Stripper's Guide

Here's a cover from the Chicago Inter-Ocean's Illustrated Supplement, the first newspaper to print in four colour on a high-speed newspaper press. The Inter-Ocean invested in this marvel of technology in honour of the 1893 Columbian Exhibition, sort of a precursor to the World's Fairs of the 20th century. Until the exhibition opened, many of the Illustrated Supplement covers offered humorous or editorial cartoons, but once the exhibition opened the favorite subjects were scenes from the event. 

This particular issue from May 28 1893 offers an array of vignettes from the Naval Exhibit. The main attraction was the U.S.S. Illinois, a mockup full size battleship constructed on site.

This cover is unusual in that Jules Gaspard and Williamson (possibly W.G. Williamson) usually worked alone on these realistic Exposition scenes, but here they share credit. The two artists draw so realistically and without stylistic flourish that when they don't sign I would not hazard a guess as to which of them is responsible for what here.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

The little remembered cartoonist Foster Follett occupies a pretty high standing in my mind, a cartoonist who really knew his stuff and made the most of what he did. For instance, without bothering to read the strips above, and trying to ignore that awful printing quality, look at the animation and energy of the characters, the staging of the panels, the seemingly effortless, even careless, drawing. Follett never wowed us with pyrotechnics, but he was a quiet and assured master of the form. Which makes it doubly unfortunate that his work was presented like this above, with bad printing and parts of panels lopped off*. 

The Hoodoo Nickel - Who Gets It Next? is a rare 1900s foray into comic strip continuity. Follett traces the adventures of a cursed nickel, which gets anyone who has it into serious hot water. Each week the nickel moves from one victim to another, telling a continuous story, but with a self-contained gag in each strip. We aren't told why the nickel has a "hoodoo" on it, but eventually the series personifies the curse with a flying ghoul who watches the proceedings with apparent glee. The series finally ends when one recipient recognizes that it is cursed and disposes of it for good. 

The Hoodoo Nickel - Who Gets It Next? ran as a quarter-page strip in Pulitzer's New York World from October 13 to December 15 1907. 

One melancholy comment about this strip. For many years I felt that Frank King's Gasoline Alley topper, That Phoney Nickel, was an overlooked stroke of genius. However, when I finally saw examples of this rare Follett strip, and the similar 1909 strip Adventures of a Bad Half-Dollar, I reluctantly had to downgrade King's strip into a mere revival of a great idea that had a much earlier life. Sorry Frank, this is one laurel you may not wear, as it belongs to Mr. Follett ... or are there even earlier versions?

* You can thank the Detroit Free Press for this execrable work. No doubt the strips were presented properly in the New York World.

Labels: Obscurities

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

Since Peanuts lost 20 papers the strip fell from its number 2 spot down to number 4. This enabled For Better or For Worse to move up to the number 3 spot. With Shoe losing 15 papers the strip fell from #19 to 24. Our biggest gainer was Zits, which moved from 16 to 12.

The Average Number of Comic Strip per paper went up again; 18.668 strips per paper from last year’s total of 18.41.

Universal Comics Page

Over the past 80 years when you picked up a paper from another town or city in most cases you would read some of the strips that appeared in your local paper but mostly you would see strips that you have never seen before. By the 1980s, with the slow demise of newspapers beginning and fewer papers around to compete for features, more papers had the opportunity to buy strips that were not available to them before. This could lead to more variety from one paper to another, but instead, the editors of these papers would do the opposite and just pick the most popular strips. As this way of filling a comics page became more and more prevalent, you would now see many of the same comics in every paper.The Universal Comic Section is a measure of how many papers run the most popular strips. 

