Friday, August 26, 2022
Obscurity of the Day: A Tale of the Jungle Imps
Okay, maybe this feature isn't the most obscure obscurity among serious newspaper comics fans, but a strip that ran in a single paper 120 years ago for less than a year? Rightly or wrongly, I'm taking ownership of it here as an Obscurity of the Day. (Besides, I have to show off that I have actual tearsheets from the series, about as rare as love letters addressed to Charlie Brown.)
A Tale of the Jungle Imps was Winsor McCay's first foray into newspaper comics, and his only series done for the Cincinnati Enquirer. His own extremely fertile imagination wasn't put to use but instead he was assigned the job of illustrating the poetry of one 'Felix Fiddle'. Fiddle in reality was George Randolph Chester, a writer with the paper who would later go on to a certain measure of fame as a writer of short stories and screenplays.
The plot of the series was that in each episode there is a fanciful explanation of how an animal came to exhibit one of its well-known features. The series didn't gain its running title until the third episode. Here are the titles of each episode:
|
How The Elephant Got His Trunk |
1/18/1903 |
|
How The Quillypig Got His Quills |
1/25/1903 |
|
How The Kangaroo Got His Big Hind Legs |
2/1/1903 |
|
How The Alligator Got His Big Mouth |
2/8/1903 |
|
How The Giraffe Got His Long Neck |
2/15/1903 |
|
How The Pelican Got His Pouch |
2/22/1903 |
|
Why The Polar Bear Left The Jungle |
3/1/1903 |
|
How The Bee Got His Sting |
3/8/1903 |
|
How The Lion Got His Roar |
3/15/1903 |
|
How The Turtle Got His Shell |
3/22/1903 |
|
How The Ostrich Got So Tall |
3/29/1903 |
|
How The Guinea Pig Lost His Tail |
4/5/1903 |
|
Why The Camel Got His Back Up |
4/12/1903 |
|
How The Snake Lost His Body |
4/19/1903 |
|
Why The Stork Brings The Babies |
4/26/1903 |
|
How The Rhinoceros Lost His Beauty |
5/3/1903 |
|
Why The Parrot Learned To Talk |
5/10/1903 |
|
How The Beaver Got His Flat Tail |
5/17/1903 |
|
Why The Goat Learned To Butt |
5/24/1903 |
|
Why The Owl Stays Out At Night |
5/31/1903 |
|
How The Tiger Got His Stripes |
6/7/1903 |
|
How The Mosquito Got His Bill |
6/14/1903 |
|
How The Lobster Got His Claws |
6/21/1903 |
|
Fourth Of July In The Jungle |
6/28/1903 |
|
How The Frog Became A Jumper |
7/5/1903 |
|
How The Peacock Got His Tail |
7/12/1903 |
|
How The Cinnamon Bear Turned Brown |
7/19/1903 |
|
How The Pig Got His Appetite |
7/26/1903 |
|
How The Swordfish Got His Sword |
8/2/1903 |
|
How The Buffalo Got Turned Around |
8/9/1903 |
|
How The Booby Bird Got Even |
8/16/1903 |
|
How The Hound Got So Thin |
8/23/1903 |
|
Why The Hyenas Laugh |
8/30/1903 |
|
Why The Mule Kicks |
9/6/1903 |
|
How The Eagle Got Bald |
9/13/1903 |
|
How The Rabbit Lost His Tail |
9/20/1903 |
|
Troubles Of Mister Whale |
9/27/1903 |
|
Why The Bat Hangs Upside Down |
10/4/1903 |
|
Why The Goose Hisses |
10/11/1903 |
|
Why The Hippopotamus Yawns |
10/18/1903 |
|
Halloween In The Jungle |
10/25/1903 |
|
How The Zebra Got His Stripes |
11/1/1903 |
|
How The Walrus Got His Tusks. |
11/8/1903 |
Each story involved the 'Jungle Imps', a race of tiny primitive African sprites, who unfortunately are delineated with the giant lipped caricature common in that era. But they're basically just another group not unlike the Palmer Cox's Brownies, the Ting-Lings, the Teenie Weenies, etc. McCay evidently enjoyed the characters as he brought back one of their race as Impy for Little Nemo in Slumberland.
The feature was a smash hit with Enquirer readers, if the paper's own gushing can be taken as fact, but the series abruptly ended when Winsor McCay inevitably got the call from New York City. A talent as huge as his wasn't going to hang around Cincinnati for long, and he left for the Big Apple to work at the New York Herald, where he would dream up his greatest comic strip creations.
The Enquirer, left in the lurch, quickly changed gears and 'Felix Fiddle' debuted a new series, The Clown Folks, the next Sunday, with art by Apworth Adams. Adams was himself a very fine cartoonist. He didn't succumb to the siren call of New York City and offered up some fine series of his own for the Enquirer over the next half-decade. I would love to offer up a few of his series, but unfortanately I've never been able to lay my hands on any tearsheets of his work there.
As far as I know, the complete series has never been reprinted, only a sample here and there. Is it because of the negative stereotypes, or is it just impossible to put together a complete run of tearsheets? I dunno.
Labels: Obscurities
: 8/27/2022 11:31 AM 