Stripper's Guide

Betsy and Me by Jack Cole
Introduction by R.C. Harvey
Fantagraphics Books, 2007
$14.95 softcover, 120 pages
ISBN 978-1-56097-878-7

Every biographer seems to be in agreement that Jack Cole's fondest professional desire was to author a syndicated newspaper comic strip. For Cole his classic Plastic Man comic books and Playboy magazine cartoons were never more than waypoints on a road that he hoped would end not at Oz but with a syndicate contract.

Other than a short stint ghosting Will Eisner's Spirit daily comic strip, Betsy and Me was Jack Cole's first, and as it turned out, only syndicated offering. The strip was offered by Field Enterprises, the syndication arm of the Chicago Sun-Times. Field had a rather pathetic track record for selling strips -- the syndicate (not to mention the newspaper) were said to be kept afloat mainly on the back of Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, a bestselling strip in these years. This gives us the first inkling that Betsy and Me was not cut out to join the pantheon of Cole's greatest creations. Since Cole's reputation was well-known his syndicate submissions would not have had to wallow in slush piles, so we can safely assume that Betsy and Me was given a serious look at any syndicate to which he submitted. Signing up with Field probably indicates that there were no takers among the strongest syndicates.

Betsy and Me is a departure, and not a good one, for Cole. His reputation was made with the looney antics and superbly executed art of Plastic Man, and his stature grew in the 50s with his magnificent painterly Playboy cartoons. But Betsy and Me is in no way emblematic of either of his previous successes. Unlike the Playboy cartoons it is not risque or titillating, neither does it exhibit the loopy sensibilities of his Plastic Man. With this strip Cole is not adding a new chapter to his biography and inventiveness; Betsy and Me is formulaic, conventional and drawn in a fad style of the day unworthy of Cole's talents.

Betsy and Me rehashes the most overdone subject matter in comic strips -- the family sitcom. That's okay -- many great strips have worked within that hoary formula. But Cole's actors are pure stereotypes - Chet is the dimwitted dad and Betsy the cipher of a wife, both with bland personalities that have no originality, in fact no definition, at all. The kid, Farley, does have a hook but it's one that's been done a dozen times before -- he's a boy genius.

With a cast of characters straight off the assembly line, Cole takes his one stab at originality in the way the strip is built. Chet narrates most of the strips in the past tense, often framing the action by introducing the strip's subject in the first panel, then narrating the ensuing gag. Sometimes the commentary is cute, other times it consists of a lot of "he said"s and "she said"s surrounding the panels. Cole was so enamored of this motif that sometimes he doesn't bother with a gag at all -- the presence of the narration itself is, at least to Cole's thinking, funny enough. And it is a cute idea, just not that cute. The narration also has the problem of making the strip far too type-dense. In these tiny 4-column strips the addition of narration leaves darn little room for art. The result is unattractive and uninviting.

In a generously long and informative introduction punctuated with sample art from Cole's better efforts, R.C. Harvey rehearses Cole's life story. Cole's mysterious suicide, which took place bare months after the introduction of this strip, is discussed at length. The consensus opinion of Cole's biographers is that the suicide was a result of long-standing troubles in Cole's marriage. No one seems to have considered the possibility that Betsy and Me could have played some role. After all, this was supposedly Cole's fondest desire. Why would he kill himself after finally getting that syndicate contract he'd dreamed about for years? Well, if you'll forgive the conceit I'm going to indulge in some amateur psychoanalysis.

After working at Playboy, with its leisurely monthly deadlines, Cole was once again under the gun as he'd not been in a long time. The stress of producing a comic strip seven days a week is well-known, and not something that Cole was used to. He was probably working harder and longer hours than ever before, and all that toil spent on a strip that was not selling well at all. Betsy and Me had a tiny client list and no rosy prospects for improving. Worse still, Cole couldn't have helped but realize by then that his strip idea wasn't very strong. And this was not like comic books or magazine gags -- he couldn't just dump the concept and come up with something better. He had a syndicate contract that obligated him to continue beating this dead horse until the syndicate told him to stop -- they could keep the strip limping along for years. Granted he could break the contract but that would do a lot of damage to his professional standing.

I'm not saying that Cole killed himself only because of Betsy and Me, of course, but I think it could have been an important influence. Cole might have seen this as his only way out from a terrible situation, a shattered dream, of his own making. Just my two cents.

