Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Toppers: Flag Facts and Fables
Before World War II it seemed like the Chicago Tribune had the Midas touch when it came to introducing new Sunday comics features. After World War II things took a 180 degree turn, and everything they tried fell flat on its face. Wild Rose, Ned Handy, Surgeon Stone, John West, Dawn O'Day ... the list of failures goes on and on. But there's no mystery in what had changed. Joseph Medill Patterson, the guiding hand behind the greatest pre-war Tribune comic strips died in 1946, leaving the shepherding of new features to his hand-picked successor, Mollie Slott. Unfortunately she just didn't have his unerring grasp of what newspaper readers wanted to see on the comics page. Patterson seemed to know what readers wanted even if those readers themselves did not yet know what that was.
Slott had been heading the syndicate for almost eight years before she could finally tally a hit Sunday strip, and it was a very unlikely success, too. The Old Glory Story debuted in February 1953 in what was originally slated to be a limited run series. Artist Rick Fletcher and writer Athena Robbins were going to tell the story of the creation of the U.S. flag and that was to be the end of it. But features editors really took to the strip and by popular demand it was turned into an ongoing series encompassing the complete saga of the founding of the country. The strip then branched out far and wide to tell other dramatic stories from American history.
The strip was originally formatted only for half pages but once its popularity grew the syndicate knew that a third page option was going to be needed to keep clients happy. On December 13 1953* the third tier of the half page strip was changed to a topper, Flag Facts and Fables. This allowed papers to drop the topper to get their third page option.
The topper offered factoids about early US flags, state flags, and military flags. This was a naturally somewhat limited subject, and after about a year it was decided that The Old Glory Story would thenceforth be offered only in the third-page configuration. Flag Facts and Fables was last included on November 21 1954.
*Source: Topper running dates from Syracuse Post-Standard.
Labels: Topper Features
