Monday, July 24, 2023
Obscurity of the Day: Gummer Street
25-year old adman Phil Krohn came up with the idea for Gummer Street while taking walks in "slum areas," according to a promo article in Editor & Publisher (August 22 1970). The cast of characters included two older women, the abrasive Shirley and saintly Darcy, plus an aimless young man named Floyd, Harold Cooney the cop, and a pool hall populated by the Green Sloth Gang and pool shark Pops Sharkey. With an eclectic cast and a drawing style that strongly evoked B.C. and Wizard of Id, most of the ingredients were there for a popular strip. What was missing, unfortunately, was humour. Krohn's gags are mostly tired stuff, the familiar material from bad sitcoms and also-ran comic strips. When he comes up with more original gags they often don't manage to stick the landing.
Billed by United Feature Syndicate as a hip new strip for a younger generation, quite a few newspaper clients took a chance on it, making space on their comics pages for the daily strip's debut on September 14 1970*. A Sunday was eventually added, the earliest of which I can find are from mid-1971. But already by then clients had seen enough and many were jumping ship. The strip ended on November 11 1972** after a two-plus year run, now in few papers. The Sundays are so scarce I cannot offer anything like definitive running dates. Anyone?
An odd postscript -- although Gummer Street was a dead-end in the States, apparently in Italy it was a minor hit. My best guess? The Italian translator punched up the gags for that audience.
Postscritto numero due: it strikes me as interesting that the scenario for Gummer Street is quite a bit like Casey from the late 70s; both set in the grimier end of the inner city, and both featuring cops and oddball characters. I'd like to say that Casey, which was an absolutely fabulous feature, showed what Gummer Street ought to have been. But I can't say that because both strips lasted almost exactly the same amount of time! Guess maybe I wouldn't make such a great syndicate editor as I'd like to think I would.
*Source: Knoxville News-Sentinel, E&P 8/22/1970.
** Source: Murfreesboro News-Journal.
Labels: Obscurities
