Stripper's Guide

The Gang was arguably PNF Service's headlining feature, the circumstantial evidence being that S.M. "Jerry" Iger, in those days going by 'Sam', is a good candidate for being the boss of the syndicate. His later business-minded nature speaks to it, and the fact that only his strip got any promotion is another point in his favour.  Unfortunately we have not had any luck tracking it back to the (so far) known start of the syndicate in July 1927. The earliest we find it starting is on September 16 1927*, though I would bet that it began back in July if only we could find a source. 

The Gang starred Micky (or Mickey), the kid with the high-cranium bowl cut, and his obligatory check the boxes pals, Stuffy the fat kid, Percy the rich kid and Snooky the black kid. It's just another entry in the kid gang genre, joining Reg'lar Fellers, Us Boys and many others. Nothing sets it apart, the art is ungainly, and the gags are strictly jokebook level. So we'll concentrate on the strip's shape-shifting traits, rather than any silly talk of it being an overlooked classic. 

The initial run of the strip seems to have ended with most of the other original titles, on June 28 1928**, but even during that run the strip was known by other names. In black papers (or at least in the Norfolk Journal and Guide) the strip was known as The Harlem Gang. In another paper, whose name I've unfortunately lost, it was The Ridgewood Kids. In other papers it was known as Micky and his Gang, or, with the inconsistent spelling in the strip itself as a guide, Mickey and his Gang. 

As with all of the PNF Service strips, The Gang immediate began circulation in what we assume are reprints. A few interesting tidbits can be gleaned from these, including the strip below, which indicates that there was some attempt at continuity in the original run ... the only problem with that is that I haven't seen any continuity strips in the original run, but then again I haven't seen a long original run in a few decades, and my memory isn't that great:

Or could there have been a further attempt for Iger to syndicate new material? Here is an example that offers a very interesting (and so far unique) bit of evidence:

This sample from a September 1929 newspaper has a new syndicate stamp on it, dated in the current year, to "Sam Iger and Herbert Enterprises". The strip also offers us a new foil for Micky, a little fellow named Pee Wee, who would a decade later star in his own Iger strip. "Herbert" is Herbert Photos, an apparently short-lived New York City based company that distributed interesting and unusual photographs to newspapers and magazines via their "flexo-plates". This company is also known to have tried to syndicate an illustrated column called Laughing Gas by Roy Fields, only one example of which is known.

This single strip ran in a handful of papers in September 1929, but not a single one of them printed any additional strips, so perhaps it was sent out as an unsuccessful promo. 

Another interesting oddity we find is in early 1928, still during the first-run era, are these strips:

The paper that ran these (the Brooklyn Sunday Star) was a PNF customer from quite early on but then in February 1928 they began running a group of strips that are known PNF strips, but now using the syndicate stamp "Rialto N.F. Syndicate". Did PNF change names? I don't think so, because I have no record of them doing so in other venues. And while the other strips were generally just additional episodes of some known strips, here we have Mickey, which may or may not be intended as episodes of The Gang -- keeping in mind that PNF played fast and loose with titles. But we also have a different artist, Dick Kennedy, on these strips, and no real resemblance to Iger's strip. Jeffrey Lindenblatt found samples of Mickey running for a couple weeks in 1927, but there it was credited to "Ned". He felt that it was a separate unrelated series.

Alex Jay did an Ink-Slinger Profile of Dick Kennedy, who as far as we know did no other syndicated strips than these Mickey's above and just three known episodes of The Whole Dam Family, also for PNF. 

* Source: Norfolk Journal and Guide

** Source: Philadelphia Tribune

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM