Obscurity of the Day: John Sapp, Demobilized Doughboy

 

Philadelphia cartoonist Joe Cunningham went off to fight in World War I, and when he was finished with his part of winning the war, it occurred to him to chronicle his re-entry to civilian life in cartoon form.Thus was born John Sapp, Demobilized Doughboy. The feature began as a series of illustrated columns in the Philadelphia Evening Ledger in January 1919, then lay fallow for awhile before restarting as a daily strip on March 31 1919. 

Cunningham was never going to give S.J. Perelman a run for his money as a humorist, but the gags in John Sapp, which soon devolved into, at best, standard jokebook fare, are downright embarrassing. Cunningham was a perfectly adequate sports cartoonist, and he should have stuck with that. But he must have had some dirt on someone at the Ledger because his whims to start strips were indulged over and over again. As a returning war vet, perhaps the Ledger felt this strip was his due. But even honoring a veteran has its limits, and the Evening Ledger stopped running the strip on August 23 1919. But in syndication, surpringly, the strip actually lasted even longer. The final strip in the series, shown as the bottom example here, ran on September 20 1919**. Thankfully John Sapp's 'vacation' proved to be permanent.  

* Source: Detroit Free Press.