Monday, May 09, 2022
Toppers: Buzzy
Buzzy was the topper to Ferd Johnson's Texas Slim, a strip that I think basically existed as a reward to Ferd for his service assisting on Moon Mullins. I am not a fan of Texas Slim, in which EVRBUDDY YACKS LAK DIS TIL MAH CONSARNED HAID IS PERT' NEAR SPLODIN'. It is also a strip in which fistfights and other physical humour are often supposed to function as the point, because there certainly isn't much else there to laugh at very often.
Anyhow, if Texas Slim doesn't rate a place in my own personal hall of fame, the topper Buzzy is just so utterly lackluster that I can't even manage to form an opinion. It stars a rough and tumble sort of kid, and the gags are often about his interactions with his mom. In the sample above, emblematic of the series, you can see the level of sparkling wit that was generally on display. At least, thank goodness, they don't talk in the annoying patois of the main strip.
Buzzy debuted on October 10 1943* when Texas Slim was demoted from a half-pager to a third in the broadsheet format. Buzzy was also added to the tab and half-tab formats. Since very few papers took the strip outside of the Chicago Tribune family of papers, and Buzzy was usually thrown out by them, the strip can be hard to track. The latest I can find the topper running is September 6 1953**, but it could have and probably did run longer than that. Anyone know of later appearances?
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* Source: Chicago Tribune
** Source: New York Daily News
Labels: Topper Features