Fans of Jack Cole, and aren't we all, will want the book if only for its curiosity value. But be forewarned that there is little of the Cole we know and love to be found herein. The book is also far from a complete reprinting of the strip, despite the claim on the back cover. R.C. Harvey cites Jeffrey Lindenblatt and myself for the running dates of the strip, but the information he gives is long out of date. My research has since determined that Betsy and Me ran until December 27 1958 on the daily, December 21 on the Sunday, not December 10 and November 23 as listed in the intro. It will matter little for Cole fans because Dwight Parks had taken over the strip back in September, so these final months, of which the last is missing from the book, are a pastiche of Cole. On the other hand, the Cole material is also incomplete, and that's less forgiveable. By my count 8 Cole Sunday strips are missing, including the whole first month, and 13 Parks Sundays. Two of the Cole Sundays are printed in color (the rest are in black and white), but these two are the third-page incomplete versions of the strip.

Labels: Bookshelf

 

William Randolph Hearst was an enthusiastic lover of comics, and he usually had a good eye for quality. Most famously, he championed that oddball strip Krazy Kat and kept it running despite dismal sales. But everyone can have a blind spot, and to my mind Hearst's was The Nebbs. According to old stories, Hearst absolutely loved the strip, and though he did not syndicate it, insisted that many of the Hearst papers run it. 

I, on the other hand, cannot see the attraction. To me it reads like a weak-kneed version of The Gumps or The Bungle Family. The comparison with The Gumps is apt because the writer of the strip, Sol Hess, got his start ghost-writing for Sidney Smith. But whatever magic he brought to The Gumps was lost when he decided that his own strip would have less abrasive characters and more down-to-earth stories. Dull as dishwater, in other words. 

Perhaps I'd give the strip more of a chance if the art by Wally Carlson wasn't like fingernails on a blackboard to me. And I don't know what it is about it that I hate! It's perfectly capable work, if a little sterile and perfunctory, but for some reason I can't stand it. (Just to get it off my chest, Jimmy Hatlo's art has the same effect on me.)

Anyway, Mr. Hearst and I will simply have to agree to disagree. The Nebbs was undeniably a successful strip, and not just in Hearst papers. In the 1920s and 30s it has been claimed that it ran in over 500 papers, and even back then that was an impressive number. So somebody must have liked the darn thing. 

Anyway, this post is not just a pointless whining session. It's about the main topper of The Nebbs, Simp O'Dill. This strip about a simpleton began on February 24 1929* as a small one-tier topper, as was the style with Bell Syndicate at the time. He had no real personality, he just acted out 'dumb guy' gags straight out of joke books. He seems to have appeared out of nowhere, or at least I am not aware of him ever being a character in the main strip. 

On September 16 1934, Simp O'Dill was enlarged to a two-tier format, becoming a full-fledged half-page strip. The strip did not really change in any way except that it took twice as many panels to tell the same bad jokebook gags. The idea, of course, was to make The Nebbs a better-selling Sunday by making it easy to substitute a half-page ad for the topper. Newspapers seemed to really appreciate this format, and I imagine it gave Sunday sales of The Nebbs a nice little bump. 

In 1936 Hess decided to add activity panels to the topper mix, but generally they just shaved a single panel off of Simp O'Dill to squeeze them in. Simp, just like The Dude, abides.

In 1941 Sol Hess died, but his duties were continued by Betsy and Stanley Baer, and both The Nebbs and Simp O'Dill soldiered on without a stumble. Though newspaper readers began to lose interest in The Nebbs in the 1940s, the Sunday half-and-half setup allowed Simp O'Dill to survive when many other toppers got the axe. But to all good, bad and indifferent things there must be an end, and so it was with Simp O'Dill. It last ran on January 4 1948**, and The Nebbs Sunday was thereafter no longer available in a full page format.

 

* Source: Tucson Citizen 

** Source: St. Cloud Times

Labels: Topper Features

History Page Evolves From Hearst Memo
By Helen M. Staunton (1947)

Very few syndicate features are presented to the public exactly as they are first conceived, and frequently the changes and reasons therefore make a syndicate story more significant than the brief announcement:

King Features will launch a new Sunday page Jan. 12, titled "Dick's Adventures in Dreamland," scripted by Max Trell, drawn by Neil O'Keeffe, featuring events from American history. It will be a full page. Behind this announcement is a full year of exploration and experimentation and a lively correspondence between William Randolph Hearst Sr., and Ward Greene, KFS editor and general manager—the evolution of a feature completely developed by the syndicate.

In Process a Year
That evolution began with a letter dated Dec. 28, 1945, from Hearst to J. D. Gortatowsky, KFS president:

"I have had numerous suggestions for incorporating some American history of a vivid kind in the adventure strips of the comic section.

"The difficulty is to find something that will sufficiently interest the kids.

"It seems to me that some which told the youthful life of our American heroes and how they developed into great men and their great moments might be interesting.

"Perhaps a title, Trained by Fate, would be general enough.

"Take Paul Revere and show him as a boy making as much of his boyhood life as possible, and culminate, of course, with his ride.

"Take Betsy Ross for a heroine, or Barbara Frietchie, or Molly Pitcher for the girls.

"Of course, there are exciting enough incidents in the lives of our American heroes but the difficulty is to develop interest for the youngsters in their youthful lives . . ."

Initial Outline
On Jan. 3, 1946, Green replied: "We can produce something like this along the lines you indicate, making separate pages or half pages out of some interesting episode in the lives of Paul Revere, Betsy Ross and other heroes and heroines. Or we could devote a series of pages to Paul Revere and another series to Betsy Ross, etc.

"There is another way to do It, which is somewhat fantastic, but which I submit for your consideration. That is to devise a new comic, or use in one of our existing comics, a "dream" idea revolving around a boy we might call Dick.

"Dick or his equivalent, would go in his dream with Mad Anthony Wayne at the storming of Stony Point or with Decatur at Tripoli, or with Betsy Ross when she was making the flag or wherever we wanted to send him.

"The virtue of this notion, as I see it, would be to provide a constant character in the comic who would become known to the kids. While the character would be fictitious, the historic episodes would be authentic.

Depends on Artist
"I think a great deal of the success of such a feature, whether it employed a fantastic device or whether it was done 'straight,' would depend upon the artist ... I am enclosing some clip sheets ... which show the work of Edward A. Wilson … Another possibility is William Meade Prince. He drew that comic for us, "Aladdin Jr.' The drawing was good . . ."

Next a telegram from Hearst:

"The dream idea for the American history series is splendid. It gives continuity and personal interest and you can make more than one page of each series culminating in the main event. You are right about the importance of the artist. Someone like Harold Foster is needed. Do you think that Wilson's wood cut style would be good?"

Then a "Chief says" note for Greene: "I like this woodcut style of Edward Wilson's for American history series." But Wilson could not undertake the page and on Feb. 1 Greene sent a week's samples of Nell O'Keeffe's art for the current illustrated book of the month for KFS, "Captain from Castile"—"That series calls for different artists, gives us a way to try out artists," Greene noted to E & P.

Samples to WRH
By early in March, O'Keeffe was finishing some black and white drawings for the history page, and by April 12 Greene was sending samples of the series to Hearst with a letter:

"We employed the dream device, building the comic around a small boy and his father. 'Dick and His Dad' is written by Max Trell. The artist is Neil O'Keeffe.

"We tried to show in one sample, the Francis Scott Key page, how an episode in history can be covered in a single page. We show in the other page the beginning of a sequence that might tell the entire career of Admiral Farragut in a series of pages. These two samples are made up in full page form. Please give me your wishes."

From Hearst Apr. 17: "I think the drawing of 'Dick and His Dad' is amazingly good. It is perfectly splendid. I am afraid, however, that similar beginning and conclusion of each page might give a deadly sameness to the series. Then again, does not that plan deprive the series of realism?

"Perhaps we could get the dream idea over by having only the conclusion in each page. I mean, do not show the boy going to sleep every time and then show him waking up, but let the waking up come as a termination to each page and let the beginning be the dream itself ...

"Can you develop anything out of the idea of having Dick the son of the keeper of the Liberty Statue in New York Harbor? I do not suggest this, as it would probably add further complications, but it might give a spiritual tie to all the dreams. The main thing, however, is to get more realism into the series by minimizing the dream and accentuating the historical story ..."

Avoiding Dull Lessons

From Greene Apr. 24 in the interests of "more realism" and "enough human interest" to avoid dull history lessons: "We do not have to show the dream at the beginning and end of every page. For example, the episode in the life of Admiral Farragut as a young midshipman should take not less than three pages to tell. We can start the dream in the first panel of Page 1 and not have Dick wake up until the last panel of Page 3 ...

"It might be an improvement to eliminate Dick's Dad entirely. It was my original feeling that the link between a boy and his father gave the comic a certain appeal to all parents and sons. But if we continue to call it 'Dick and His Dad,' we will have to keep the father in the picture pretty constantly, thus forcing us to use a good many sleeping and waking panels. If we simply call the comic something like 'Dreamer Dick', we would have more freedom ...

"Some device other than the dream might be used to put Dick into different historical scenes. A simple method would be to have him curl up with a history book in the first panel. We then see him living the story he is reading. Another way might be to make Dick a young American living in Revolutionary times. There would be plenty of material to carry such a page for years. I do not like this idea, however, because of the obvious limitations.”

