Friday, January 21, 2022
Obscurity of the Day: Billy the Bell Boy
I'm always delighted to feature our favorite completely bonkers cartoonist, Eddie Eksergian, on the blog. Today we cover one of his highest profile series, Billy the Bell Boy. This strip generally ran on the front page of the St. Louis Star's comic section during its run.
The strip's unvarying plot involves the dream fantasies of a sleeping bellboy. The kid imagines himself being cuddled, coddled and generally treated like royalty, only to be rudely awakened by the desk manager, who flings a city directory (the precursor of the phone book) at him.
The art is as wild as anything in the Eks pantheon, but I get the feeling that Eddie was holding his bizarre imagination in check on this feature. Billy's fantasies are pretty firmly grounded in the comic strip version of reality, not the Bizarro world we often visit in an Eddie Eks production. Maybe with Billy the Bell Boy occupying a marquee position on the comics section covers he wanted to offer a more reader-accessible version of his esteemed brand of dementia.
Billy the Bell Boy ran from February 8 1903 to June 19 1904. While I think of this (and all Star material) as having been distributed by World Color Printing, it was not the version that was contracted through the New York Daily News, but rather the homegrown material that ran in the Star and a few syndicate client papers. For the extended discussion on this whole Star-WCP brouhaha, check out this post.
Thanks to Cole Johnson for supplying the samples.
Labels: Obscurities
Finally got to Billy! For some oreason, I thought that Billy was Eksergian's most important character, yet when you think of it, none of his creations meant anything the day after they stopped being printed.
Notice the October 1903 page above guest starred heavyweight boxing great James Jeffries. there was another episode that featured master detective William J. Burns, the head of the Bureau of Investigation, precursor to the FBI.
I guess you, Cole and I have thrashed out the enigma of Star/WCP so many times and for so long I'm having umbrella handle-themed nightmares, but I have, yes, another theory. Like to hear it? well here 'tis, anyway;
Maybe The St. Louis Star did have their own syndicate. (Notice Billy works at the "Star Hotel") And in 1904 they decided for some reason, to throw in the towel and just take the comic section offered by the new WCP company that happened to be produced across town.
It would seem to be a cheaper option, considering they (The Star) offered only two pages of material, sometimes one, and though it might have been prestigeous to run, in 1903-4, the Hearst material in the Star's own Sunday comic section was probably expensive for them.
: 1/21/2022 3:00 PM 