Friday, September 15, 2023
Obscurity of the Day: Father's Day
Father's Day is one of the earliest newspaper strip entries (the first?) to feature divorced parents and their kids. While the strip was a flop, it seemed to open the floodgates of cartoonists taking a whack at the subject with their own features. Syndicates obviously felt it was a potentially lucrative niche because they have offered a goodly number of these strips over the years. The only problem is that none that I can think of had much success. Am I forgetting a succssful divorcee strip?
You can certainly turn the sadness and pain of divorce involving kids into humour; after all, some definitions of comedy boil down to 'tragedy happening to someone else.' But basing seven gags per week on this aspect of life seems to me like overkill. As a subplot to a strip with other gag-inducing aspects, sure, but Father's Day and its many followers seem to be a bit one-note.
But you have to give Father's Day some points for creativity. You might expect the first entry of the genre to offer a pretty vanilla version on the subject, but Father's Day has a decidedly odd take, offering us the rarity of a father who has custody of the kids. Odder still, dad is a struggling writer who is always broke, so he's living off the child support supplied by his ex-wife. This is all good comedy fodder, but at least to this reader just perusing a few weeks of this strip has me actively contemptuous of the strip's star for being such a pathetic drip loser.
Father's Day was created by the husband and wife team of Nancy and Mario Risso. Although unstated in the promos I've found, I'm assuming this wasn't the first time at the altar for them, otherwise, why pick this subject? Apparently Nancy was the artist, Mario the writer. Both are creditably done, with pretty good gags and breezy art emblematic of the era. As far as I know, this was the Risso's only foray into syndicated comics, but they also collaborated on a few books.
United Feature began distribution of the daily and Sunday strip on May 4 1981*, missing an obvious gimmick of having the strip start on Arbor Day. The strip did not sell well and came out of the gate with a modest client list. No doubt due to the repetitive subject matter, by the time the strip was retired on January 2 1983 finding a paper running it is like searching the mailbox for a child support check before the due date.
PS: If strip #2 has you scratching your noggin, here ya go ya young whippersnapper. Or ya forgetful old coot.
* Source: All dates from United Feature Syndicate internal records.
Labels: Obscurities
: 11/26/2023 10:42 PM 