Monday, July 15, 2024
Obscurity of the Day: Alex in Wonderland
I've opined on the subject of the hapless Copley News Service here before, and no doubt will again in the future as long as I can still bang on a keyboard and dig up samples of their wares. But let's recap: Copley owned a chain of newspapers, primarily in California, and starting in 1955 they began trying to syndicate some of their features to other papers.
Sounds okay, right? But that statement deserves some caveats. First, at least in regard to comics it should be pointed out that much of what Copley syndicated, in fact almost all of it, did not appear in their own newspapers. And second, the syndicate was downright spectacular in its ability to NOT sell features. So, taking those two facts into account, I am left with head in hands, sobbing quietly, wondering what the point of it all was. If you didn't want these features for your own papers, and the client list for the features hovered very close to zero, what was the point? Surely you couldn't have done it JUST to drive comics historians crazy looking for this stuff!
I'll be okay. Just give me a moment to dry my eyes, and we'll talk about today's Copley obscurity, Alex in Wonderland. This strip by Bob Cordray is about a kid, Alex, trying to understand the perplexing adult world. Alex's parents are MIA, so his main foil is his uncle, who goes by 'Unk'. The gags, as you can see above, are light social and political commentary, and Alex is the Candide-type who generally starts the ball rolling by asking a question, giving Unk the excuse to deliver the punchline.
The strip is by no means fabulous, but Bob Cordray's wonderfully simplified art style and quick, pithy gags puts it over, giving readers an instantly digested seconds-long daily experience.
Cordray had a long-running strip before this called Smidgens, but it died when the syndicate (National Newspaper Syndicate) shut down in 1975. A few of National's remaining properties went to United Feature, but they apparently took a pass on Smidgens. Left without a meal ticket, Cordray started shopping around and ended up creating this new feature for Copley.
The strip seems to have debuted on April 5 1976, though its only known client at the time, the Chicago-based Daily Calumet, started it a day late and dropped it after a two-week tryout. Which is about par for the course with Copley strips.
Playing to an audience of practically none, Alex In Wonderland soldiered on until 1980, ending on June 14*. Copley continued to offer the strip in reprints at least through 1986, but for some bizarre reason they offered it only as a weekly. Figure out the logic of that, I dare you.
* Source: San Pedro News-Pilot.
Labels: Obscurities
