Obscurity of the Day: Boy and Girl

 

John Henry Rouson was a newspaper cartooning specialist. His specialty was tiny features that could be shoehorned into various sections of the newspaper, not just the comics page, and he could turn them out in wholesale quantities. He had four long-running daily features running concurrently, two of which he created under pseudonyms so as not to appear too ubiquitous for his own good. 

Boy and Girl was the third of these mini-features, all of which were syndicated by General Features. General was no powerhouse in the sales department, but between the four features Rouson would claim to a total of 300 papers in his client list. Less than a hundred papers per feature is not a particularly impressive number, but in the low-rent world of General Features Rouson must have been considered a house superstar. 

Boy Meets Girl debuted on October 3 1955*, really just an Americanization of a feature he had previously penned for the London Dispatch in the 1940s. It was a two panel strip that chronicled the world of romance. For Rouson this most often translated to strips about the comedic aspects of boys pursuing girls.  The title was changed to Boy and Girl just a few months after it debuted, probably because the title was already copyrighted by someone else. 

The tiny feature offered simple mostly pantomime gags that could be digested in a second or two, It ran for many years yet is little remembered, as are all of Rouson's features, because they were rather generic gags with no continuing characters. 

At the end of 1974 General Features sold its contracts off to the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. Some of General's features were given the ax, but Rouson's were continued by the new syndicate. However, given that Rouson was now pushing 70 and that the LA Times didn't seem to be out there really hawking his material, Rouson started cutting back. Boy And Girl was the second of his features to be retired, last running on December 27 1975**. 

Rouson had a very interesting life; I highly recommend the News of Yore profile of him that will appear as our next post.

* Source: New York Daily News

** Source: Bridgeport Post