Stripper's Guide

“Punky,” a real, wholesome, natural and human little boy makes his bow to readers of the Harrisburg Telegraph and a half hundred other newspapers throughout the country today.

But “Punky” will mean more to Harrisburgers than to other communities since his creator, Fred Balk, lives here.

There is an interesting story behind the story of “Punky.” Mr. Balk like many children preferred pencil and chalk to other playthings of childhood. He sketched continuously on walls, floors, books, pads, ceilings when he could reach them. His school days were tragically interrupted by the slaying of his father, a sargeant [sic] of Chicago detectives who fell in line of duty when the artist-to-be was ten years of age. Mr. Balk had to go to work but he arranged to attend continuation school and later completed a course in the Academy of Fine Arts. He then struck out on his own as an artist but the world turned down his offerings. Finally he returned to his instructor with turned down samples of his wares and asked: “What’s the matter with these?”

The instructor countered with, “Fred, why don’t you take up prize fighting?”

And Fred did. Scaling 6 feet, one with a weight of 195 pounds he added boxing for good measure.

But he couldn’t drop the pencil and chalk and after establishing a cellar studio in Chicago, sketched and sketched and sketched some more.

Always memories of two nephews, his favorite boys guided his pen. And in February last year magazines started buying his output. Since then he has sold thirty-seven panels to the Saturday Evening Post—one appears in the current number, a great number to a score and more of other magazines.

Mr. Balk cannot determine the exact date of Punky's birth but he believes the little chap has been a part of him since the days of his own frustrated youth. He made a series of Punky’s daily activities, submitted them to the Associated Press which immediately accepted.

Mr. Balk is married but Punky is his only son.

And to him Punky is a real flesh and blood little boy.

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The 1951 directory said Wong resided at 319 Main Street. He was a stockman at the Walgreen Drug Company. His parents were still at 619 1/2 Main Street and involved with the Oriental Cafe.

The Klamath Falls Herald and News, June 1, 1954, reported Wong’s break into syndicated comics.

Mike Wong, young Klamath Falls cartoonist, is now associated with Hank Ketcham, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Ketcham who syndicates the cartoon series, “Dennis the Menace,” which started this week in the Herald News. Mike is the son of Mr. and Mrs. L.H. Wong, owners of the Oriental Cafe on Main Street. He was introduced to Ketcham by Scott Newhall, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Newhall cartoonist [sic] for the San Francisco Chronicle, when he went to San Francisco to market his work. He is a graduate of Sacred Heart Academy and is 22 years old. He recently sent an autographed copy of “Dennis”, to Maurice Miller, circulation manager of the H & N.

Editor & Publisher, June 12, 1954, also noted Wong’s new job., “Mike Wong is now associated with Hank Ketcham, who does “Dennis the Menace.” Mr. Wong is an ex-parttime cartoonist for the Klamath Falls Herald and News.”

It’s not clear how Wong assisted Ketcham who was living with his wife and son in Carmel, California.

American Newspaper Comics (2012) said the strip, Romulus of Rome, debuted April 10 1961 in the San Francisco Chronicle. It written by J.P. Cahn and drawn by Wong. Editor & Publisher, January 5, 1963, said Romulus of Rome would be syndicated in early 1963. Editor & Publisher, March 2, 1963, reported how the Chronicle was promoting the strip locally.

The recipe for the Kooba kiss is being offered San Francisco Chronicle readers in promotion featuring the “Romulus of Rome” historical adventure comic strip released through Chronicle Features Syndicate. This is the drink all Kooba enjoyed in the days of Romulus, according to the strip’s creators, J. P. Cahn and Mike Wong. (E&P, Jan. 5, page 42). The promotion copy described the beverage as “a delectable potion which changed all history.” The Chronicle declares the recipe is available—by mail only—to Kooban Information Bureau, Room 303, Chronicle. A self-addressed, stamped envelope is required.

 

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received instruction in the art of cartooning and pen and ink drawing suitable for newspaper reproduction. The first experiment continued for 16 weeks.

H.E. Cochenour, member of the teaching staff of the art school and himself an artist, took these young Dispatch children’s page artists under his wing and outlined a course so planned as to be of practical help to these of varying experience.

