Stripper's Guide

Is this an editorial cartoon from 2020? Nah, it's a perfectly innocent (and very cute) gag cartoon published in 1897. It was penned by H.B. Eddy for the January 31 1897 edition of the New York Journal.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

As a kid I was absolutely fascinated with dinosaurs, reading everything I could get my hands on about them. I recall elementary school teachers being gobsmacked when I could properly pronounce their names and reel off all sorts of information about them when other kids were barely past sounding out the adventures of Dick and Jane.  

I guess I was far from the only one, because evidently lots of kids loved Alley Oop, even in its pre-time travel days. Of course there were actually no cavemen in the time of the dinosaurs, but we kids in the know were willing to look the other way about that inconvenient fact, just so long as we could fantasize ourselves meeting up with these amazing monstrosities of prehistory. 

V.T. Hamlin must have understood that fascination, because some of his Sunday toppers were on the subject of real dinosaurs. Dinny's Family Album, the first and longest-running of Alley Oop's toppers, was a panel devoted to actual information about actual dinosaurs, and boy oh boy, I would have eaten it up if I was growing up in the 1930s. 

Dinny's Family Album debuted along with the new Alley Oop Sunday page on September 9 1934*, and ran until February 7 1937**. It was replaced by more prosaic topper fare, perhaps because Hamlin had run out of interesting dinosaurs to cover after two and a half years. 

* Source: Buffalo Times.

* Source: NEA Archives.

Labels: Topper Features

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

Even though Gus Mager had a very popular series going with his 'monk' strips in the New York Hearst papers, he was constantly trying out other ideas. One very short-lived entry in this long list of experiments was Ain't It?, which had a lifespan comparing only slightly favorably to a mayfly's. This series, whose title is also the punchline, was extant from March 2 to March 10 1909 in the New York Journal*. 

* Source: Dave Strickler's New York Journal index.

Labels: Obscurities

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

I've opined on the subject of the hapless Copley News Service here before, and no doubt will again in the future as long as I can still bang on a keyboard and dig up samples of their wares. But let's recap: Copley owned a chain of newspapers, primarily in California, and starting in 1955 they began trying to syndicate some of their features to other papers. 

Sounds okay, right? But that statement deserves some caveats. First, at least in regard to comics it should be pointed out that much of what Copley syndicated, in fact almost all of it, did not appear in their own newspapers. And second, the syndicate was downright spectacular in its ability to NOT sell features. So, taking those two facts into account, I am left with head in hands, sobbing quietly, wondering what the point of it all was. If you didn't want these features for your own papers, and the client list for the features hovered very close to zero, what was the point? Surely you couldn't have done it JUST to drive comics historians crazy looking for this stuff!

I'll be okay. Just give me a moment to dry my eyes, and we'll talk about today's Copley obscurity, Alex in Wonderland. This strip by Bob Cordray is about a kid, Alex, trying to understand the perplexing adult world. Alex's parents are MIA, so his main foil is his uncle, who goes by 'Unk'. The gags, as you can see above, are light social and political commentary, and Alex is the Candide-type who generally starts the ball rolling by asking a question, giving Unk the excuse to deliver the punchline. 

The strip is by no means fabulous, but Bob Cordray's wonderfully simplified art style and quick, pithy gags puts it over, giving readers an instantly digested seconds-long daily experience. 

Cordray had a long-running strip before this called Smidgens, but it died when the syndicate (National Newspaper Syndicate) shut down in 1975. A few of National's remaining properties went to United Feature, but they apparently took a pass on Smidgens. Left without a meal ticket, Cordray started shopping around and ended up creating this new feature for Copley. 

The strip seems to have debuted on April 5 1976, though its only known client at the time, the Chicago-based Daily Calumet, started it a day late and dropped it after a two-week tryout. Which is about par for the course with Copley strips. 

Playing to an audience of practically none, Alex In Wonderland soldiered on until 1980, ending on June 14*. Copley continued to offer the strip in reprints at least through 1986, but for some bizarre reason they offered it only as a weekly. Figure out the logic of that, I dare you. 

* Source: San Pedro News-Pilot.

Labels: Obscurities

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

Labels: Wish You Were Here

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