Monday, January 09, 2023

 

Obscurity of the Day: The Pranks of Pantomime Pete

 


I've always said that if I got to go back in time to interview just one cartoonist, it might have to be Roy W. Taylor. Taylor worked at just about every major paper in New York and Chicago, so just imagine the stories he could tell. Taylor had a lovely clean style, and if his gags were not really top-notch you tended to forgive him because his strips look so gosh-darn inviting. 

Today we feature Taylor's The Pranks of Pantomime Pete, a strip that he did while on a stint with the Chicago Tribune (though you can bet he was submitting material elsewhere at the same time). Walter Bradford pretty much dominated the Trib's funnies section in the first half of the 1900s, but Taylor, in his short stints there in 1901-02 and 1905-06, gave him a run for his money. Unfortunately they both kinda got the bum's rush in 1906 when the Tribune decided to have a bunch of German cartoonists produce the majority of the section. 

The Pranks of Pantomime Pete ran from December 3 1905 to April 29 1906; in the latter part of the run the strip only appeared sporadically (... darn Germans). If you have a hankering for the whole run of Pete, albeit in living black and white, head on over to Barnacle Press for the full monty.

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# posted by Allan Holtz @ 7:00 AM
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