Saturday, December 23, 2023
Christmas with Dot and Dick, Part 5
Friday, December 22, 2023
Christmas with Dot and Dick, Part 4
Thursday, December 21, 2023
Christmas with Dot and Dick, Part 3
Wednesday, December 20, 2023
Christmas with Dot and Dick, Part 2
Tuesday, December 19, 2023
Christmas With Dot and Dick, Part 1
Okay kiddies, time to gather 'round the fireplace in your PJs, sip your hot cocoa, and read this year's Stripper's Guide Christmas Story.
This year we have a 1935 Christmas strip courtesy of Associated Press. It is a 14-part series titled Christmas With Dot and Dick, and it was distributed not only to AP syndicate clients but also apparently to their news wire clients. I say that because this series ran in quite a few papers, not just those who ran the AP strips.
I call this a strip, but in addition to that element there was also a text story that ran with it, which adds depth to the comic strip and gives us a more complete story. There's also an activity component, which you'll see soon, in which kids are shown how to make Christmas decorations and homemade gifts for their family.
This strip was drawn by Milt Morris, one of the stalwarts of the AP syndicate bullpen who would over the decades put in work on many of their features, sometimes credited, sometimes not. Perhaps Morris wrote this feature as well, that's not known for sure.
Christmas with Dot and Dick is a heartwarming tale, made less sugary when we consider that in 1935 the Great Depression was still a huge force in American life. Many kids had no money to buy even small presents for their families and this strip offers them ideas of how to make presents out of even the most basic materials, like an old tin can and a page out of a catalog. It also offers them the fantasy of going on a great adventure.
The only downside of this strip is that it sends a rather unfortunate message -- if you should happen to meet some weird old codger deep in the woods, and he invites you back to his cabin, go right ahead, all will be fine. Ah well, it was in some ways a more innocent time.
So, if you promise not to take Milt Morris' views on Stranger Danger to heart, please enjoy the story!
Labels: Christmas Strips
Monday, December 18, 2023
Obscurity of the Day: A Yarn of the Nancy B
The New York World ad salespeople frequently sold space in the Sunday sections of the 1900-10s, much more often compared with other sections in which ads were pretty uncommon. Those salespeople were not above selling oddly sized spaces, necessitating the use of mini-sized strips to fill the resulting holes. Thus we get this weird little eighth-page strip A Yarn of the Nancy B by Jack Callahan.
Being pretty strictly a space filler, Callahan didn't beat his brain too hard for material. He came up with the idea of a sailor who gets in trouble due to a sassy talking parrot, and repeats pretty much the same gag with minor variations over and over. The title is a reference to an 1866 W.S. Gilbert poem, "The Yarn of the Nancy Bell", a very funny tale of a cannibalistic sailor ... or at least funny if you can stomach the subject matter.
The strip sometimes ran in the syndicated version of the World section, sometimes just in New York. According to Ken Barker's New York World index it ran in the flagship paper from September 8 1912 to October 5 1913. It did not run every week but only when an ad necessitated it.
Thanks to Cole Johnson, who supplied the samples.
Labels: Obscurities
: 12/18/2023 1:33 PM 
Sunday, December 17, 2023
Wish You Were Here, from R.F. Outcault
Here's a literally steamy Valentine's Day card from the pen of Richard Outcault, part of the phenomenally popular Tuck's line of offerings. Buster may be about to be in awful trouble, because I'm not sure that's Mary Jane! Thanks to Mark Johnson who provided the scan.
Labels: Wish You Were Here