He gave them the fundamental rules of drawing perspective design, figure drawing, lettering and arrangement. …

Three Columbus high school students were awarded prizes ion an art contest held by Sun Dial, Ohio State university campus publication, it was announced, Monday. First prize in cartooning and second prize in illustration were awarded to Chauncey Grothkopf, 1758 North High street, North High school …

I was born in a small Ohio farm town. I had a very Huckleberry Finn-like upbringing. We’d all go swimming on hot summer days in the Ohio river. … I started drawing at a very early age. … I loved fait tales and cartooning and would draw everything as if it were alive … If you were an artist in my hometown you were considered a sign painter; I was surrounded by farmers and art just wasn’t something that was thought of as a legitimate career. …

I won a scholarship [in the early 1930s] at the Chicago Art Institute where I took a fine arts course … After graduating, Paramount Pictures selected me to be one of their junior art directors. At Paramount, I did no cartooning, just straight illustration like the type I did when was at DC. Lousy stuff … My heart belonged to cartooning. … I started out at Detective Comics (DC Comics) in 1938 …

The earliest mention of made-for-television animation in America is Willie the Worm, an eight-minute cartoon that aired on NBC in 1938. Animated by Chad Grothkopf using cels and cutouts, it was seen in the New York area by a handful of people who owned sets with seven-by-ten-inch screens.

A certificate of incorporation for “Chad Incorporated” was filed recently in the town clerk’s office. The new firm will engage in the television business, including writing, directing, producing, recording and filming of TV shows. Its incorporators are Mr. and Mrs. Chad McKee Grothkopf of Wilton and Agnes Vaughan of New York City.

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1949 Jayhawker yearbook

 

1950 Jayhawker yearbook

Presently, Bibler is an assistant professor in the art department at Humboldt State College, Arcata, California. He admits to a “beautiful blonde wife,” two daughters, and a son. He notes proudly that his son is already scribbling cartoons about guys flunking biology.

Richard N. Bibler died peacefully in his sleep May 24, 2013. He was a retired Art professor of 30 years at Monterey Peninsula College and creator of Little Man on Campus cartoons. Richard is survived by his children, Ms. Susan Gardner, Dr. Mark Bibler and Ms. Ellen Milinich. His ashes will be placed in the cemetery in Monterey.

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Lariar’s training began in the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. For the first six months he was on commercial illustration, then switched to cartooning. After graduation he started out with two buddies, Jack Arthur, now a school teacher in the New York system, and Adolph Schus, now a designer in fabric house.

The trio set up a cartoon agency in a flat in the 80’s in New York, sold vignettes to College Life, for which the editor wrote two-line captions. They also got in America's Humor magazine, primarily because it couldn’t pay as much as Life or Judge, says Lariar. Arthur, the oldest of the three (he was 21) would contact various outlets and say he represented a dozen different artists, which Lariar, Arthur and Schus tried to prove. One of their “artists” was named Baron de Shebago, who drew a full page of zanies.

In 1927, Lariar went to Paris on a scholarship to the school of dynamic symmetry. [Contemporary Authors said he studied at the Academie Julien.] He was accompanied by Arthur. Later, the third musketeer, Schus, joined them. They went into the same routine in Paris, and did a big business with British magazines and Fleetway House, then one of the big magazine publishing houses of the world. Much of their work was for The Looker-On, which folded but paid off—fortunately for the sake of their fares back home. They did work, too, for Boulevardier, a Paris publication operated by Erskine Gwynn, an American.

The trio caromed back to New York in October, 1929 [Lariar’s return was on September 10 according to a passenger list at Ancestry.com], a few days after the boom had burst.

“To make a living, we did everything,” says Lariar. “We had a service for printers, drew cartoons for calendars, played messenger and did some of the first work for the slicks.”

The boys hit upon a deal that brought home the bacon when they did a series of cartoon postcards, designed to save Boy Scouts time in writing home to mother. They sold over a million of them in a direct-mail campaign.

Flushed with success, they then embarked on a venture that sank them. In Paris, Lariar had picked up a book reproducing the etchings of a Rembrandt exposition. The plates were excellent, and they had sold many of them to friends back home without any other effort than razoring them out of the book. Reproduction by a photographic process was expensive, and they moved in trade as slowly as coal buckets from a hardware merchant’s shelves in the summer time. …

Lariar has not yet been found in the 1930 census. Contemporary Authors said he commercial advertising artist from 1930 to 1933, then a freelance illustrator and political cartoonist in 1933. Editor & Publisher said “Lariar rented offices on 45th Street where he turned to strip cartooning, drew some of the first comic books in 1933, and for Stuart Shaftell’s Young America created ‘Inspector Keene of Scotland Yard.’”

In 1935, Brooklyn-born Lawrence Lariar married his agent, Susan Mayer [sic] of Brooklyn. They have two children. Lariar says his wife was one of the first cartoon agents in the magazine gag panel field, and was a gag creator on her own. He took the Walt Disney aptitude test in 1938. …

Lawrence Lariar of Wynsum avenue, Merrick, whose humorous cartoons in Esquire, Colliers, Saturday Evening Post, American and many other publications are “tops” as laugh producers, has gone to Hollywood.

He will forsake his drawing board for the typewriter when he joins the staff of Walt Disney productions in the story department.

Although he is only 30, Lariar is near the top in his profession and has been for several years. When his name was added to “Who’s Who in America” in 1937, the ultimate listing medium for those who have arrived, he was the first comic artist to be listed in that book.

While he has been cartooning for seven years as a free lance, poking fun at politics and administrations with his funny characters, he is no stranger to writing, and he feels that in joining Walt Disney, he is heading one step nearer the top of the ladder.

For Lariar believes that Disney has only started his career in motion pictures. Lariar has written fiction and he hopes to write more for Disney productions, but with the difference, that instead of seeing his work only in print, he will see his characters in action on the screen. …

In his book, Cartooning for Everybody, Lawrence Lariar astutely counseled, “Sketching is sketching. It involves a model, usually, whether the model is a buxom nude or an old tomato can. It is copying, after a fashion. The cartoonist, when he sketches, is going through a process of study. He concentrates upon the model, plumbs its movement, bulk, the ‘guts’ of the thing he’s after. He puts into his drawing (though it may be as big as your thumbnail) all his experience. He simplifies. He plays with his line. He experiments. He isn’t concerned with anatomy, chiaroscuro, or the symmetry of ‘flowing line.’ There’s nothing highbrow about his approach to the sketch pad. He is drawing because he likes to draw!”

As Editor of Liberty, I’ve had an opportunity to observe Lawrence Lariar’s versatility in the field of comics. He has been Cartoon Editor of Liberty for seven years, during which his skilled judgment in selecting our cartoons helped maintain a high level of humor in the pages of our magazine. I know of nobody in the cartooning business who is better equipped to show the young talent of this country the inner workings of the various branches of the craft, for Lariar has been through the mill of experience in every phase of professional cartoonery.

Long Island Star-Journal 12/30/1957

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Harry Shorten of 458 Eastern Parkway, ace blocking back go the football team, today was awarded the Sussman Memorial Medal at N.Y. U. commencement exercises. The prize was presented to shorten by the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity for outstanding service to the sophomore class of Washington Square College of the university. He is a former Thomas Jefferson High School star.

The Mal Stevens opus, “How to Watch Football [sic],” is the literary work, we hear, of Harry Shorten, the 190-pound junior blocking back, pass receiver and wit of the N.Y.U. team, who turned it out when he had nothing else to do during the summer.

Brooklyn Eagle 10/19/1937

… After graduating from college in 1937 [sic] with a degree in Geology (“I wouldn’t know one rock from another now”). …

“The sports magazines paid $1 per page of copy or $10 per story,” he says. “Earlier I’d sold stuff to Street and smith, Argosy, and a few others. Back in those post-Depression days you were paid from 1/2¢ to 1¢ per word and you got paid when you caught them. In those hungry days the publishing business was severely depressed.”

Shorten … sold “everything he ever wrote” and eventually gravitated to writing comic books. … “I was hired by Abner Sunbell [sic], editor of Columbia Publications, to be his assistant. He became my mentor: he was my teacher and my inspiration and taught me much of what I know today about the business.

“We put out Pep Comics, Blue Ribbon Comics, Black Hood Comics and Archie Comics. Eventually we had a string of 10 comic books, which isn’t bad. When I was with them their total assets were $300,000. Now they’re worth $3-million and they’re asking $5-million for the business.” …

While on the subject of millions: Shorten was making the magnanimous sum of $1 per page (steady) for grinding out comic book text and would average a steady $35 per week. Woe to the long suffering artist. “Those poor guys only got $5 per page and it took them all day to draw just one.”

… “In those days you had to turn out an astronomical number of pages to make any money.” While turning out an “astronomical number of pages” Shorten invented “Archie,” the bumbling high school student who later became a King Features daily comic staple. Shorten says he owns the copyright.

“In 1943,” he explains, “Henry Aldrich was a popular radio show [The radio show was called The Aldrich Family, a series that began in summer of 1939 and ended in 1953.] and the kid made a tremendous impact. I suggested to Sunbell that we start a strip with a Henry Aldrich-type kid. … I created ‘Wilbur’ with Lin Streeter as the artist and the character came out looking exactly like him. “Later we signed Bob Montana to draw ‘Archie’ and the kid came out being about eight-years-old, he was much too young. I was writing the strip and wrote him as being a teenager and he came out just right. That was the greatest time of my life. We worked on ‘Archie’ in hotel rooms and at Montana’s summer home in New Hampshire and had a great time.

“During that time we created ‘Katy Keene,’ ‘The Shield,’ ‘The Black Hood,’ ‘Reggie,’ ‘Jughead,’ ‘Betty and Veronica,’ ‘Ginger,’ ‘Super Duck,’ ‘Pokey Oakey,’ ‘Calthar the Jungle Man,’ and many others. We created many heavies but even more minor characters.”

Shorten dreamed-up the format for “There Oughta Be A Law,” which he wrote and his partner, the late Al Fagaly (who died six years ago) drew. “That was in 1944,” says Shorten. “We sold it to the McClure Syndicate and stipulated that they had to take ‘Archie’ along with it. We only gave them three weeks worth of daily samples but they grabbed it. The thing was in 20 papers almost immediately. We made from $30,000 to $40,000 the first year and the strip made $65,000 and up with the syndicate getting 40% and us getting 60%, which Fagaly and I divided equally.”

… The cartoon feature, which made Shorten a millionaire … was the springboard he used to jump head-first into the publishing business. “In 1952” he says, “we published the first of four ‘There Oughta Be A Law’ paperback anthologies … which grossed about $8,000 per book with 85% sales. Then we just kept going on until we built-up a list of 26 titles and publish 26 books per month plus four comic magazines and two TV magazines and we’ve added three book lines which include another 26 titles.”

Shorten, whose organization now grosses almost “four-million” per year employs 35 people—all of whom receive more than $1 per page for text and $5 per page for art. “We’re part of the V-T-R Corp., (American Stock Exchange) part of the V-T-R Corp., (American Stock Exchange)— he says. “It’s a conglomerate. They’re our parent corporation and are worth between $55-million and $60-million. V-T-R is headed by Fred Gould, a sharp young guy who made his money in real estate, and there are some very dynamic-minded young executives in the organization who already are looking for new properties.”

One property that became a casualty was, strangely enough, “There Oughta Be A Law,” which Shorten stopped writing “four or five years ago”. “It was fun in the beginning, then it got to be a drag,” he says. … United [Features] took the strip over from McClure in 1963. Art is being handled by Warren Whipple, who formerly worked for the late Jimmy Hatlo. … Sy Reit has taken over the writing chores from Shorten, who still owns the feature lock, stock and barrel.

Some years ago, when [John] Goldwater and [Louis] Silberkleit decided to launch their first Archie comic, everyone said they were crazy. A teen-ager as a comic book character? Not a chance. “All today’s kids want,” they were told, “are super-men, either saving or destroying cities, with plenty of thrills, gore, and manufactured excitement. True-to-life stuff will never go.”

But John and Lou felt differently about it. Differently enough to gamble that the children of America wanted good, wholesome entertainment based on stories that had to do with normal characters who, in spite of their cartoon guise, acted and looked and talked pretty much like their own teen-age friends. They decided to build up a comic group based on that idea, a comic group that would create an entirely new concept in comic book publishing. 

John Goldwater inspired by the popular “Andy Hardy” movies starring Mickey Rooney; wanted to create a comic about a normal person to whom readers could relate. He created “America’s newest boyfriend”, Archibald “Chick” Andrews. In Pep Comics #22, December 1941 writer Vic Bloom and artist Bob Montana, published Archie Andrews first adventure. Gloria Goldwater, John’s wife said “He loved Superman and he wanted to create a kind of opposite to Superman,” “Archie was based partly on a red-headed friend of his named Archie,” Mrs. Goldwater said. “He also created Betty and Veronica. Then he decided Archie needed a real good friend. That was Jughead. It just grew and grew.”

Harry Shoten made his stake as the writer of the There Oughta Be A Law comic strip that had been very popular in the ’40s and ’50s. He had a very successful pocket book publishing business when the comics had a boom in the ’60s and he decided to take the plunge. I never talked to him but I saw him around the offices once in awhile. He looked like the very caricature of a publisher. Stocky body, bald head, and a fat cigar in his mouth at all times.

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

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George T. Eggleston, senior in the University of California Law School and art editor of the Pelican, campus publication, was awarded second prize, a $250 gold watch, from a field of several thousand in a nation-wide art contest conducted by a magazine, according to word received by him yesterday. Young Eggleston does his art work as a side line to his study of law at the university and his talent is without instruction. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. C.P. Eggleston, 1221 Cavanaugh road, Oakland. The committee awarding the prizes included James Montgomery Flagg, H.N. Swanson, editor of College Humor; Gaar Williams and Arthur William Brown.

George T. Eggleston, graduate of the University of California with the class of 1929, and former editor of the Pelican, has been made editor of Life, New York magazine. Eggleston is the son of Charles P. Eggleston, 515 Vernon street, Oakland, and was graduated from Fremont High School, Oakland. Following his graduation he was associate editor of College Humor at Chicago. He is a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity and was married last july to Miss Martha downing of Berkeley.

Mr. Eggleston was editor of Scribner’s Commentator, a magazine published in New York that helped lead the opposition to the United States’ entrance into World War II in 1940 and 1941. He changed his position after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and enlisted in the Navy, but charges of disloyalty dogged him for years.

Mr. Eggleston recounted some of the harassment against him in his last book, “Roosevelt, Churchill, and the World War II Opposition,” published by Devin-Adair in 1979. He wrote about leaving the Navy after Walter Winchell, the syndicated columnist and radio commentator, urged Americans to start a letter-writing campaign demanding his removal from the service.

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1922

Acutely conscious of certain trends, 1st Lt. Robert North of Alhambra, Calif., decided that something drastic should be done to offset the inroads made in the Pacific by that amiable, sprawling outfit labeled the Short Snorters.

He conferred with M.Sgt Norman Hoch, a citizen in good standing of Oklahoma City, and they decided that there was a crying need for some sort of exclusive organization in the South Seas, where all sorts of improbable things happen. The Short Snorters, they opined, was getting pretty loose. It used to be limited to those persons who had flown over a body of water, but now it could happen to anybody, like Athlete’s Foot, or rundown heels.

So they founded the Tarawa Cricket Club, and might have run something up a pole to commemorate the occasion, but poles are scarce in that country. Instead, they enlisted the aid of Maj Peter S. Paine of New York City, and Maj Chester M. Sullivan, of Minneapolis, Minn., to help them get under way.

In case you've wondered, the name comes from the fact that there are a lot of idle cricket fields laid out on the islands. The English used to play the game there before the war, but have given it up for more strenuous activities.

Maj Sullivan designed a stamp, and unless you’ve had some business in the Pacific war you won’t ever get any closer to it than you are right now. That’s how the thing was made exclusive. Stamps are being distributed to other points—there will be a Kwajalein Chapter, Saipan, Guam, perhaps a Truk Chapter, a Philippines, and no doubt a Tokyo Chapter under the parent Tarawa nucleus.

The stamps will be held on each island by some responsible officer, probably the S-2, and if you care to join, look him up and he’ll stamp a replica of the informal coat of arms on your stationery, birth certificate, a pair of souvenir panties, or anything else that will take the ink. It costs you a dollar, which is used to buy more stamps for other chapters.

It was felt that the club would promote a certain comraderie [sic] among the men, for it is a thing that is really exclusive. No outsiders can join—you absolutely have to be on the island before you can join.

You can have a bill stamped and dash around collecting signatures if you like, but the originators look down their noses frostily on the practice.

The club is open to everyone from Dogfaces up, and there’s some highpowered company in it. Even generals—especially generals—are potential members, and some belong now. Maj Gen Willis H. Hale belongs, and plugs the club for a commendable venture, according to Lt North.

Membership won’t make you any money or when you get back home (wars always HAVE cure very many of the ills man is heir to, but ended) you’ll have something as exclusively South Seas as atoll-fishing.

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