Stripper's Guide

The opening of the Exposition was less than a month away when Art Young contributed this interesting illustration for the supplement's cover. Just for the heck of it I did a little poking around to find a photo of the finished sculpture. Oddly enough, I can find no reference to a sculpture with this subject, much less a photo of it. Anyone care to pick up the gauntlet and find us a pic of this sculpture?

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 8 comments

Although R.F. Outcault was the unquestioned king of series comics in the 1800s, by the turn of the century he didn't have any really popular series in his current kit bag. Gallus Coon thankfully didn't take hold at the New York World, and today's obscurity, Nixie, done for the Herald, showed some promise but ultimately fell by the wayside. 

Nixie is a moon-faced little kid who always wears an odd form-fitting cap (perhaps a baby bonnet?) topped with a pom-pom. A genteel version of the Yellow Kid, perhaps? The strip was sometimes pantomime, but when talking was the order of the day, it was done through captions below the panels. As was sometimes the case, animals get special dispensation to use word balloons. Nixie doesn't have a strong personality in the samples I've seen, so his odd face and garb are about the sum total of his appeal.

The Herald tried to get the public excited about Nixie, but evidently the reviews were not enthusiastisc enough. The strip started on March 18 1900 and last appeared on September 23* of the same year. Very soon Pore Little Mose would come on the scene, and he would function as Outcault's bread-and-butter strip for the next two years. 

Here are a few additional Nixie examples from OSU's Bill Blackbeard archives. 

* Source: Ken Barker's New York Herald index in StripScene #20.

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

January 10 1926 was an important date for Sunday comics. This was the Sunday that the first wave of Hearst Sunday features added toppers. Some lagged behind, but it was on this date that Boob McNutt, Toots and Casper, Tillie the Toiler, Bringing Up Father, Happy Hooligan and Katzenjammer Kids led the charge to a new era of Sunday comics. (Well, actually there is one much earlier outlier, but we'll save that special case for some other day.)

The Katzies first topper was Jungle Bed-Time Stories, which, like all the original Hearst toppers that started in early 1926, was soon replaced. But this one was fine while it lasted, offering up gags starring jungle animals. Harold Knerr pulled this one out of a very old bag of tricks. Way back in 1911, for the very obscure Publishers Press/C.J. Mar syndicate, he'd contributed one of their best-looking features, Zoo-Illogical Snapshots, which covered the same territory. 

Jungle Bed-Time Stories ran until May 2 1926, which happens to be the sample above. And speaking of the sample above, if anyone can decode the gag on this one I'm officially in Comics I Don't Understand territory. The next week Knerr produced a one-shot topper called Naughty! Naughty!, and then settled into the very long run of Dinglehoofer Und His Dog Adolph.

Labels: Topper Features

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 3 comments

I really like Yenevieve Yonson's Cat. I know it's dopey and repetitive, I know the strip just rips off the popular song The Cat Came Back, I know it animates cruelty to animals, and I know the Yonson character is an unkind stereotype of Scandinavians. But despite all that the strip still finds its way to my funnybone just about every time I get to read one. Which isn't exactly an everyday occurrence because the strip ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer from February 10 1907 to October 31 1909.

Yenevieve Yonson's Cat is also intriguing from another perspective. In its very respectable two and a half year run, the feature was NEVER ONCE signed. Some syndicates didn't like their creators to sign a whole bunch of strips because it made them look like a penny ante outfit. And some creators didn't sign because they were on salary at another syndicate and did uncredited work to bring in some extra scratch. But for a titled feature to run that long with the creator so consistently not signing is a feat of some note. 

Is it a record? Mmm, maybe not. Some of the McClure Sunday strips from the latter half of the 1900s weren't signed for years, too. The difference there is that almost always in some part of their run they WERE signed, even if only once or twice. 

So the big question, then, is who wrote and drew Yenevieve Yonson's Cat? And I have a pretty strong belief that the culprit is Charlie Payne. First, it looks like his work, Secondly, he had two other features running in the Inquirer Sunday sections -- Scary William and Bear Creek Folks -- so the powers that be at the Inky might have told him to anonymize himself on this one. 

Luckily, I happen to know that there is an expert on all things comic and Philadelphia lurking out there, and I will be waiting to hear him weigh in on my art ID. Oh Mark...?

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 1 comments

Here is a Nate Collier card from Taylor Pratt's Series 892 (aka Red Border Series), published in 1912. It seems to me this card is a brilliant bit of marketing magic -- those who shun religion will buy it, knowing their recipient will understand they are being sarcastic. Those of a religious bent will also buy it for the opposite reason. Nice one Nate!

Labels: Wish You Were Here

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments