Obscurity of the Day: Boys Will Be Boys

 

Harry Grant Dart was a fabulous cartoonist and he created an amazing though criminally little-known classic of newspaper comics with the 1908 series The Explorigator. Happily it has been reprinted in its entirety by Sunday Press in Forgotten Fantasy: Sunday Comics 1900-1915, along with many other delights. The book is pricey but well worth it for all the hidden treasures, beautifully and grandly reproduced, therein.

Dart did a few other newspaper series and though they aren't nearly as graphically exciting, they are well-drawn series in their own right. Here is one titled Boys WIll Be Boys that he did for the New York Herald. It ran from February 7 to May 9 1909*. In it we have a group of boys at a boarding school who consider it their solemn duty to make life hell for the teachers and other students.

* Source: Ken Barker's New York Herald index in StripScene #20.