Friday, March 17, 2023
Firsts and Lasts: The Final Spat of Mr. & Mrs.
Mister & Mrs. is a truly odd success story, a strip that survived for over forty years with essentially no fan base that I am aware of, or, for that matter, that I can imagine.
The strip debuted in 1919, helmed at first by the great Clare Briggs. Mr. & Mrs. sure didn't have much of the touch of greatness that Briggs could impart, though. The strip was about a bickering couple, Joe and Vi Green, and was quite depressing in its horrifically negative view of marriage. The couple were constantly at each other's throats and honestly seemed to be just one more fight away from either divorce or even homicide. The regular tagline of the strip, in which the couple's young son meekly whispers to the adult combatants, "Papa love mama?", heartbreaking as it is, seems to say it all.
Why would anyone want to read this? If the reader is unmarried, this strip is scary enough to make them swear off the institution. If happily married, it's a horror show of what could eventually be. If unhappily married, a confirmation that this is a perfectly normal situation, not one that will ever likely improve.
But what do I know? People read and seem to love Andy Capp and The Lockhorns, which are more of the same. So perhaps there's some weird fascination, a "there but by the grace of God go I", that draws an appreciative audience.
My guess is that Briggs had little to do with the Sunday strip; he probably took primarily a supervisory role once the ball was rolling. When he unexpectedly died in 1930 the strip was taken over by a series of lesser creators, without even the guidance of a brilliant manager. The new creators seemed content to continue the formula as long as the paychecks kept coming.
The last creator was Kin Platt, whose work on the strip began as artist only, from scripts by Arthur Folwell, in 1948. Platt's work at the outset was marginally attractive, but by the mid-50s was looking so crude and slapdash that you might think he was a doddery octogenarian; he was actually just in his 40s.
Folwell dropped out in 1957, and the daily strip (added after Briggs' death) was dropped in 1958, but Platt kept up the Sunday until September 22 1963. You might expect that Platt would have finally given readers what I'm sure they were hoping for all those years, a nice day in divorce court for Joe and Vi. But no, he elected to end the strip with a breaking of the fourth wall episode, and some final bickering from Jo and Vi before they went forever back in the inkwell.
Labels: Firsts and Lasts
Maybe marital strife fascinates some folks. Other people's, even make believe ones, social agony is quite interesting to the busybodies of the world, that's why there's soap operas. Unhappy couples seems to be niche comedy genré, look at The Bickersons or the Honeymooners.
: 3/17/2023 3:03 PM The article says it's Capp railing against the treatment of Superman's creators, but it's focused tightly on newspaper comics so inspiration was probably closer to home. The evil syndicator rips off strip creators at every turn, finally by selling it to newspapers cheap -- if they buy an expensive feature by his own mother.
Is it possible Mr. & Mrs. served a similar function, a property owned outright by the syndicate (or an executive) that had to be bought to get more popular titles? Did every paper that bought it print it?
To EOCostello -- yes, and of all the platinum books out there, the Mr. & Mrs. is the one most often seen in really nice clean condition (mine was practically mint). Almost as if no one bothered to crack 'em open more than once.
--Allan