With a lot of classic strips being dropped the universal section had a shake-up this year. We only made it to the Top 16 strips before originality reared its head, but instead of one paper we had 4 papers that had the Top 16: El Paso Times (TX), Hartford Courant (CT), Montgomery Advertiser (AL) and Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL)

Top 2 – 186 (Down 4)
Top 3 – 165 (Down 8)
Top 4 – 139 (Down 14)
Top 5 – 113 (Down 11)
Top 6 - 95 (Down 6)
Top 7 – 83 (Down 4)
Top 8 – 68 (Down 2)
Top 9 – 53 (Down 4)
Top 10 – 41 (Down 3)
Top 11 – 23 (Same)
Top 12 – 19 (Up 5)
Top 13 – 13 (Up 2)
Top 14 – 10 (Up 6)
Top 15 – 9 (Up 5)
Top 16 – 4 (Same)
Top 17 – 0 (Down 1)

Here are the rest of strips that did not make the Top 30:

42 – Crankshaft – (0), Luann – (+3)

39 – Mary Worth (-3), Mutts (+5)

38 – Funky Winkerbean (+2)

36 – Rex Morgan (+1)

35 – Pickles (+5)

33 – Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (-1), Herman (-2), Lockhorns (+1)

30 – Alley Oop (0)

28 – Boondocks (+5), Curtis (0), Get Fuzzy (+15)

24 – Kit N Carlyle (-1)

22 – Grizzwells (-3)

21 – Geech (+1), In The Bleachers (-1)

20 – Marvin (-2), Robotman (+2)

19 – Judge Parker (0), Sherman’s Lagoon (+4)

18 – One Big Happy (0), Real Life Adventures (-1), Rubes (0)
16 – Baldo (R), Crabby Road (+1)

15 – Bizarro (0), Gasoline Alley (-1)

14 – Adam (+1), Betty (+1), Lola (+4), Pluggers (0), Stone Soup (+1)

13 – Andy Capp (-3), Big Nate (-1), Drabble (0), Overboard (-3)

12 – Anges (+3), Buckles (+1), Fred Basset (0), Grand Avenue (-2), Heathcliff (0), Mark Trail (0)

11 – Phantom (0), Soup To Nuts (R), Tank McNamara (-2), Tiger (0)

10 – Berry’s World (0), Piranha Club (-2), Six Chix (R), Speed Bump (0)

9 – Dunagin’s People (0), Sylvia (-1)

8 – Gil Thorp (0), Heart of The City (+1), Hocus Focus (-2), Middletons (-1), Nancy (-2), That’s Life (+4), Zippy (0)

7 – Apartment 3-G (-1), Brenda Starr (0), Dinette Set (+2), Herb & Jamaal  (-1), Liberty Meadows (+4), Rhymes with Orange (-1), Rugrats (-6), Shirley and Son (R)

6 – Dick Tracy (-1), Duplex (-1), Fusco Brothers (+1), I Need Help (0), Mr. Boffo (-2), Off The Mark (0), Red & Rover (R), Strange Brew (+1)

5 – Amazing Spider-Man (-2), Archie (0), Ben (0), Bound & Gagged (0), Citizen Dog (0), Committed (-1), Grin and Bear It (0), Kuduz (0), 9 Chickweed Lane (0), Pokeman (R), Safe Havens (0), They’ll Do IT Every Time (-1)

4 – Buckets, Crock, Horrorscope, Momma, Over The Hedge, Randolph Itch, Tumbleweeds, Twins

3 - Cats With Hands, Coast, Comic For Kids, Cornered, Donald Duck, James, Love Is, Mixed Media, Our Fascinating Earth, Pooch Café, Ralph, That’s Jake

2 - Ballard Street, Better Half, Between Friends, Bobo’s Progress, Broom Hilda, Chubb & Chauncey, Helen Sweetheart of The Internet, Loose Parts, Meg, Mickey Mouse, Natural Selection, Nest Heads, New Breed, Norm, Offsides, On The Fastrack, Redeye, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Tarzan, Willy N Ethel

