Stripper's Guide

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

Here's a collection of gag cartoons that ran in the New York Evening Journal on April 14 1904. Starting at upper left and going clockwise, we have a Jimmy Swinnerton cartoon, two by H.B. Martin, a silhouette cartoon by J.K. Bryans, and another two Martin cartoons. 

These are all pretty weak gag cartoons, but the reason I wanted to feature this array is the cartoon in the upper middle by Martin. You may be wondering what the heck is going on there, and rightly so, and there's an interesting explanation. The Indian is dressed in drag, that's him on the right. Why? There was a momenatry fad in 1904 having to do with crossdressing Indians, and Martin was certain enough that everyone was in on it that he didn't need to explain. The fad was brought on by the publication of a novelty song, My Dandy Dainty Redskin Brave, in which the (male) singer is fooled into wooing a high-society Gibson girl type who turns out to be a Native American man. The odd fad song had its very short moment in the sun then disappeared into the mists of time.

Or, maybe the cartoon just had the wrong caption printed with it.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

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

A very special guest star makes an appearance in this one-shot strip by Carl Anderson. It ran in the New York Journal on January 24 1897.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

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

Is this an editorial cartoon from 2020? Nah, it's a perfectly innocent (and very cute) gag cartoon published in 1897. It was penned by H.B. Eddy for the January 31 1897 edition of the New York Journal.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 1 comments

By 1895 the New York Herald did have colour printing capability, but they tended to use it for things besides comics. So here then is a Clarence Rigby strip from the Herald of August 4 1895, run in glorious black and white. This strip offers a fascinating glimpse into the still-evolving conventions for comic strips. I'm not going to tell you to what it is I'm referring; you'll have to read the awful captions to figure it out. Great drawings, though!

I suppose there is a question worth posing -- was the convention being broken here pretty much established by 1895, and Rigby was just a little slow on the uptake? I'm tending to think he might be a little behind the curve...

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

The inside pages of 1890s newspaper comic sections were often full of written jokes with the comics artfully, or inartfully, scattered about the page. This example is an interior page from an early New York Journal Sunday comic section, January 3 1897. Frank Nankivell offers an impressive page border with dozens of cartoon figures cavorting about. The large upper middle strip is by someone who, I swear this is what I see, signing himself Badfish. The middle two panel strip is unsigned. The panel cartoon at the bottom is quite badly printed, but I think it might be by E.W. Kemble. 

As was normally the case with these interior pages, only limited colours were used. In this case it seems to be two - green and red. Not using black as one of your colours might have seemed like a good idea, but I doubt that even when hot off the press with nice white paper that pages like this were easy on the eyes. Having yellowed over the century plus since, I had a heck of a time teasing out the detail from this page to make it even somewhat legible, so apologies for it being hard to read.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

Walt McDougall, one of the greatest of the pioneering American newspaper cartoonists, was a bit of a one-shot wonder factory. After his very productive 1890s work in New York, most of it one-shots, he left for Philadelphia where he began a long run of one-shot comics for the Philadelphia North American. Here is one from 1903, appearing in syndication at the St. Paul Dispatch. 

The book text can be hard to read on this smallish image. In panel one it says "Animal Curiosity". In panel two "They will pry into things in which they have no concern." In panel three the back of the book has the title "Animal Curiosity Vol. 2." In panel four, "...become intrusive at times." In panel 5 "...this proved by facts."

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

Sometimes One-Shot Wonders aren't wonders for the art or the gag, but for where they appeared. Here is one of the premier expressions of that last classification. Got What They Weren't Looking For ran in the short-lived Boston Herald tabloid comic section of 1901. I have been seeking examples of this section for decades with no luck at all, and then finally a few months ago one appeared on eBay. Happy? You'd have thought I found a gold bar selling for a buck.

The section ran for less than six months and offered up a lot of pretty amateur material. There were a few series, but most of it was one-shots like this. This strip is a pretty fair representation of the level of art and humour you could 'enjoy' throughout the section. The signature of the cartoonist is very hard to read -- I'm guessing maybe it is Skeets?

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 1 comments

Just when you thought you'd seen every possible gag played out in a comic strip, here comes Syd B. Griffin with one so outlandish, so weird, that I bet it is that rarest of birds, a unique gag never seen before or since. 

