Obscurity of the Day: Mr. Broad of Wall Street

 It's been a long, long time since we trained the spotlight on Charles McManus here at Stripper's Guide, since 2007 to be precise. As you may know, he was the considerably less talented brother of George McManus, creator of Bringing Up Father.

Of course when you have a brother who produces the most popular comic strip in the U.S., and probably the world, you have a significantly better chance of getting your work published than just any Tom, Dick or Gertrude, and Charles certainly took advantage of his position. But in a way, his work did have a very definite value -- it looks somewhat like George's work to the untrained eye, and it was marketed to smaller papers that couldn't afford a bunch of high-profile stuff. That sort of paper could see the value in running a McManus comic strip, never mind that the given name was wrong. And quite a few smalltown papers did take Charles' strips, probably under the presumption that McManus' brother was better than no McManus at all. 

It has long been assumed, by me and many others, that Charles got a lot of help on these strips from his famous brother. The art is a klunky imitation of the George McManus style, and the repetition of wooden character poses makes one wonder if Charles didn't just trace his work from model sheets produced by George. That theory holds up well when we consider how the backgrounds and props are minimalistic and often out of perspective. There was a day when I thought Charles actually had a bunch of rubber stamps made up for the characters, but having since seen some original art of these strips, that guess turns out to be wrong. 

Mr. Broad of Wall Street was Charles' second strip, joining his first, Dorothy Darnit, at Bell Syndicate. The strip debuted on November 21 1921*. It is about a fellow who works in a stockbroker's office, and the gags are often about him trying to cadge stock tips. But Charles was not one to be a slave to details, and so Mr. Broad can show up in just about any sort of business office, or, if no business-related gag came to mind, in just about any other situation you can imagine, too. He can even be found coexisting with Dorothy Darnit on occasion (see last example), giving Charles the luxury of producing one strip that can be run with both series. 

For unclear reasons the title of the strip was changed to Freddie the Financier on March 27 1922. Why this was deemed necessary I can't begin to guess. The gags and (lack of) focus seem to change not one iota. 

Because we are dealing with Bell Syndicate here, notorious for reselling material in those days, coming up with an end date is tricky. As near as I can figure, the series ended on April 7 1923**, but Bell seemed to immediately start selling the strip in reprints; perhaps even before the end of the original run. They not only sold it in reprints themselves, but when they tired of flogging it to ever small papers, they sold it off to an unknown reprint syndicate, where it went through further rounds of selling until the papers they marketed to got so small as to be non-existent. The latest I have found the strip appearing is in 1932***, almost a decade after the original run ended.

* Source: Buffalo Express

** Source: New York Evening Telegram

*** Source: Stuart Daily News