Stripper's Guide

Walt McDougall, one of the greatest of the pioneering American newspaper cartoonists, was a bit of a one-shot wonder factory. After his very productive 1890s work in New York, most of it one-shots, he left for Philadelphia where he began a long run of one-shot comics for the Philadelphia North American. Here is one from 1903, appearing in syndication at the St. Paul Dispatch. 

The book text can be hard to read on this smallish image. In panel one it says "Animal Curiosity". In panel two "They will pry into things in which they have no concern." In panel three the back of the book has the title "Animal Curiosity Vol. 2." In panel four, "...become intrusive at times." In panel 5 "...this proved by facts."

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

Perhaps the most daunting job you could ever have as a newspaper cartoonist is to be chosen as the  replacement for Winsor McCay. And that's the thankless task tackled by Ap Adams* when Winsor McCay jumped ship from the Cincinnati Enquirer. McCay had drawn the minor classic A Tale of the Jungle Imps for the Enquirer for a little less than a year before the inevitable happened and he was summoned to the big time in New York City. 

Faced with an empty page of their Sunday comics, which were a combination of syndicated and local content (two pages versus one page), the Enquirer picked "Ap" Adams out of the art bullpen and handed him the reins to the local page on November 15 1903.  Initially he collaborated with "Felix Fiddle", the writer of the Jungle Imp tales, whose real name was George Randolph Chester. The first few episodes of The Clown Folks were very prose-rich productions, just like the Imps tales. Then 'Fiddle' decided to change over to a more normal comic strip approach, with one line descriptions under each panel. 

I'm guessing that Adams decided that Mr. Fiddle's services were of dubious use when he was writing just a few short captions, and on the Sunday page of January 24 1904 the name Felix Fiddle is dropped for the remainder of the series. Neither Fiddle nor Adams was at this point very adept at comic strip writing, so Enquirer readers probably didn't notice much difference. 

What Adams lacked in writing chops he made up for with lovely art. It wasn't good enough to make anyone forget McCay, but it was delightful on its own terms. While The Clown Folks didn't last long, ending on April 19 1904, Enquirer readers would enjoy the delightful art of Adams on a succession of Sunday strips lasting until late 1908.

* I have seen Mr. Adams' full first name given as Apworth, Anthorp, and Apthorp. I have no idea which is correct.

Labels: Obscurities

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

“Nothing much happened there. Got tossed out of the local high school for something or other and was promptly placed in a now defunct institution—Union Academy. After being a sophomore for several years, they decided that the only way of getting me through school was to give me the old heave-ho. Which they did to our mutual delight. After all, I do not think a college education would be a great help in making Moon. …

… “My father had moved to Chicago back in 1909 [sic] for business and social reasons. And since my dough was running low, I thought it would be a good idea to do the same, as I was always very fond of eating.

“I told him I was going to be a cartoonist but he didn’t believe me and neither did anyone else … Then the World War broke out in August, 1914. I noticed they had no cartoon on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, so I went home and drew one.

“Mr. Beck, the managing editor bought it for $15.00 and ran it on the front page. So I got out a pencil and figured if you could make that sort of dough drawing, why work for a department store for eleven bucks a week, and hurried across the street and quit my job. Mrs. Woodrow Wilson died the next day so I made another cartoon about that. Then Mr. McCutcheon, the real cartoonist, came back and there wasn’t much need for my talent.

“Mr. James Keeley over on the Herald talked to me for five minutes and said, ‘Boy, you haven’t enough brains to be a political cartoonist!’ I said how about a comic artist. Mr. Keeley said, ‘Well, maybe you’re dumb enough for that. So he gave me a job. Did a kid page called, ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’ and another called ‘Mrs. Pippins Husband,’ and a so-called humorous cartoon.

“America got into the war. I got into the first draft. Was a pretty punk soldier, had a pretty good time. Out outfit built roads and did no fighting. And we thought they’d left us in France for a souvenir when they finally shipped us home in July, 1919. …

Frank Willard, western cartoonist, has joined King Features Syndicate. He has created a new comic strip entitled “Outta-Luck” which will be generally syndicated throughout the United States and Canada. 