1 – Aminals, Animal Crackers, Belvedere, Big Picture, Bit Off, Bottom Liners, Do Not Disturb, Edge City, Fair Game, Flight Deck, Good Life, Laffbreak, Little Orphan Annie, Mandrake The Magician, Meehan Streak, Meet Mr. Lucky, Modesty Blaise, Mulch, Offline, Out of Bounds, Playing Golf With Jack Nicklaus, Quigmans, Raising Hector, Reality Check, Saturday Afternoon, Single Slices, Spooner, Squinkers, Top Secrets, Tundra, Warped

Labels: Paper Trends

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

The biggest gainer in 2001 was a repeat of last year. Cartoonist Jerry Scott’s two strips, Zits and Baby Blues, added a combined 29 papers between them, which is three more than his amazing performance of the year before. The other big gainer was last year’s bronze rookie winner, Get Fuzzy, which added 15 more papers, stepping up to silver.

Here are the strips that added at least 5 papers or more. You will see an interesting pattern with these strips:

Zits – 17
Get Fuzzy - 15
Baby Blues - 12
Fox Trot – 5
Mutts – 5
Pickles – 5
Boondocks - 5

As we begin a new century, we can see the mindset of the feature editors was “out with old and in with the new.” All the strips that gained 5 or more papers this year are relatively young strips.
 

The strips that were the biggest losers were mainly veterans. Leading the pack as with last year was a strip that went into reruns. Peanuts dropped 20 papers. The other big loser this year was  Shoe, which dropped 15 papers and Cathy with 11 papers. Here are all the strips that lost 5 or more papers:

Peanuts – 20
Shoe - 15
Cathy – 11
Frank and Ernest - 7
Beetle Bailey – 6
Wizard of Id – 6
Rugrats - 6
Garfield – 5

The continuing pattern of adventure and soap strips losing papers continued in 2001 with adventures strips losing 4 spots and soaps losing 3.

Adventure (-4)
Alley Oop – 30 (0)
Mark Trail – 12 (0)
Phantom – 11 (0)
Brenda Starr – 7 (0)
Dick Tracy – 6 (-1)
Amazing Spider-Man – 5 (-2)
Mickey Mouse – 2 (0)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 2 (0)
Tarzan – 2 (0)
Little Orphan Annie – 1 (0)
Mandrake the Magician – 1 (0)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Zorro – 0 – (-1)

Soaps (-3)
Mary Worth – 39 (-3)
Rex Morgan – 36 (+1)
Judge Parker – 19 (0)
Gil Thorp – 8 (0)
Apartment 3-G – 7 (-1)

Ended -- Heart of Juliet Jones, but it was already at 0 papers in the survey

Labels: Paper Trends

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

Last year our biggest rookie focused on a minority group in this country, the African American community, with the strip Boondocks. This year our top rookie focuses on a different minority community, Latinos, with the strip Baldo that gets 16 papers in our survey. Other big debuts were Soup to Nutz with 11 and Six Chix with 10. Here is the complete list of the Rookies for the past year:

Baldo – 16
Soup To Nutz – 11
Six Chix – 10
Shirley and Son – 7
Red and Rover – 6
Pokemon – 5
Randolph Itch Two A.M. – 4
The Coast (revival of Leftcoast, aka The Other Coast), Pooch Cafe – 3
Helen Sweetheart of The Internet, Natural Selection, Offsides – 2
A Bit Off, Mulch, Raising Hector, Saturday Afternoon, Spooner, Squinkers - 1

Labels: Paper Trends

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

But more importantly, what's with this jarringly untraditional term 'straw-ride'? For goodness sake, how could Hutaf know the activity, but not know it is a hayride? Now I'll grant you, out in the midwest grain-growing belt, I suppose they might actually refer to it as a straw-ride, since they produce lots of straw there. But Hutaf was a New Jersey guy, and here on the east coast we're hay-makers. And yes, I refuse to explain the difference to you city slickers. Look it up yerself, fancy-pants.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

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