Stripper's Guide: One-Shot Wonders: H.T. Webster Gag Cartoons, 1903

Saturday, May 18, 2024

One-Shot Wonders: H.T. Webster Gag Cartoons, 1903

At about age 17, H.T. Webster moved to Chicago to attend an art school. Unfortunately the art school shut down shortly after he arrived. Faced with needing to earn a living, he found that the Chicago Daily News was a ready market for cartoons. The News carried a half page or more of cartoons and strips, crammed in and printed very small, for their back covers. It was a great page if you had real sharp eyesight. The list of neat stuff that appeared there goes on and on.

Webster failed to make any big impression at the Daily News, but they bought plenty of his cartoons, and he even started a few short-lived series. Here we have a few cartoons from 1903 that show that early Webster cartoons are almost impossible to identify without the signatures.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM

Comments:

The umbrella title for the Chi'News syndicated pages of tiny cartoons was "WHERE THE LAUGH COMES IN."

# posted by

Mark Johnson : 5/18/2024 12:24 PM

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My name is Allan Holtz. I am a comic strip historian, and author of "American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide." This blog is my outlet for all manner of interesting, oddball and rare material related to comic strip history. It is also a forum where others interested in comic strip history are encouraged to participate through the comments, or even by contributing articles. Have some information about a strip or cartoonist you'd like to share? I'd love to hear from you! You can post a comment on any post (click on 'Post a Comment' at the end of any post), or email me (see below). Note: All images on this blog are thumbnails - click on the images to see full size readable versions. Some browsers may require you to click on the image a second time to see the image at absolute full size (not reduced to fit your screen).

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