Smilin' Jack Debuts ... Sorta

 

Smilin' Jack, the unique flying strip with a roll call of memorable characters and zany plotlines, was a fixture of the Chicago Tribune and a very healthy client list for just a hair shy of four decades. But it didn't start out with that name. The first Sunday, shown above, is how it debuted in the Tribune on October 1 1933. At the outset the strip was titled On The Wing, and the star of the show was a midwestern hayseed type named Mack.  

How the strip got into the paper in this fetal stage I don't know, but according to creator Zack Mosley, it wasn't long before Colonel Patterson, that midwife of great Tribune comics, sat down with him and brainstormed how to turn this instantly forgettable copycat aviation strip into one that flew higher than the competition and outlasted it by decades. 

Patterson took a cue from Mosley himself, whose nickname was Smilin' Zack, and decreed that the strip and its hero would be renamed Smilin' Jack. With that simple reader-attracting hook in place he encouraged Mosley to write the strip to his own strengths, which ran to the quirky and tongue-in-cheek. The strip was Sunday-only at this time, and between the installments of December 24 and 31 1933, the title and character name change were put in place. The strip did not immediately turn into its zany mature self, but Zack started loosening up his cartooning style, began evolving his hero into the dapper ladies man, and the boring flying school stories were dropped in favour of more exciting fare.