Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Toppers: Joe Palooka's Boxing Course
In 1936 Joe Palooka's Sunday formatting took the topper away from the tabloid version, so that only the full broadsheet format still included it. Even then if a paper ran Joe Palooka on their front page, as was quite often the case with the popular feature, a large masthead would knock the topper out. So while most Palooka fans got to read the previous topper, Fisher's History of Boxing, fewer had the chance to learn how to box from the main strip's star in Joe Palooka's Boxing Course.
Which wasn't a terrible loss, because it seemed like Fisher just transcribed a basic text on learning to box, and added a few illustrations of Joe going through the motions. Not too exciting. The course began on June 27 1936 and ran until May 1 1938, almost two full years of learning to float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Okay, so the topper's not too exciting, but the sample above is a very interesting one. In case you're not aware, the whole craze for hillbillies in comics, which began in earnest with Li'l Abner, actually had a precursor in Joe Palooka. Big Leviticus and his mammy and pappy starred in a sequence of Joe Palooka in late 1933, and after Li'l Abner became a huge hit Ham Fisher started a feud in which he claimed that Al Capp ripped off his creations. Here above we see an early (the earliest?) public shot fired in that long-running feud; check out the box in panel one of the main strip.
Rather than recount the circumstances of the feud here, I suggest you go read R.C. Harvey's exhaustive discussion of it over at The Comics Journal. It's a long article, but I assure you the bizarre story of Al Capp vs. Ham Fisher is a juicy and fascinating read.
For what it's worth -- very little -- my take on the feud is that it doesn't matter at all who came up with Big Leviticus. If he was such a great character, the equal of Abner, the syndicate would have made Fisher bring him back as a regular, or even given him his own strip. They didn't, and Fisher evidently saw no great future for him, either, until Capp showed the way. The simple fact is that Al Capp, for all his faults, was undeniably a cartooning genius. I have no doubt that he could have taken ANY idea and made a phenomenon out of it. Whether it was hillbillies, prankster kids, barnyard animals, or even grains of sand reciting Proust, Al Capp was destined to make great comic strips out of it. It's a shame that Fisher couldn't see that and wish the man well, rather than trying pathetically to cut him down.
Labels: Topper Features
: 3/20/2024 7:50 AM : 3/20/2024 11:44 AM Find myself reflecting on the idea of cartoonist as celebrity. We've had a few in this age of reduced print influence; was there an era where at least moderate fame attached to artists who weren't at Peanuts or Garfield level?
: 3/23/2024 1:51 PM 