Stripper's Guide

Well, it's about doggone time that One-Shot Wonder Saturdays finally heard from the inimitable Eddie Eksergian, the rootinest, tootinest, wackiest cartooner that there ever was. Eddie's Sunday comic stripping was mainly for the St. Louis Star, but in 1904 he switched hometown teams and went over to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. The above strip is from the tail end of his comic strip career, appearing on April 9 1905, the week after the last of his Sunday series had bitten the dust. Eks stayed in the cartooning game for years more, but as far as I know, he never penned another newspaper comics series.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

When I think of Walt Disney and marketing, naturally my thoughts turn to Mickey Mouse watches and all the other untold bazillions of products emblazoned with the iconic faces of Mickey, Donald, Pluto, Goofy, and the rest of the Disney cast. 

But Disney was no stranger to cross-marketing, either. The company might have wanted its characters on nearly every product under the sun, but they knew where to draw the line. But if they wisely chose not to start a chain of Goofy Gas Stations that sell Mickey's Motor Oil, hey, if someone else wanted to run with that ball and give them a taste of the gate, go for it. 

And so in 1938-40 the Standard Oil Company of California (which I'm now told is distinct from the company that became Esso/Exxon, but still one of the conglomerate under control of old man Rockefeller) licensed the characters to appear on their advertising and on promotional materials at their stations. Disney provided some absolutely beutiful renderings of their characters for this marketing blitz, of which we have a small taste shown above (these were run in early 1940). I don't know if we have many Disney experts following along here at Stripper's Guide, but I bet some of those knowledgeable folk can even tell us the staff artist who created these lovely images. 

Oops, I should have known better. Disney being so well documented, I actually found a post about this ad campaign at the Disney History Institute website. Over there they seem pretty convinced that the Standard Oil account was serviced mostly with the artwork of Hank Porter.

Labels: Marketing Madness

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

12/1933

Miss Pauline Moore Marries N. Y. Artist

Miss Pauline Love Moore, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Moore, became the bride of Jefferson Machamer, New York artist, this week at the Methodist Church at Westminster, in the presence of the immediate families.

The pair left after the ceremony for a trip through the West, and after October they will reside in New York. Mrs. Machamer is a graduate of the William Penn High School and has played in a number of New York theatrical productions. Recently she has been posing for magazine covers. Her husband contributes comic strips to magazines and newspapers. 

Jefferson Machamer says too many people ask: “How do you ever get ideas for cartoons?” (Ideas like the one on page 50.) And he gives an answer. He says: “Well, an idea might bloom this way: Business demands me in Washington, D. C., for a few days and I ask my wife to help pack a bag.

“ ‘A bag?’ she stonies. ‘You’d better put a couple of windows in our steamer trunk and let me makeup a bed in it and-’

“ ‘Quiet!’ I yell, race for the drawing board and rough out a businessman starting for Washington with a combination trailer trunk. Which bears out advice Clare Briggs once gave me. ‘Listen to or watch anyone in the world for ten minutes, and they’ll say or do something funny enough to draw!’ ”

Machamer turned to painting after he wrote (and starred in) eight two-reel comedies for 20th Century-Fox. “I painted 60 oil and pastel masterpieces in three months at Los Angeles,” he says, “and had a one-man show, but he didn’t buy anything. . .

“Am now living on a wonderful old North Carolina plantation which we named Four Chimneys. It has four coal-burning fireplaces, three coal-burning stoves and a coal-burning furnace. I have to tend all and sometimes I just don’t know whom I agree with, Harold Ickes or John L. Lewis!”

5/25/1947

1/9/1949

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Smilin' Jack, the unique flying strip with a roll call of memorable characters and zany plotlines, was a fixture of the Chicago Tribune and a very healthy client list for just a hair shy of four decades. But it didn't start out with that name. The first Sunday, shown above, is how it debuted in the Tribune on October 1 1933. At the outset the strip was titled On The Wing, and the star of the show was a midwestern hayseed type named Mack.  

How the strip got into the paper in this fetal stage I don't know, but according to creator Zack Mosley, it wasn't long before Colonel Patterson, that midwife of great Tribune comics, sat down with him and brainstormed how to turn this instantly forgettable copycat aviation strip into one that flew higher than the competition and outlasted it by decades. 

Patterson took a cue from Mosley himself, whose nickname was Smilin' Zack, and decreed that the strip and its hero would be renamed Smilin' Jack. With that simple reader-attracting hook in place he encouraged Mosley to write the strip to his own strengths, which ran to the quirky and tongue-in-cheek. The strip was Sunday-only at this time, and between the installments of December 24 and 31 1933, the title and character name change were put in place. The strip did not immediately turn into its zany mature self, but Zack started loosening up his cartooning style, began evolving his hero into the dapper ladies man, and the boring flying school stories were dropped in favour of more exciting fare.

Labels: Firsts and Lasts

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

Time to inflict on you another postcard by Cobb Shinn. Here's a case where the cartoon, for all its faults, has a recognizeable subject, but it just doesn't serve to bring home the gag that is alluded to by the caption. Cobb, oh Cobb, what are we going to do with you. 

 This one has no maker or copyright information, but it was postally used in 1911.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

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