Friday, September 01, 2023
Obscurity of the Day: The Dinkies
From Cole Johnson's collection we have these samples of The Dinkies, one of those "how much action can we stuff into a panel" features that were very popular in the 1890s. This genre was a response to the phenomenal popularity of Palmer Cox's Brownies, which pretty well created the style.
This particular feature is rather special because it is by Charles W. Saalburg, the man who pioneered the form of newspaper colour comics, culminating in 1894 with The Ting-Lings for the Chicago Inter-Ocean. If you didn't know about The Ting-Lings, you can be forgiven if you look at the panels above and dismiss them as rip-offs of Hogan's Alley, starring the phenomenal Yellow Kid. But the fact is, both Outcault and Saalburg merely followed on the heels off Palmer Cox.
By 1897, the year of The Dinkies, Saalburg was working for the New York World and his considerable drawing skills seemed to be taking a back-seat to his expertise in four-colour newspaper production. Presumably by 1897, with the World's colour printing well in hand Saalburg now had a little free time to indulge his artistic muse.
But not a lot of time, that's for sure, because The Dinkies came and went in a wink. They only ran in the August 8 and 15 1897 Sunday editions of The World, and on each of those dates a pair of half-page panels were run, for a total of four 'episodes.' Ironically, Saalburg being a colour printing expert, this series was run in black and white.
The Dinkies is essentially just a retread of his The Ting-Lings. The only difference being that the latter were little Chinese sprites, whereas the new model were stereotypical black kiddies. Both series don't so much tell a story as offer a tableau of all the shenanigans the kids get into in some interesting or exotic locale. As you can see above, The Dinkies was set in popular tourism sites. Much belated thanks to the late Cole for these very rare samples.
Labels: Obscurities
