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.