Obscurity of the Day: Mr. Bings and the 20th Century ...

 

Syd B. Griffin only produced a handful of newspaper comic strip series. His forte was magazine cartoons, and for newspapers, one-shot gags. All of Griffin's series were produced for the New York World but for this one exception, Mr. Bings and the Twentieth Century ..., which was produced for the then-new McClure Syndicate just a few months into its existence. 

Mr. Bings is a delightful strip (if a bit clunkily plotted) in which the gullible protagonist will buy any new product if the salesman makes the claim that it is a 20th century invention or improvement (that is, less than a year old at the time). Such is Mr. Bings' faith in modern ingenuity, fueled by famed contemporary inventors like Edison, Marconi and Bell, that he is anxious to be on the bleeding edge of every new advance. Of course, this is a comic strip so things never work out quite as he hopes. 

True to the age in which he lived, Griffin obviously bought into the assumption that new inventions, even those touted by street corner hawkers, generally worked. The gag here is that they work TOO WELL. In more modern days, of course, the standard gag would be that the streetcorner salesman is selling worthless junk. An interesting bit of social history, that. 

Mr. Bings and the Twentieth Century ... ran in the MClure Sunday sections from July 21 1901* to January 5 1902**. 

* Source: New York Press

** Source: Philadelphia Press