Friday, June 28, 2024
Obscurity of the Day: The Red Creek School
There were plenty of kids caught trying to play hooky from school in the early newspaper comics, so when the great George Frink cast his eye on that hoary old plotline, he decided to shuffle the deck. What if those kids, rather than playing hooky, kept the schoolteacher from getting to the school? Then not going to school is no crime -- there's no school to go to!
George Frink was the undeniable king of the Chicago Daily News cartoonists, and he created many weekday series there from 1901 to 1915. The Red Creek School was just a passing fancy, lasting only from May 22 to July 24 1906, but it had Frink's signature boisterous and subversive energy. In each strip the boys, dubbed the Redskins Three, put their combined intellects up against that of the teacher, Professor Whack, and inevitably came up the victors each time.
Labels: Obscurities
