon above. More importantly, though, he offers us his interpretation of the call of a kangaroo, "Klaff klaff". Must be a kangaroo who smokes too many Camels.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Gary Larson's The Far Side opened up a long-moribund vein of humour in newspaper comics, one that hadn't really been seriously mined since the early days of the form -- science and scientists. Back in the 1890s-1900s wacky scientists were a regular sight in comics sections, fueled by the rapid-fire scientific advances that were coming out of their labs. 

The genre never died out completely, but Larson brought it back with a new twist -- he wrote gags often featuring off-kilter scientists, but as often as not readers were expected to have at least a modicum of scientific literacy to get the gags. Larson's syndicate might well have admonished him for that approach with the idea that he was excluding a portion of newspaper readership, but thankfully they didn't, or at least were unsuccessful at reining him in. The Far Side in effect told scientific illiterates that they should look elsewhere on the comics page for their laughs. 

The Far Side appealed to an underserved target audience, the so called nerds and geeks. That audience turned out to be far larger than newspaper editors imagined, and so The Far Side took a long time to catch on -- with editors that is, not readers. For proof, check out Jeffrey Lindenblatt's The 300 posts here on the blog to see how slowly the panel gained papers. 

Once The Far Side had proven that there was an audience, naturally everyone wanted on the bandwagon. While many me-too entries focused on the unusually deadpan delivery of the gags, a few tried to latch onto the science aspect. That brings us, finally, to Eureka! by Munro Ferguson, a strip unapologetically and emphatically about science and scientists. This strip began in Canada at the Globe and Mail, but eventually got a small foothold in the States.

Not having access to the archives of the Toronto Globe and Mail*, I can tell you only that it is supposed to have started there sometime in 1985**. I don't know if it was a Sunday, daily or something else at the time. It was not until three years later that Universal Press Syndicate picked up the daily strip for US syndication, which began on November 28 1988***. A Sunday might have been available from the beginning, but the earliest I can find is January 8 1989 (and it's about the Big Bang, which would make for a good first Sunday). 

Eureka! is all about science and scientists, unlike The Far Side which is not so single-minded. This seems to have made Ferguson's strip a harder sell, even to editors whose eyes had been opened by the popularity of Larson's panel. Eureka! also has a much different tone, more whimsical and goofy, that sets it apart in a good way. Readers don't need a carbon copy of The Far Side, but some editors frankly can't see beyond the obvious. And even if they did, you can see them wondering what exactly they would drop in order to add this strip, which seems to offer a somewhat narrow base of interest. 

A few papers added the strip to their weekly science pages, but the clientele that ran it every day was vansishingly small. No wonder, then, that Universal Press pulled the plug sometime in 1990; my latest examples are from May of that year. 

