Saturday, April 30, 2022
Herriman Saturday: April 1 1910
April 1 1910 -- Jim Jeffries has been noted to have a "careworn look" about him, and George Herriman suggests that Big Jim needs to get to his training camp out in the sticks where the noted outdoorsman will feel more at home.
Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons
Friday, April 29, 2022
Selling It: Safety Sonnets
Starting in the 1920s, as car ownership grew by leaps and bounds and better roads were being built all over the country, car accidents became a major and deadly problem.
Originally chartered to foster workplace safety in 1913, the National Safety Council expanded its mission to highway safety in the 1920s. The organization offered free material to newspapers, often in the form of cartoon series, to educate drivers -- or at least scold them -- about proper driving habits. One of their many series was Safety Sonnets, which offered twenty of what I call 'before-and-after' two panel cartoons by Sid Hix. The series was issued in November 1938. Though intended as a daily series, papers of course usually ran the little 1-column feature on an ROP basis.
Sid Hix (whose real name was spelled Hicks) was an interesting cartoonist. He specialized in advertising cartoons; though his work was seen in newspapers and magazines quite constantly from the 1930s to 1950s, as best I can tell he never got the bug to create a syndicated feature of his own -- he preferred that advertisers foot the bill for his print appearances. Nice work if you can get it!
Hix had a pleasant and lively style but he was also adept at aping other styles if clients requested something different. Safety Sonnets is an instance where he used what I think of as his native style.
Labels: Advertising Strips
: 4/29/2022 2:56 PM Monday, April 25, 2022
The New Stripper's Guide Website -- Update
Thank you for all your helpful testing and suggestions last week in regard to our new website:
ComicStripHistory.com
As of this morning, the programmer has updated the website to fix the problem with large images that was reported in certain browsers. Please visit the site again and let us know if the images are either fixed for you, or if they were working before, that they are still functional and scrollable left-right and up-down. Do be sure to clear your browser cache and reload the website afresh in order to make it a valid test.
The only complaints we got were in regard to the fonts used on the website. Apparently on some platforms the body font is thin and a bit hard to read. I asked Alex Jay, our resident lettering expert in addition to his ability to do genealogical research wizardry, to make some suggestions. He came up with three options for headline/body font combinations. Please go to this page:
http://www.ComicStripHistory.com/font-test
And give us your vote for which combo you like best. Thanks!!!
Images were working before, and continue to do so.
Abril Fatface/Prociono is my top preference followed by Suez One/Amestheta. I didn't much care for the 3rd example (Cadal/Jomolhari; the Jomolhari looked smudged).
Bob Carlin
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Wish You Were Here, from Charles Schulz
Here's another Peanuts postcard, this one with an earnest message for the long-distance recipient. Who wouldn't be touched to receive such a postcard?
This Hallmark card is coded on the back as "50PST 401-8". I'm surprised this card got into circulation as it is miscut, as you can see on the droopy top left.
Labels: Wish You Were Here