The title of Willard’s new comic was suggested to him in France during the war when he was with the 343d Infantry. It was the common expression of doughboys covering a multitude of various unfortunate things that happened them from missing mess to missing mail. Returning to America Willard found an infinite number of humorous situations in civil life where somebody was correspondingly “Outta Luck.” So he sat down and pictured them.

He is a graduate of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and for five years his comic drawings appearing in the Chicago Herald and other western papers have been exceedingly popular.

“Then I got a job with King Features Syndicate. Did a very appropriately named strip called ‘The Outta Luck Club,’ which was just that. At the same time doing the Penny Ante series and about everything but carry water for the elephants.

“Perley Boone, a pal of mine, told me that Mr. Patterson was looking for a new comic for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate and to see Mr. Arthur Crawford, who told me to see Mr. Patterson. After talking to me a few minutes, Mr. Patterson said I should do a roughneck strip. There never had been a roughneck, low life sort of strip and he thought it might be a good idea. And, incidentally, he’s given me plenty of ideas since. [A violent version of the story was told in The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History (1994).] 

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 6:00 AM 2 comments

Comic strip fans like to talk about records, and the discussion of the longest lasting series is a favourite. We tend to ignore toppers when having these discussions, though, and of course there's a good reason for that -- without the main strip there's no need for a topper, so they are automatically disqualified from being the longest running series. 

But what is the longest running topper? this can be a tough question in and of itself, because the longest running series were still being produced into the 1960s and even 1970s, but they appeared in vanishingly few papers. Some, I'm convinced, were produced but never ended up being printed anywhere. 

By the 1960s the third page strip was the de facto standard, and that format almost never included a topper. By then you would generally only see a topper on some tab or half-page formats. So few papers used these formats, especially for strips that used toppers, which practically begged to be cut down, that tracking the toppers becomes next to impossible. In fact, for my research I've often had to base my end dates on original art, which is often the only place you're going to see toppers of these late years. 

The Sunday strip of Moon Mullins added its topper Kitty Higgins* around the same time as the other Chicago Tribune strips. The first strip, seen above, ran on December 14 1930. The strip was quite obviously an afterthought, with the gags (even the very first) being real mouldy oldies. No doubt production of this strip was by Frank Willard's assistant Ferd Johnson, and neither of these guys wasted too much brain juice on the feature. Although the first strip was done in a two-tier format, it would quickly settle down into a one-tier affair for its many years underneath the main strip (yes, they're still called toppers when they run at the bottom of the page). 

The Chicago Tribune-New York News Sunday strips hung onto their toppers much longer than the products of other syndicates. Most of their A-list strips kept doggedly including toppers into the early 1970s, even though they were used by maybe one out of a hundred papers that ran the main strip. For the longest time I thought Kitty Higgins ended in 1973, because that was the last year that it appeared in the Editor & Publisher Syndicate Directory. It wasn't until recent years that I saw the original art for the May 26 1974 strip, which included the topper and so upgraded the end date to sometime after that. 

Finally I found a newspaper online that actually ran Moon Mullins consistently as a tab in 1974, the Elizabethton Star. The last Kitty Higgins I can find is the release of September 1 1974. The September 8 issue, sadly, is missing the comics section, but on the 15th the topper is gone, and Kitty is co-starring in the main strip -- perhaps she had an appearance contract? 

What is either the final or penultimate Kitty Higgins is here, from digitized microfilm:

That gives Kitty Higgins a forty-four year run, a very impressive accomplishment, especially considering that no one, including the creators, really cared much about the strip for that whole time. Does Kitty get the crown as longest running topper? I can think of one or two toppers which might just possibly edge it out. What do you think?

* Technically that was not Moon Mullins' first topper, but that's a tale for another day.

Labels: Firsts and Lasts, Topper Features

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

Here is card #14 in the McCutcheon "A Boy In ..." series, which Eddie Campbell tells us totalled 32 different cards. Copyrights on these cards seem to refer to original appearances in newspapers, and this one apparently ran in 1905. The copyright on the reverse is 1906, and since they're all divided-back cards they were likely actually published in 1907 or later.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 5 comments