Stripper's Guide

By 1895 the New York Herald did have colour printing capability, but they tended to use it for things besides comics. So here then is a Clarence Rigby strip from the Herald of August 4 1895, run in glorious black and white. This strip offers a fascinating glimpse into the still-evolving conventions for comic strips. I'm not going to tell you to what it is I'm referring; you'll have to read the awful captions to figure it out. Great drawings, though!

I suppose there is a question worth posing -- was the convention being broken here pretty much established by 1895, and Rigby was just a little slow on the uptake? I'm tending to think he might be a little behind the curve...

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 2 comments

There were plenty of kids caught trying to play hooky from school in the early newspaper comics, so when the great George Frink cast his eye on that hoary old plotline, he decided to shuffle the deck. What if those kids, rather than playing hooky, kept the schoolteacher from getting to the school? Then not going to school is no crime -- there's no school to go to!

George Frink was the undeniable king of the Chicago Daily News cartoonists, and he created many weekday series there from 1901 to 1915. The Red Creek School was just a passing fancy, lasting only from May 22 to July 24 1906, but it had Frink's signature boisterous and subversive energy. In each strip the boys, dubbed the Redskins Three, put their combined intellects up against that of the teacher, Professor Whack, and inevitably came up the victors each time.

Labels: Obscurities

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

Before World War II it seemed like the Chicago Tribune had the Midas touch when it came to introducing new Sunday comics features. After World War II things took a 180 degree turn, and everything they tried fell flat on its face. Wild Rose, Ned Handy, Surgeon Stone, John West, Dawn O'Day ... the list of failures goes on and on. But there's no mystery in what had changed. Joseph Medill Patterson, the guiding hand behind the greatest pre-war Tribune comic strips died in 1946, leaving the shepherding of new features to his hand-picked successor, Mollie Slott. Unfortunately she just didn't have his unerring grasp of what newspaper readers wanted to see on the comics page. Patterson seemed to know what readers wanted even if those readers themselves did not yet know what that was.

Slott had been heading the syndicate for almost eight years before she could finally tally a hit Sunday strip, and it was a very unlikely success, too. The Old Glory Story debuted in February 1953 in what was originally slated to be a limited run series. Artist Rick Fletcher and writer Athena Robbins were going to tell the story of the creation of the U.S. flag and that was to be the end of it. But features editors really took to the strip and by popular demand it was turned into an ongoing series encompassing the complete saga of the founding of the country. The strip then branched out far and wide to tell other dramatic stories from American history. 

The strip was originally formatted only for half pages but once its popularity grew the syndicate knew that a third page option was going to be needed to keep clients happy. On December 13 1953* the third tier of the half page strip was changed to a topper, Flag Facts and Fables. This allowed papers to drop the topper to get their third page option. 

The topper offered factoids about early US flags, state flags, and military flags. This was a naturally somewhat limited subject, and after about a year it was decided that The Old Glory Story would thenceforth be offered only in the third-page configuration. Flag Facts and Fables was last included on November 21 1954.

*Source: Topper running dates from Syracuse Post-Standard.

Labels: Topper Features

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

Ian Fenwick was an accomplished British cartoonist who in the 1930s was published in Punch and other top flight venues. When Britain went to war Fenwick went all in, campaigning in North Africa and Italy while still producing wonderfully droll cartoons now on mostly military subjects. 

His fame didn't really spread to the U.S., but somehow the editor of Hearst's Pictorial Weekly got wind of his work and liked it very much. The Sunday magazine insert began a series of weekly cartoon pages featuring his work, titled Fun With Fenwick, debuting in their August 6 1944 issue. 

Tragically, Fenwick never got to enjoy his new notoriety across the pond. At the time Pictorial Weekly was preparing to show off his work he was behind enemy lines assisting the French resistance. He was killed in action one day after his first appearance in the magazine. 

Due to the circumstances of his death, the news took awhile to filter through to the Hearst people in New York. The weekly Fun With Fenwick ended with the September 3 1944 issue, and perhaps due to wartime secrecy, there was no explanation offered for the feature's disappearance. 

Here is a good capsule bio of Fenwick which highlights his lovely covers for some P.G. Wodehouse novels. It also provides links to more detailed information.

Labels: Obscurities

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

Harry Hershfield did only one postcard series that I know of, and it featured his famous creation Abie the Agent. Each card offered a cartoon of Abie along with a gag using his trademark New York Jewish argot. For reasons unknown these cards are quite hard to find. Maybe because they fail to offer a copyright to International Feature Service?

The "Kabibble Kard"s were published by the Illustrated Postcard and Novelty Company of New York. The cards are undated, but based on the cartoon of Abie, I would definitely place them in the 1910s, as Abie's look changed a bit by the 1920s. This particular card is marked "658/2" whatever that means. Series 658 card 2 perhaps?

Labels: Wish You Were Here

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