If there was a Comic Strip Hall of Fame, and that Hall of Fame had a room devoted to toppers, and I were curator, I know exactly which topper would be exhibited center stage as the greatest of all time. It would be Harold Gray's first topper to Little Orphan Annie, The Private Life of...
The strip posits the question of what objects, plants, animals (and rarely, people) think about. This was not really a new idea, but in comic strip form it would typically be played strictly for laughs. Gray, a pretty serious guy who was prone to deep thoughts, offered instead a weekly dose of philosophy, pathos and powerfully emotive soliloquies that seldom fail to make the reader sit back and contemplate. The above sample is a perfect encapsulation of the spirit of the series. Who could read this strip and not find themselves at least a little devastated by that final panel, wherein this joyous and carefree traveller has not yet realized that their travelling days may have come to a sudden and inauspicious end. If that doesn't bring your heart up to your throat for at least a moment, I submit that you might be just a little cold-hearted.
Gray could produce material on a par with this nearly every week, and did so from January 4 1931 to December 25 1932; a glorious two year run of sheer genius. When he felt that he had run the gamut, he ended the series and replaced it with the mundane and uninteresting folk wisdom of Maw Green, which would run past Gray's retirement from the strip decades later.
Hello Allan-
ReplyDeleteThis is reminiscent of the Briggs series,
"Wonder what a_____ thinks about".
Good point, Mark, and Briggs did occasionally use that series to go for pathos, not just a cheap yuck. Well, Gray loses points for originality but I still think it's the topper series I'd want if I were stranded on a desert island.
ReplyDelete--Allan