He Would Steal Eggs, or Willy the Human Omelette ran in the New York Journal comic section of May 9 1897.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

Here we have a collection of miscellaneous gags from the McClure comics section of December 15 1901. Some are about Christmas, befitting the publication date. But Herriman's contributions are evergreen items, probably stuff he'd been carrying around in his portfolio for months looking for some pigeon to buy them. 

Besides Herriman, whose cartoons are at the upper left and right, we have a Marriner gag (top center), and a two-panel A.D. Reed gag on the bottom. I have to give Reed the nod for best gag, though Herriman's wordplay in the upper right gets points for ingenuity.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

Webster failed to make any big impression at the Daily News, but they bought plenty of his cartoons, and he even started a few short-lived series. Here we have a few cartoons from 1903 that show that early Webster cartoons are almost impossible to identify without the signatures. 

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 1 comments

The opening of the Exposition was less than a month away when Art Young contributed this interesting illustration for the supplement's cover. Just for the heck of it I did a little poking around to find a photo of the finished sculpture. Oddly enough, I can find no reference to a sculpture with this subject, much less a photo of it. Anyone care to pick up the gauntlet and find us a pic of this sculpture?

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 8 comments

Sorry for the nausea-inducing colours on this strip, but blame the New York Journal, not me. Inside pages of the comics sections of the 90s were almost always two-colour affairs, and the choices for those two colours sometimes make you wonder what colour-blind numskull was making the decisions. 

Today we have a one-shot by Fred Brisley, who most likely would not have his newspaper cartooning career recognized on this blog without this category of post. Supposedly Brisley, who sometimes signed himself just 'Bris', or even just 'B', was a cartoonist with the St. Paul Dispatch in the 1880s-90s. Brisley came on the scene at the New York Journal in 1897, contributed lots of work to the Sunday comics section until early 1898, and then disappeared with amazing thoroughness. 

Was he any great shakes as a cartoonist? Well, no. But today's one-shot, featuring a cleless British fop named Lord Dedbroke exploring the New World was certainly good enough that Brisley could have done just one more gag with him. How close you came, Fred, to being immortalized in my book.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

Here's a strip by Herriman that ran in the McClure syndicated comics section of November 3 1901. George serves up a tremendously animated sequence, a very oddly horned goat, and a well-executed gag in this very early entry. 

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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

An array of single panel gag cartoons was a familiar sight in 1900s papers, especially evening editions. Here's one such grouping from a 1904 edition of the New York Evening Journal, featuring four cartoons by William F. Marriner (first and third columns) and two by Harry B. Martin in the middle. 

A few explanatory notes:

* "Beautiful Snow" was a poem written in 1869 by John Whittaker Watson. It seems to be the only poem of his that really outlived him in the public consciousness. 

* I can find no evidence that there was a revolutionary named Bustaments in South America in 1904, but there are a few by the name Bustamente in decades long past by then. I imagine Martin is using it as a sort of generic Latino name.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 1 comments

In the heyday of Yellow Journalism, when Sunday circulation figures were more important to newspaper publishers even than the company's profit or loss, all sorts of freebies were given away with Sunday issues to stimulate those figures. One of those freebies were pictures that could be watercoloured by the buyer's children, using "special" inks printed directly on the pages. Add a little water and you could paint with the resulting concoctions. 

My educated guess is that those special inks were actually ink formulations that were found not to be colourfast and therefore poor choices for newspaper printing. This was, after all, in the days when publishers were still experimenting with ink formulas, looking for the quickest drying, most vibrant hues possible. The story of the Yellow Kid's origination, after all, was supposedly due to one of these experiments that required a nice big spot of yellow ink for testing. While I find the exact circumstances of the famous tale hard to swallow (there was already a workable yellow ink in use at this time), there is no doubt that colour ink experiments did take place. 

Anyway, back to today's One-Shot Wonder. Ed Carey neglected to sign this strip, but there's no doubt this is his work. It ran in the McClure colour comic section of August 17 1902 and the gag depends on the reader's knowledge of the watercolour stunts in use with some newspapers at the time, proof that they were quite common and well-known.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

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