According to an online bio of Ferguson, who is also known as a filmmaker/animator, the strip continued in the Globe and Mail until 1992.

~~~~~~~~~~

* If you have a Toronto library card then you have access to those archives online. If you'd care to do a little research on the strip I'd be very appreciative if you could share the definitive start and end dates and frequency of Eureka!

** Source: a widely printed article from Gannett about the strip, printed in November to December 1985 in various papers.

*** Source: Santa Fe New Mexican.

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Chicago Tribune Appoints New Art Director.

Morris B. Aleshire, veteran Chicago newspaper man, has become art director of the Chicago Tribune. He has general supervision of the art activities of the editorial and business departments of the Tribune and its affiliated organizations, including the New York Daily News, P. & A. Photos, etc.

Mr. Aleshire worked on several Chicago newspapers as a reporter and cartoonist, making sketches of the events he covered. For some years he has been in the advertising business in New York. After his own company, the M. B. Aleshire Advertising Service, merged with the Wilfred O. Floing Company, he was vice-president of that concern. For the last three and a half years he has been art director of Calkins & Holden, advertising agents, New York.

M. B. Aleshire Is Dead—Artist on Newspapers 

Morris Bibby Aleshire, former art director of The Tribune, died in a New York hospital yesterday at the age of 50 years. An operation was performed on Friday, but he failed to rally from it Mr. Aleshire was born In Gallipolls, O. He was at one time connected with the Chicago Inter Ocean and later was art director of the Calkins & Holden Advertising agency in New York, leaving there to become art director of The Tribune. When Liberty magazine was founded, he filled the same post on its staff and had been associated lately with the New York News. He is survived by his widow, Mrs. Katherine Marjoribanks Aleshire, and by one brother, Edward Aleshire. Funeral services will be held today in New York.

 

Morris Aleshire, Artist and Art Director, Dies 

Morris B. Aleshire, 50, former art director of Liberty magazine and a widely known illustrator, died yesterday at the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled. He was taken to the hospital Friday night from his home at 325 E. 41st St. to undergo a major operation. 

Resigning a position as art director for Calkins & Holden, advertising agency, Aleshire joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune in 1923 to assist in the development of the colored rotogravure process. When Liberty was started May 7, 1924, he assumed the management of the magazine’s art department. In the past several months he had illustrated many fiction stories for The News. 

Aleshire is survived by his widow, Mrs. Kathleen Marjoribanks Aleshire, and a brother, Edward, who lives in Huntington, W. Va. Services will be held at 5 P. M. today in a funeral parlor at 140 E. 57th St. His body will be sent tomorrow to Gallipolis, O., his birthplace. 

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

For a strip that lasted only about a year and a half, Felix and Fink sure has taken an outsized share of research to try to pin down its large variety of mysteries. But let's start with the not at all mysterious fact that this strip is about as bald a rip-off of Mutt and Jeff as one could imagine. Tall skinny guy? Check. Short fat guy? Check. Short fat guy is dumb as a sack of rocks and gets the tall somewhat more intelligent guy in trouble? Check. The two are partners in crime, or at least ne'er-do-well-ery? Check.

About the only thing missing from Felix and Fink compared to Mutt and Jeff is the humour brought to the latter by Bud Fisher. Whatever we might think of Fisher's work ethic and his use of ghosts, it has to be admitted that the strip was quite a hoot in its early days, the oughts and teens. Felix and Fink on occasion can get a laugh out of me (the cop's secret beer provider gag, for instance, is ably done), but usually the set-up is sloppy, the gags creaky, the pacing awful and the dialogue inane. On the positive side, the art is delightful, though one might grumble that the artist is cribbing a lot from George Frink -- in fact Felix is pretty much the spitting image of Circus Solly/Slim Jim. 

But let's get on to the mysteries. Felix and Fink bursts into being in a pretty decent number of papers, including major ones, in October 1911. As one of the earlier imitators of Mutt & Jeff, a very hot property at this time, it makes sense that a lot of papers that missed their chance to get the original were willing to take this second-rate copy.

The first strips we find in these papers seem to read like we are picking up an ongoing series. So for the longest time I assumed that Felix and Fink was created earlier and finally had a spurt of marketing to explain its new clients that month. 

The strip gives some clues, but they aren't exactly giveaways. The earliest strips carry a copyright to C.N. Mather, and then it switches to North American Press Syndicate for the remainder of 1911. I know nothing of Mr. Mather except that his byline appears on a few syndicated articles in 1909-10, and then starting in mid-1911 he gets the copyright notice on a small selection of syndicated columns.  That makes it sound to me like he was running a syndicate. The only problem is that it apparently is NOT the North American Press Syndicate. I say that because I found an incorporation notice for the North American Press Syndicate in E&P and three principals are named, but no Mather.

According to the tiny bits and pieces I can pick up, the North American Press Syndicate was originally based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was either a subsidiary or aligned somehow with the Grand Rapids Herald newspaper. That sent me off to review the Grand Rapids Herald, hoping I'd found Felix and Fink's home paper. The Herald is digitized, but only available on a painfully slow website, so I could not review the paper in depth. But what I found out is that Felix and Fink seems to have only run there on a few occasions, and not near the beginning of the syndicated run. That didn't necessarily mean that the strip wasn't produced there, but that the syndicate was not having all their material run in the Herald for whatever reason. I also didn't find other material in the paper (like editorial or sports cartoons) by the creator of Felix and Fink. If this cartoonist worked for the Herald, surely I'd find something by him ... but no. 

Then I found a mention of the syndicate in Editor & Publisher saying that they were moving their operation from Grand Rapids to Chicago in May 1911. So probably the Grand Rapids Herald was a blind alley, and by the time Felix and Fink debuted the syndicate no longer had any ties to Grand Rapids at all.

On a tip from Alex Jay I checked the 1911 US copyright records. What I found is that C.N. Mather claims copyright to two dates of Felix and Fink, October 7 and 11. The earliest I've found the strip running is October 13, but that can easily be explained by a not uncommon lag between the copyright claim and the actual appearance in papers. But then things change, because the North American Press Syndicate claims copyright to a batch of Felix and Fink strips, the earliest of which is dated October 26. 

So my guess based on all this is that the strip originated in Chicago, and was originally solicited and sold by this Mather fellow who had a number of features that he successfully peddled. Maybe Mather then went to work for North American Press Syndicate, or the syndicate bought the feature from him. But in less than a month, Felix and Fink was being distributed by that syndicate. 

So did Felix and Fink have a home paper in Chicago? Well, the strip was in the Chicago Daily News from the apparent start. That's pretty weird because as I mentioned before, the strip's drawing style owes a lot to George Frink ... who drew his strips for that selfsame paper! But we'll get into the question of authorship later.

Back to the syndicate mystery. The syndication through North American Press Syndicate seems not to have lasted very long. As of the beginning of January 1912 the strip no longer carries a copyright notice at all. Going back to the copyright books, we find that copyright of the feature was next applied for in April, this time by the Ale-Ting Service of Chicago. This would prove to be the last copyright I can find for the strip. This odd name seems a little less odd when you note that the strip was signed "Ale Ting". This leaves me with the impression that this "Ale Ting" person began self-syndicating the strip at the beginning of 1912.

So now that we're presented with the name "Ale Ting", do we not have the creator of the strip? It's an odd name, to be sure, and one can search for it on the interwebs to no avail, but certainly that doesn't make it unique. Lots of creators have left a light footprint. But I am not the one who unravelled the mystery of "Ale Ting", so you'll have to wait for Alex Jay to weigh in with his Ink-Slinger Profile coming up next. 

Before I sign off, though, let's put an end to Felix and Fink. It ended on May 25 1913, perhaps a victim to all the other Mutt & Jeff copycats that were coming online. In any case, some papers that lost the strip lamented its departure woefully. For instance, here's the announcement that ran in the Decatur Herald:

This announcement gives us a few tantalizing clues that may or may not lead anywhere.The fact that the announcment heralds the arrival of Scoop the Cub Reporter may have been something inserted by this paper, but if it was boilerplate sent out by the creator/syndicator, does that mean the feature was being syndicated by International Syndicate? They rarely put copyrights on their strips, so there's no strike of that nature against them. 

The second clue I leave it for you to ponder, and Alex Jay will soon have something to say about it.

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 2 comments

Here's a Rose O'Neill Kewpie card published by the Gibson Art Company of Cincinnati. I can find no copyright date, but the card was postally used in 1928.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments