Stripper's Guide

Waaaaaayyy back in the summer, when we were young and life was gay, I published a long series of posts covering the comic strip series that ran in the Chicago Tribune Comic Book. Unfortunately, that blog series was not absolutely complete, as there were two titles for which I did not have the necessary samples to do a proper show and tell.

Luckily for us, Kurt Gore has come along and offered me scans of one of those series, making us 50% closer to our goal. Thanks Kurt!

The Drums of Fu Manchu was a comic strip adaptation of a Republic movie serial of the same name. The first episode of the movie serial was released on March 15 1940, and the first episode of the comic strip, which told the first episode's story via stills from the movie, was printed in the March 31 Chicago Tribune Comic Book -- the inaugural edition of the new Tribune feature.

Each episode was recounted in three pages of the comic book. The stills didn't work all that well because the printing was quite muddy. Although Tribune retouchers worked hard to make the photos reproduce better, often by removing backgrounds and outlining the characters, the results were less than spectacular. This method was finally dropped, and starting on June 2 the feature was drawn, probably by a Tribune bullpenner. The only clue the cartoonist gives us to his identity, beyond his style, are the initials N.P. on each strip. The new strip was much more attractive, but the movie serial only had so many episodes, so the strip had no place to go after adapting the whole run. The last comic book episode ran on June 23 1940.

Those N.P.  initials don't match anyone at the Trib that I can think of. In fact the only American cartoonist of the era with those initials I can come up with is Nick Penn. But I doubt it was him. The style has sort of a generic Tribune look to it. Gus Edson, Stanley Link, Al Posen, Carl Ed ... any of those Tribune guys could, I think, have whipped off this sort of thing. In fact, the second panel looks like a Caniff swipe. Hey, could it be? Nah. Caniff couldn't draw this mediocre on a bet.


Oh, by the way. If you'd like to see a good helping of the movie serial, head on over to The Serial Squadron, where they offer a half-hour video clip from the serial, and have a fully restored DVD available for sale when you just can't survive without knowing what happens next.

P.S. Before you expend a lot of brain juice trying to figure out the secret identity of N.P., I have to tell you that our resident super-sleuth, Alex Jay, has come up with nearly incontrovertible proof of the artist's identity. I have to say, when he revealed it to me, I was rather pleased. But that's all I'm going to say -- you can wait for Jay's Ink-Slinger Profile tomorrow to learn ... the rest of the story. Good day!

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book

I hope you enjoyed the last month of posts about the Chicago Tribune Comic Book and its creators. I know that Alex and I enjoyed doing the research to bring the series to you. If you really, REALLY enjoyed the comic book features themselves, you might drop a line to the good folks at IDW Publishing expressing that interest. I talked to editor Dean Mullaney about doing a book of these features, and he felt they were a mite esoteric to warrant a book. He's probably right. But if there was an upwelling of fan interest, well, you just never know.

I really enjoyed getting the feedback on this series as I learned a lot from you folks as well. Given the level of knowledge out there in the readership, it has long ago stopped surprising me that you folks took me behind the woodshed on a few points.

First there was the question about the identity of the Bucks McKale creator. Used to be that the smart money was on Vin Sullivan,  until Alex Jay practically pulled a rabbit out of his hat, finding a cartoonist named E.B. Sullivan who was known to sign his work as Sullie. Although we don't know for sure if either of these gents is the creator, at least the puzzle is now on the web, where perhaps others will continue to weight in with evidence.

The bigger bombshell, and it only came to light very recently so that the posts do not reflect it, is that the Chicago Tribune Comic Book lasted longer than I believed. Y'see, I had this crazy idea that the research about the Comic Book features was best done with the microfilm of the Chicago Tribune. Foolish, foolish me. Turns out that while the Tribune itself gave up on the comic book format itself in April 1943, and the former comic book features petered out in their regular comics section over the next six months, the Tribune's clients weren't quite so cavalier.

Only a few papers other than the Trib are known to have run the comic book. The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Post did, and I would bet that the Detroit Free Press did, although I don't have any samples from that paper. It never occurred to me to spend any time with these papers in regard to researching the comic book, and that was a mistake.

The Los Angeles Times comic strips are indexed on Dave Strickler's website. If I'd bothered to just pay attention to what is there in black and white, it appears that the Times ran the comic book section intact for three months longer than the Tribune, cancelling it and all the features on July 4 1943. That means that while for many of the comic book features I still have later end dates, for the ones that the Trib dropped shortly after the end of the comic book section itself, like Bucks McKale, the Times is a source for additional episodes.The other difference in the Times is that they did not run Lew Loyal except on one isolated occasion. It appears that in the LA Times comic book, Brenda Starr stuck around much longer than in the Chicago Tribune version, and Lew Loyal was not needed.

Boston Post Comic Book, courtesy Cliff Erickson

I only realized this because of a message from reader Cliff Erickson -- and Cliff had bigger news than that. He told me that he also had later dates on Tribune Comic Book strips from the Boston Post as well. Turns out that the Post, while they apparently had given up on the comic book format per se, kept the comic book features in their own separate section, not printed on a space-available basis in the regular comics section like the Tribune, to the bitter end.

As you may have noticed, many of the Chicago Tribune comic book strips ended in that paper at the end of October. Here's a tally of Chicago Tribune end dates:

Bucks McKale - 4/11
Fighting with Daniel Boone - 5/9
Speed Berry - 8/29
Mr. Ex/The Whizzer - 9/26
Hy Score - 10/31
Lew Loyal - 10/31
Rocky the Stone-Age Kid - 10/31
Streamer Kelly - 10/31
Vesta West - 10/31
Gertie O'Grady - 11/14

Cliff told me that of his four scattered dates of the Boston Post comic book section, his latest was October 3, and that the section still ran Bucks McKale, Speed Berry and The Whizzer, all of which had been gone for varying times from the Tribune. Like the LA Times, the Post did not run Lew Loyal, but rather used Brenda Starr as their headline strip.

It seems obvious then that the Chicago Tribune, while having given up on the comic book section itself, was meeting the demand (or contract requirements) of a few client newspapers for it. Based on the last episodes that run in the Tribune itself, it seems likely that October 31 might very well have been the final edition of the comic book section offered to clients. Or maybe November 14, or maybe even later. The only way we could know for sure is to; first, determine when the Boston Post last ran its comic book section, and second, cross-reference the last episodes printed between the Tribune and the Post, And third, hope that no other paper was still running the doggone thing!

Although I have spot-indexed the Boston Post of the 1940s, I have nothing in my notes indicating that I saw these comic book sections. That may be because they weren't microfilmed, or it might be because I had no interest in them since I thought I was already in possession of definitive information from the Tribune. For now the research path is cut off as I don't see myself getting back to Boston anytime soon to check that information. Any Boston folks reading this who would like to try their hands at some research work?

By the way, Cliff Erickson tells me that the sort-of-superhero that took over the Mr. Ex strip, The Whizzer, appeared to be printed on a consistent basis in the Post. Here is the last episode he has, from October 3, Thanks again Cliff!!

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book

 One of the longest running features in the Chicago Tribune Comic Book insert of 1940-43 was Gertie O'Grady. The strip debuted on June 30 1940, shortly after the comic book itself, and managed to outlive the comic book section by a short while, ending November 14 1943.

Gertie O'Grady concerns a middle-aged Irish woman, whose role in life is never really spelled out in any great detail. She seemed to be a maid in early episodes, then a boardinghouse proprietor, but through most of the series she had no clear career. Her comedic foils started off on the zany end, with a mad professor and a giant ape, but later switched to a poor Irish immigrant girl named Fortune, and then she finally hooked up permanently with Uncle Shanty, an Irishman of the old school. The Irish humor in the strip was stereotypical, of course, but 180 degrees away from the coarse, racist Irish humor you would have seen in strips thirty years earlier. In Gertie O'Grady, the Irish are treated as loveable in their picturesque, idiosyncratic ways.

Cartoonist Paul McCarthy was at the helm of the Sunday-only strip. I know little about him other than that apparently he later went on to be one of the artists behind the extremely successful Sad Sack line of comic books.

EDIT 12/31/2017: Just found a half-tab example of Gertie O'Grady dated 3/20/1949 -- six years after the end of the original series. Although there's no overt clue on the tearsheet,  my guess is that this is from the New York Sunday News, and they commissioned this as one of their filler strips. It is apparently new material, because Gertie has slimmed down and prettied up considerably, while Uncle Shanty has become more decrepit looking. Has anyone seen any other later examples?

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

Vesta West was the last new strip to appear in the Chicago Tribune's Comic Book section. It debuted on August 30 1942, about seven months before the section itself was cancelled. Vesta West survived the section, but not for long, ending on October 31 1943 along with most of the other refugee features from the Comic Book.

The strip was a pretty conventional present-day Western, with a little added sex appeal from a girl heroine. The strip was created by Fred Meagher, whose excellent bio on Yesterday's Papers is highly informative, except on the point of why he turned the strip over to Ray Bailey after just two months. I'm afraid I'm no more in the know on that issue. The fact remains, though, that Bailey took over with the strip of October 11 1942, and stuck with it until the end. Before this assignment Bailey had primarily been an assistant, working on Terry and the Pirates and The Gumps, both Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate properties.

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

Mister Ex was some sort of a secret agent, forever embroiled in international intrigue of all sorts. The stories, breathlessly told with no time wasted discussing background, tell us just about nothing about our hero. His gimmick, I'm told, is that he was a master of disguise, but that seldom figured into the plotlines in any significant way.

At the beginning of the series,which debuted January 19 1941, our hero was bearded, a rarity in those days. Bert Whitman, the creator of the strip, probably thought it would be a great way to identify his main character. However, I guess the American public just wasn't ready for a hirsute hero, and the soup strainer disappeared in less than six months.

The strip started off slow, with Ex in a small-time drama regarding a mistreated kid. It wasn't long, though, before the hero was getting involved in a banana republic revolution, then pretending to be a Nazi to infiltrate a spy ring, then going for a nautical adventure hunting German subs. It was all very exciting, and once Whitman got into the groove he wrote a pretty good little adventure strip. Once the Comic Book section ended, though, Mr. Ex only made it a few months in the regular comic section, ending July 4 1943.

But that's not quite the end of the story. In the final panel of that July 4 Sunday it was announced that the strip would continue, renamed The Whizzer. However, the next Sunday no whizzing was to be found in the Trib's comic section. It wasn't until September 5 that a strip bearing that name appeared. The renamed strip only ran once more, on September 26, before it disappeared for good. Question is, did The Whizzer appear on a regular basis elsewhere? All I can say is that I haven't found it anywhere. Anyone? [I originally posed this question way back in 2006, and I haven't heard anyone yet volunteer any additional information]

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

Among the better features of the Chicago Tribune Comic Book was Captain Storm. In a line-up designed to appeal to comic-book crazy kids, and to compete with The Spirit pull-out section available from the Chicago Sun, there was a lot of second-rate stuff  in the 'comic book', but Captain Storm was a cut above. The strip barely got off the ground, though, running just five months from November 13 1940 to March 2 1941

The strip was nominally about the skipper of a freighter ship, but the heroic Captain Storm seemed to spend more time everywhere else, because the first story arc has him losing his ship to thieves.The writing, the art and the plot are all top-notch work and I don't doubt that they were reader favorites.

The strip is by Ed Moore, whose work resembles another Chicago-trained cartoonist, Dick Moores, enough that I get the two confused. Ed Moore did some assisting work on Dan Dunn and Don Winslow prior to creating Captain Storm, the only newspaper strip on which he got credit. However, Moore was also working at the same time in comic books. Perhaps he found that to be more lucrative or less demanding than Captain Storm, and that explains its short run. Moore worked in comic books and assisted on newspaper strips into the 1960s, then switched to advertising work, according to Ron Goulart in The Great Comic Book Artists, Volume 2.

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

Hy Score was one of the new features introduced in the Chicago Tribune Comic Book. I guess the comic book was somewhat of a success because it remained a part of the Tribune for three years. The gimmick had to be what kept it alive, because the contents tended to be less than inspired. Case in point is Hy Score, which was added to the comic book on June 30 1940. At first this feature was truly awful, with ridiculously text-heavy narratives and exposition laden plots.

The strip was also at times titled Secret Agent Hy Score, Adventures of Hy Score and Hy Score in Arabia. An unmemorable one-panel 'topper' called Hy Score Comic Book Quiz was added in October 1942. 

Mr. Score was an FBI agent who got into all the familiar scrapes of the genre. He solved murder mysteries, foiled espionage, and generally brought all sorts of miscreants to justice. The strip was penned by someone signing themselves as George Merkle, of whom I know nothing. Merkle's stories improved over the life of the strip, as he slowly but surely pared away at the paragraphs long captions. His art was alright, except that he had a real blind spot (heh) about drawing eyes. Most of his characters run around with eyes firmly shut, and when he did attempt to draw them open you can understand why. The strip looked best when the cartoonist was swiping from Alex Raymond, which he did often. According to Jerry Bails, there never really was a George Merkle -- he says that this is a pseudonym of George Marko, a fellow who worked in comic books.

Hy Score managed to outlast the Tribune comic book, albeit for just half a year. The strip was put to bed on 10/31/43.

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

The last thing you'd expect to find in a comic strip about cavemen is tenderness and tranquility. Yet Frank Engli's Rocky the Stone-Age Kid is just about the gentlest comic strip imaginable. I don't mean saccharine sweet either; I just mean that everyone treats everyone else with genuine love and respect. There's no violence to speak of -- certainly no club to the noggin slapstick -- and about the only characters that get hurt are the fish that Rocky's family catches on their frequent fishing trips. Peacefulness isn't easy to do in the context of a funny comic strip, and, to be frank, Rocky isn't all that funny. It is, however, heartwarming, pleasant and an enjoyable read.

Frank Engli, better known to comic strip fans as Milton Caniff's long-time letterer, was at the helm for this strip, which ran in the Chicago Tribune's Comic Book section starting August 25 1940. It ran there until the Comic Book section folded, and then graduated to the main Tribune comic section, ending October 31 1943.

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

Kit Cabot may not have had the makings of the next blockbuster hit, but I'm sure intrigued and wish it had stuck around awhile. I ask you -- how can you go wrong by making your lovely heroine an artist who undresses on panel at least once per week?

Kit Cabot was added to the Chicago Tribune Comic Book section on June 8 1941. At first it might have seemed an odd choice, because the strip has a lot in common with Brenda Starr, with which it shared space in the Comic Book section. Both were strong female 'working girl' characters, and both always seems to have a moment to peel down to their skivvies in the middle of the action. However, after three weeks sharing space, Brenda was graduated from the Comic Book section into the regular comic section, making it obvious that Kit Cabot had been intended as her replacement here in the Comic Book when the elder strip went on to bigger and better things.

However, Kit Cabot didn't last long. The strip was dropped from the Comic Book on April 26 1942, less than a year later, when the section was downsized from 24 to 16 pages. Ah, all the undergarments we never got to see...

The strip was penned by someone named Gene McNerney, a name that means little to me. All I know is that he (?) also tried syndicating a couple features through the elusive Watkins Syndicate, neither of which have ever turned up in my research.

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

A quasi-historical imagining of Daniel Boone's adventures in founding the town of Boonesboro/Boonesborogh/Fort Boone, this feature was by C.C. (Carlisle) Cooper. Although the strip is quite good and consistently entertaining, it suffers from excellent but cartoony art that just isn't appropriate for a blood-and-thunder adventure strip like this.  There's also the matter of the name, which it seems to me implies that the strip is actually told from the viewpoint of Boone's adversaries. Although that concept might have some merit for being out of the ordinary, in fact the badly worded name was meant to indicate that the strip was about those who fought alongside Boone.

In the early strips, Boone's partners are a couple of hunters cum sidekicks named Bear-Dog and Pierre Perue. Later, the focus shifts to Boone's young friend Catfish (seen in the samples above), who periodically elbows Boone out of his own strip. It's all good fun, with just enough historical accuracy to keep the historians from taking up arms against the cartoonist.

Fighting with Daniel Boone debuted on October 27 1940, and ran about a month past the end of the Comic Book itself, ending on May 9 1943. As far as I know, this is Cooper's only newspaper cartooning credit, and that's a shame as it seems to me he would have been really good handling the art on a humor strip.

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

If breathless adventure is your cup of tea, and you're willing to deal with short rations of logic and coherence, Lew Loyal is right up your alley. This Chicago Tribune Comic Book series, which debuted on October 13 1940, must have been considered a big draw. While other strips got one or two half-tab size pages, Lew Loyal received a munificent four pages per issue.

Creator Milt Youngren gave the Trib a lot for their money, too. Those four page adventures read like an over-excited kid trying to tell a story. The events pour out at breakneck speed, and in the process cause and effect become jumbled and important plot points are missed and muddled.

Another apt comparison that can be made is with the typical lesser grade comic book stories of this period. And, of course, that's basically what the Chicago Tribune wanted in their Comic Book section. They must have been tickled pink when Youngren's submissions got the thumbs up as being "just like comic books" from the editors' kids.

Although there is precious little expository material in the strip, I surmise that Lew Loyal (the fellow in the red sweater) is a youngish teen. He and his Uncle Mack, who seems to be some sort of government agent, are constantly stumbling onto nefarious criminal plots to kick-start their adventures, and then when the war begins, Axis saboteurs pop out from every dark doorway and abandoned warehouse. Lew's friend Becky tags along on most of his adventures. The kids are often ducking hails of bullets, while fighting back with their wits alone, usually doing more to bring the villains to justice than their uncle.

Lew Loyal got a demotion in 1942, down to two half-tab pages per issue. The strip outlived the Comic Book section, which ended in April 1943, but didn't last long in the Tribune's regular comic section. Lew Loyal went into retirement as of the October 31 1943 episode.

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

 Today I suppose a strip titled Streamer Kelly would tell the saga of a multimedia website developer, but back on September 8 1940, when the strip debuted in the Chicago Tribune Comic Book section, a streamer was a fireman. The Sunday-only Streamer Kelly told tales from the firehouse for a solid run of seven years (with a big hole in the middle, which we'll get to momentarily).

This strip makes me wonder -- kids were (and are?) definitely fascinated by firemen, so why weren't there more features telling the tales of the profession? I guess I answered that question for myself when I read a big batch of Streamer Kelly strips in preparation for this post, and found that the most of the plots revolved around firebugs. When push comes to shove, I guess there's not all that many different plots available that involve firefighting. Oh well, so much for yet another of my million dollar ideas.

One of Streamer Kelly's firebugs is noteworthy, though, for their nom de guerre -- The Joker (see sample #2). The Batman's nemesis predates Streamer Kelly's villain by a good solid year, but still, kinda neat. Unfortunately, given that the creator, Jack Ryan, was also producing comic books in the early 1940s, I have the sinking feeling that he did not come up with the idea independently.

The Streamer Kelly strip had two separate runs. The first, in the Chicago Tribune Comic Book, survived after that section ended by graduating to the main comic section, but the flame was put out on October 31 1943.

This might have been because Jack Ryan was called into service, because after the war was over Streamer Kelly reappeared in the Chicago Tribune, starting April 7 1946. The strip ran there until December 31 1950. Considering that I have never seen the strip running in any other paper, I think it's safe to say that the Tribune was uncharacteristically liberal in affording it comic section space all that time.

PS -- the term 'joker' -- used in two different senses in our samples -- deserves explanation (well, at least I was confused). Turns out that the most popular municipal fire alarm system in the U.S., until the 1970s or so, was the Gamewell system. For reasons unknown it was known as the 'Gamewell Joker'. Okay, so maybe Jack Ryan did come up with his Joker character independently after all, taking a cue from the Gamewell device's name.

PPS -- the top sample has been reformatted for this blogpost -- originally the top and bottom halves appeared on separate pages of the Chicago Tribune Comic Book.

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

World War II caused most Americans to put aside their pre-war hopes and dreams, and concentrate instead on pulling together in pursuit of victory. The same was true for many comic strip characters, including today's Obscurity, Speed Berry.

The Sunday-only comic strip began in the Chicago Tribune Comic Book section on April 27 1941, then titled Bush Berry. The strip was intended to be about baseball. As is typical of baseball strips, we began with a farm boy who has a rocket for an arm. Called up by a major league team, he seems to be on the road to fame and fortune as the star hurler of the Chicago Eagles. Naturally there are some unforeseen bumps in the road, but 'Bush' Berry has everything going for him.

However, creator Evans Krehbiel apparently saw the writing on the wall in mid-1941, and he had Bush Berry enlist in the Army, where his nickname received a promotion, on October 12 1941, to Speed Berry.  At first Speed's life doesn't change all that drastically. His chums and enemies from the Chicago Eagles all seem to have enlisted with him, and his job in the Army is -- what else -- to play baseball.

Then Pearl Harbor happened, and the tone of the strip quickly changed. Soon Speed and his entourage were on their way across the Pacific, baseball all but forgotten. The strip now became a red-blooded war strip, with Speed and his buddies seemingly single-handedly winning the war. So fine a job did Speed do in the Army that he was mustered out early. The strip was cancelled on August 29 1943, about four months after it was graduated from the Comic Book section, which was cancelled, to the regular Tribune Sunday comics section.

Evans Krehbiel, son of respected artist Dulah Evans Krehbiel, either had a quickly evolving style, or he got a lot of help on this strip. The art varies from cartoony to sketchy to finely delineated over its short three year life. Krehbiel got at least one more syndicated comic strip job, the 1944-45 Wilbur Wackey. Lambiek cites two additional features, Bitsy and Becky's Senior, neither of which I have ever seen. Bitsy is only known to exist as a set of originals, none of which have copyright dates or syndicate slugs. Becky's Senior was advertised by American International Syndicate, which claimed a whole slew of features that no one's ever seen actually running in a newspaper.

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

Bucks McKale was one of the earliest new features adopted by the Chicago Tribune Comic Book, starting on June 30 1940. It managed to outlast the Comic Book section itself, if only by a single week, ending on April 11 1943.

Bucks McKale is a story about a fabulously rich kid. How he gained his money I don't recall, not having seen the first installments since I reviewed the material on microfilm about twenty-five years ago. However, what I can say is that despite the superficial resemblance, the feature was nothing like Richie Rich. Bucks McKale's money was rarely an important plot point, except that it sometimes gave him a convenient springboard to adventure with his buddy/mentor/manager, Smoothie. Bucks liked to fly off to exotic locales in his own planes, star in Hollywood movies that he financed, and the like. But once the money got him started on an adventure, there was rarely anything more said about it.

Bucks gained himself a sweetheart on one of his cross-country flights when he and Smoothie crash-landed in a hillbilly area. April May, one of the local yokels, fell instantly and deeply in love with him, and accompanied him on adventures from that point on.She also got to appear with him on the cover of the comic book on Sundays when he got that featured spot.

Signing the strip was someone named Sullie. I was long ago told by researcher Paul Leiffer that this was Vin Sullivan, famously primarily for having been the comic book editor responsible for Action Comics, the birthplace of Superman.

In my book I mentioned this possible ID without much comment. However, I have now looked into the matter some more. I re-read an interview with Sullivan in Alter Ego #27, and looked at the samples of his art there and on various websites. The artwork seems to be an excellent match, no doubt about that. My only problem with the ID lies in that interview. While Sullivan did leave DC Comics in 1940, right around the time Bucks McKale began, it sounds like Sullivan went pretty quickly into other comic book-related endeavors. He also states, in response to the question of whether he considers himself a cartoonist, "I haven't tried to sell comic strips of my own stuff, not as a success, really. So, yes, I think you could call me a cartoonist, because I've done some cartoons for the newspapers and also for the magazines themselves."

That doesn't sound to me like the response of a guy who had a Sunday comic strip running in the Chicago Tribune for three years. Self-effacing, perhaps? Anyway, he's so vague that the comment certainly doesn't shut the door. Unfortunately, the portion of the interview in which he discusses his career immediately after leaving DC, and which might have answered the question definitely, apparently happened during a tape recorder malfunction.

It wasn't actually Sullivan's words or art that ended up clinching it. It was the fact that as research went on with the other contributors to the Comic Book, I kept encountering cartoonists who would later be associated with Magazine Enterprises, the comic book company run by Sullivan. It seemed too great a coincidence that so many ME hands were in the Comic Book, and that a guy who went by Sullie, and drew like Vin Sullivan, was there too.

** EDIT: D.D. Degg has pointed out that Editor & Publisher, which for some reason I never checked while researching this strip, lists the creator as one E.B. Sullivan.  This E.B. Sullivan fellow even has two other credits (albeit on strips so obscure they have not yet been found actually running anywhere). So the Vin Sullivan story is now all of a sudden looking a little less likely. Yes, Vin has a convenient gap in his work history (which D.D. Degg now seems to be able to fill -- see below), and yes, his style is compatible with that used on Bucks McKale, but the last thing we want to do is blithely steal a credit from another cartoonist just because the peg happens to fit well in the slot. Does anyone know of a cartoonist by the name of E.B. Sullivan who might have lived in the Chicago area?

** EDIT2: Alex Jay has found a cartoonist named E.B. Sullivan, and a profile is now on the blog. Is this our man? There is no primary source that definitely ties him to Bucks McKale, or the other two features, but he seems to be in the right place at the right time.

**EDIT3 (9/28/15): Now we have additional proof that E.B. Sullivan is our guy. I received this letter from Steve Joynt:

I was looking for info on a strip called Bucks McKale and found your entries really helpful.

 

I think that what I have can help you settle, once and for all, the mystery of the cartoonist.

 

My wife was digging through boxes of her deceased parents' belongings and ran across an original piece of art that was made for her dad, probably at the request of her grandfather.

 

In the 1940s, her father (Kent Godwin) was a young boy in Chicago. His father (Gaylord Godwin) worked for United Press in Chicago.

 

In this piece of artwork, the character, Bucks McKale says, "Your dad (Gaylord) and my boss (the creator of the cartoon, no doubt) were school mates at Ole Mizzou." Bucks is wearing a sweater with a big gold M on it.

 

E.B. Sullivan, according to the bio you posted, attended the University of Missouri in the mid-20s, as did Gaylord.

 

I would think that would settle the question that the strip's creator was E.B. and not Vin Sullivan.

 

By the way, the bottom of the artwork is personalized with "Best wishes to Kent Godwin from Bucks McKale and Sullies."

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book, Obscurities

In 1940, the comic book publishing business, whose ledgers showed very healthy profits even before the phenomenon of the superhero blew things wide open, was madly booming. Every entrepreneur in publishing was drooling over the money to be made with the 'funnybooks'. Newspapers, of course, were no exception. They already had the Sunday comics section, which was similar, but could they profit more? How could they further bait the rugrats into howling for Pops to buy the Sunday paper?

Most contented themselves with purchasing a comic strip that originated or resembled those in the comic books. The new Superman comic strip, of course, was the obvious choice and a hot property. But some papers wanted to go further. Enter Bell Syndicate, Will Eisner, and their Spirit 'comic book' section. More than a few major papers decided to bite on this attempt to piggyback on the popularity of comic books. However, believe it or not (as Mr. Ripley might say), the Spirit comic book section was not the first of its kind.

No, the first came from the Chicago Tribune, which published their inaugural Comic Book Magazine section, in addition to the regular comics section, on March 31 1940 (the Spirit section debuted on June 2 of that year). However, it is my guess that the Trib was not in any sense a real originator. Bell Syndicate needed time to round up clients for their proposed comic book, while the Trib, alerted by Bell's marketing, only needed to throw together a few features and fast-track the production of a couple extra color pages in order to beat the originators to market.

It was ridiculously simple, too. The 'comic book' was simply a few color newspaper sheets that kids were supposed to cut up and form into an unbound 'comic book'. With a few simple cuts and folds kids would have a 16-page (and for awhile, 24-page) comic book. The cost to the Tribune was comparatively small, especially if they could hold down the costs of producing the material.

And boy did they do a great job of holding down creative costs. In the first issue of Comic Book Magazine, the outlay was about as close to zero as possible. The  kiddies were treated to Old Doc Yak and Bobby Make-Believe strips from the 1910s; a couple of current topper strips from Tribune properties -- Tiny Tim's Dill and Daffy and Smokey Stover's Spooky; and photo montage comics from a pair of movie serials -- Drums of Fu Manchu and Overland with Kit Carson. The former was in theatres at the time, and its appearance here was almost certainly underwritten by Republic Pictures. On the other hand, the Columbia Kit Carson serial probably wasn't even in theatres anymore in Chicago, making its appearance here very odd indeed.

The Comic Book contents varied from week to week. Also regularly on tap were the Harold Teen topper Josie, Sweeney and Son topper Them Days is Gone Forever, and Corky from the Gasoline Alley Sunday. A new addition in the second week's issue was Texas Slim and Dirty Dalton. Although I long presumed these to be reprints from the 1920s series, I now wonder if Ferd Johnson might have been begun producing new episodes of the series somewhere down the line in its Comic Book run.

The inclusion of topper strips in the Comic Book would continue all through the run, but the 1910s reprints, thankfully, were replaced with other material by the end of June. The photo comics, too were phased out. Both Kit Carson and Fu Manchu changed to regular drawn comic strips before being replaced with other strips within the first three months

In June the rival Spirit section debuted, and that seems to have been a red flag to the Tribune to put their game into a higher gear. At the end of June new features were added to the section, replacing all or most of the reprint material, and cutting back the quantity of toppers. The new features definitely had a comic book flavor to them, and no wonder -- many of the creators had been pulled from those ranks. In fact, after researching the comic book careers of the creators, it seems that many had connections with Magazine Enterprises. That brings up the question of whether ME editor Vin Sullivan was perhaps acting as the packager for some of the content of the Comic Book.

Some new features were designed to please the kids, others an older demographic. Brenda Starr was one of the new entries on June 30, and the series created for the Comic Book that had by far the longest and most successful run. Brenda seems meant primarily to appeal to a female audience, but creator Dale Messick knew how to attract the males as well -- Brenda had a habit of spending a lot of her on-panel life adjusting her stockings, running around in negligees and taking bubble baths.

The next year saw the Comic Book section grow incrementally stronger, with more comic book-style strips appearing. Although there was occasional backsliding into reprints, they were at least entertainingly weird choices -- for instance, to absolutely no one's demand, Tack Knight's early-1930s strip Little Folks was offered for three weeks. Even W.E. Hill's sophisticated Among Us Mortals spent a month between Comic Book covers.

The Comic Book was originally meant to serve as competition for The Spirit, but both comic book-style newspaper inserts failed to make much of a splash. The Spirit section definitely won the skirmish for subscribing papers, but was never a real cash cow. The Tribune, however, soon found that they had another reason to be offering circulation-builders. In December 1941, after a great deal of fanfare, Marshall Field's Chicago Sun newspaper debuted on the newsstand as a liberal alternative to the Tribune's arch-conservative editorial policy. Along with the different slant came a surprisingly strong Sunday comics section, also appealing to the comic book readers -- Buckskin Lad, Navy Bob Steele, Captain Midnight and True Comics were obviously meant to appeal to the Chicago Tribune Comic Book readers.

If not for the Chicago Sun, the Tribune Comic Book probably would have been phased out by the end of 1941. But with additional competition for the junior hearts and minds, its lease on life was extended. The page count, though, was reduced back from 24 to 16 in 1942. That was a minor loss, because the new material was continued while more of the secondary material was dropped.

Finally, it was wartime paper shortages that ended the Comic Book in 1943. Even though the Tribune had its own vast corporate-owned forests in Canada supplying paper, the war was, if not the real reason, at least a convenient excuse to drop a feature that never did seem to do a whole lot for circulation. Most features from the Comic Book were then moved into the body of the Chicago Tribune's regular comic section. However, many of them were cancelled shortly thereafter, and it was pretty obvious that the decision had already been made and that the Trib was just being frugal using up stock. A few strips did last longer -- Streamer Kelly, in particular had a long life. Brenda Starr, which only ran in the section for one year and was then graduated to the main comics section of the Tribune, continued for over seventy years.

Starting Monday, and running for about a month, we will shine the spotlight on most of the original features that ran in the Chicago Tribune Comic Book. Alex Jay has uncovered  interesting biographical material on many of the creators, too, for some excellent Ink-Slinger Profiles.

I do have a favor to ask. You notice that I said *most* features? I haven't been able to do posts on two features due to lack of samples. If anyone out there can provide sample scans of the 1940 series Kit Carson (both photo and drawn versions) and the drawn version of Drums of Fu Manchu, I would be most appreciative!

Labels: Chicago Tribune Comic Book