Monday, February 13, 2023
Obscurity of the Day: Looie the Bowler
Before daily comics became a metronomic list of the same titles every day of the year in your paper, you never knew from day to day what might show up. There were still series, but a given series might go on for a few days, a few weeks, or for years. It all depended on the series. Take Looie the Bowler for instance. The idea of a guy who speaks broken English and can make amazing trick bowling shots is great fun, but it has a very limited natural lifespan. And that was just fine in 1909 when cartoonists were freer to come up with new concepts and drop old ones once the humour had been wrung out. We've lost so much by tying our great cartoonists down, slaving over the same set of characters in the same situations year after year after year. Imagine what they could come up with if they had the freedom to jump around among subjects and characters to their hearts' content!
But I digress. Looie the Bowler ran on occasional weekdays from January 25 to June 11 1909, penned by that workhorse of the New York Evening World, Ferd Long. Ferd was a tremendously funny guy, but evidently never quite got the hang of logical panel placement (see upper sample).
Labels: Obscurities
: 2/13/2023 1:44 PM I presume the proper order is (1-2) the two small panels at upper left (3-4) the tall panels in the middle (5) the upper right panel (6) the lower left panel and (7) the lower right panel.
It doesn't help that the one pin left standing, the one Looie knocks down to make his spare, isn't shown in (5)...or is it a printing error and that blemish is where the pin was supposed to be?
: 2/15/2023 9:54 PM 