Stripper's Guide

 Big announcement Monday, please mark your calendars, call in sick to work, and get a sitter for the kids. 

I know the anticipation is killing you, so here's a preview. The announcement will be one of these four things:

1. We're going on hiatus as I have to go to Hollywood. I have been tapped as technical adviser on the movie set of EKS MARKS THE SPOT: THE GENIUS OF EDDIE EKSERGIAN. Look for the gala release  next Christmas.
2.  The U.S. Government has appealed to Canada to stop me from writing Stripper's Guide. Reason: I am stealing jobs from U.S. newspaper comics researchers, who should take precedence. Canada, of course, capitulated.
   
3.  Stripper's Guide, Inc. has been bought out by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Turns out newspaper comics fans are the hottest marketing targets since tweens. I'm sad to see the site go, but my 300-room castle in Scotland, super-yacht, and personal jet will help to heal me. Thanks guys!
4. None of the above.
   

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 1:58 PM 1 comments

Here's a comic strip by A.T. Crichton that ran in the February 7 1897 edition of the New York Journal. Not much to the gag, I guess, but it certainly comes in an attractive package.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

 On Monday! 

Can't you just feel the anticipation? Like waiting for that (blecch!) ketchup to come out of the bottle? Like smelling a nearby paper plant?  Like the palpable dread of a thousand philosophy majors looking for jobs the day after graduation?

That's right. Monday!

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:47 AM 4 comments

Here to close out our mad professor week is Professor Knix, a Jimmy Swinnerton short run series that appeared in the Hearst Sunday comics from April 3 to July 17 1904*. As seems to happen to all of our mad professors, Professor Knix can depend on having the you-know-what beat out of him by the end of each instalment, whether as a side effect of his invention, or by the innocent bystanders he enrages. 

What I find interesting about this strip, and other early strips featuring mad professors, is that it is common for them to have German accents. I would have thought that trope, the idea that Germany was a fertile ground for off-the-wall geniuses, would have blossomed in the aftermath of Albert Einstein. But evidently Einstein only served to feed an already existing stereotype, and perhaps focus it with the wacky unkempt hair adding to the picture. 

*Source: Atlanta Constitution

Labels: Obscurities

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

Norman Ritchie (who signed himself just 'Norman') was the longstanding editorial cartoonist of the Boston Post. When comic strips became the new rage he was pressed into service to provide homegrown Sunday funnies for the paper as well. A few months ago we covered one of his earliest strip series, 1904's Exploits of Mama's Angel Pet, and I pointed out that he was still feeling his way with this new assignment, and that his grasp of how to construct a good comic strip gag was still in the early stages. 

Well, here we are less than a year later in 1905, and Norman Ritchie has figured out how to produce a good and proper Sunday comic. I won't say that Professor Si N. Tific is a lost masterpiece by any means, but I think it interesting to see just how fast an old pro like Norman Ritchie (he was about 40 at this time) was able to adapt to his new job. 

Professor Si N. Tific ran in the Boston Post Sunday comcs section from April 16 to September 24 1905.

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 4 comments

 It's Mad Professor week here on Stripper's Guide, featuring three, count 'em, three, wacky genius inventors. Leading off with ...

 It's impressive to me that there was a time when a freelance cartoonist, probably a kid who had just completed a mail order course, could walk into a newspaper of the first stature, like the New York World, get an appointment to see the features editor, and sell him on a new comic strip series. 

I know basically nothing about E. Burton Johnson, the cartoonist of today's obscurity, but given that Scientific Sam - Have You Met Him? is his only known newspaper credit, it seems likely that he somehow managed to get that much sought after audience with an editor, and with a not particularly original series, and decent though by no means spectacular cartooning, got himself a berth in one of the globe's highest circulation papers. Wow, that's an incident that would strain the credulity of even Horatio Alger

I suppose you could say the same thing is possible today, but the odds against you seem almost infinitely worse. But as far as I know, you can still show up at The New Yorker and get yourself an audience with the cartoon buyer. Or, with a lot of chutzpah and luck, you could see a features editor at the New York Times, or the Washington Post, and maybe, just maybe, they might take pity on you. But you better arrive with something a lot better than Scientific Sam!

Anyhow, Scientific Sam - Have You Met Him? ran as an occasional weekday feature in the New York Evening World from August 16 to October 6 1909. What happened to Mr. E. Burton Johnson after that? Did he keep on as a cartoonist in some other capacity? Sorry, I haven't a clue. But hopefully he didn't use up his whole lifetime's quota of luck at the New York World, and the rest of his career was also replete with bright spots.

Labels: Obscurities

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

Here's an Outcault postcard from the J. Ottmann Company, published in 1905. My batting average on this card is a perfect .000. I don't get the gag at all -- is Company G a Thing of some sort, or ... ? And then, in the sender's message, what in the world is a "poultry wall", and why's she asking about it????

Labels: Wish You Were Here

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 4 comments