Obscurity of the Day: Hans and Gretchen

 

Hans and Gretchen ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer from September 23 to November 4 1906*. It's an odd strip on several counts.

The strip is about a couple of stereotypical Dutch children, dressed in traditional garb right down to the wooden shoes. The strip tells its little storybook tales in verse, and the level of the writing and plots seems to be intended for very young children -- very simplistic, very banal. While this sort of material, meant for the smallest kiddies, wasn't totally unknown in the Sunday comics sections, in most cases it was jazzed up just enough so that the older kids and adults didn't feel cheated. In this series the stories are so shallow I'm really surprised that the Inquirer would run them. Of course, none of that criticism applies to the sample above, which was (perhaps not surprisingly) the final installment. I've certainly seen plenty of strips about cannibals in these early comics, but never witnessed a case of them actually chomping on a little girl. And in a strip that had, up until then, been intended for the smallest children, too! Get ready for kiddies having nightmares tonight, ma.

The other weird thing is that this series by "Allen" would seem likely to be T.S. Allen in some ways but not in others -- there's a number of pros and cons to that ID. The signature could pass for his, though its not quite a dead ringer. Also, T.S. Allen was famed for his cartoons of tough slum kids, not namby-pamby fairy tale children. The art is not typical for him -- he favoured a more sketchy style -- but he was definitely capable of modifying his style when the situation required. The timing of the strip's appearance is perfect for him, though, as late 1906 is when he seems to have been dropped by Hearst in New York, and he was very soon to spend some time at the Philadelphia Press. So a stopover at the Inquirer would be very reasonable. So is this T.S. Allen? In my book I gave him the credit, but now I'm not so sure...

* In my book I say it lasted until November 18, but it turns out on digital review that the extra strip on that end date is a one-shot titled The Little Hollander; nothing to do with this series other than the nationality of the subject. So nice to be able to compare strips without having to dig out a different microfilm reel!