Hearst to Greene July 29. "Do you think we should run the American history dream of the boy with Columbus for quite a long time—for seven months in fact, and perhaps through a year? ... If we find it is not a success of course we can brief it, but if it is a success it should be a long series. This applies not only to the life of Columbus, but to the other history incidents as well ..."

Then after correspondence on other allied matters, Greene to Hearst Nov. 1: "I am sending you two sample pages of "Dick's Adventures in Dreamland” which start a series about Christopher Columbus ..."

Hearst to Greene Nov. 9: "In January, I am told, we are going to 16 pages regularly on Puck, the Comic Weekly. That would be a good time to introduce the Columbus series, don't you think so?"

Labels: News of Yore

A few months back I tried to put together an index of the American Weekly Sunday magazine covers. With the help of you blog readers, I was able to turn my index, which started out shot through with holes like a Swiss cheese, into a near perfect one.

Unfortunately, publishing that index worked out so well that I got the crazy idea that maybe -- just maybe -- I could succeed in indexing the other Hearst magazine cover series. The problem with the others is that, unlike the American Weekly, these magazine covers are not identified with a running title or masthead. Which might not necessarily be an insurmountable problem, except that there are definitely multiple cover series in play. Seemingly we are offered two identifying characteristics:

1. Unless a newspaper routs it out, each cover displays a copyright to a syndicate. Hearst is known to have run magazine cover series under three different syndicates: International Feature Service (IFS), Newspaper Feature Service (NFS) and King Features Syndicate.
2. Newspapers thankfully tend to stick with one magazine cover series for a long period. Therefore, in theory, we can assume that the series being run by newspaper X is consistent from week to week for long periods.

Unfortunately I found out as I worked at the indexes that neither rule is nearly as helpful as expected. While I was blissfully left alone by the routerman, everything else seemed to be stacked against me. Not only do many of the newspapers I followed seem to have a penchant for switching series, but far worse, the Hearst syndicates sometimes seem to play pin the tail on the donkey with their syndicate stamps. The exact same cover can be stamped with different syndicate stamps, depending on which newspaper was using it. To add more complexity, it's typical to find multiple papers that run the same series but running the material weeks off track from each other.

So I went in expecting to have a pretty clean delineation; there'd be an IFS series, an NFS series and a King series, each of which followed its own and separate path. No such luck. My indexes are a mess, and series seem to change from one syndicate to another for no obvious reason. Because of that, what I'm going to present here is a bit of a jumble. I'll try to annotate when things get weird and when I feel that I have insights.

My first index is for a series I didn't realize even existed when I began work. I knew Dan Smith had produced quite a few Hearst magazine covers, but I discovered that he basically had his own series throughout the 1920s.

The Dan Smith cover series begins in May 1921, when he took over as the cover illustrator on a feature magazine that had previously concentrated mostly on photos and uncredited illustrations for its covers. When Smith arrived, the covers continued to often feature a photo or two, but they became secondary aspects of the design, which featured large Dan Smith drawings and usually a few paragraphs of text story. When the series began, the cover subjects were generally about bizarre news stories, fashion and culture. Later on the series subjects would evolve in several different directions.

Date	Title	Syndicate
5/15/21	An Indian Lover's Curse Fulfilled at Last	International Feature Service
5/22/21	Science Sanctions Flirtation	International Feature Service
5/29/21	The Poppy Girl	International Feature Service
6/5/21	The Strangest Wedding That Ever Happened	International Feature Service
6/12/21	How Red Hair Made a New Reno in Europe	International Feature Service
6/19/21	Girl Bull Fighters - Mexico's Latest Fling	International Feature Service
6/26/21	The Woman Judge Who Gives Husbands a Square Deal	International Feature Service
7/3/21	We Want Our Own Star in the Flag	International Feature Service
7/10/21	The Tragedy of the Loveless Marriage	International Feature Service
7/17/21	Who'll Bid For This Beauty?	International Feature Service
7/24/21	The Battle Against Bare Legs	International Feature Service
7/31/21	The Beauty Whose Make-Up Has Lasted 8,000 Years	International Feature Service
8/7/21	The New Bareback Dianas of the Surf	International Feature Service
8/14/21	Why Do Men Marry Their Stenographers	International Feature Service
8/21/21	Is Woman Leaving Her Pedestal?	International Feature Service
8/28/21	Are Men More Merciful Than Women?	International Feature Service
9/4/21	The Law Defines a "Vamp"	International Feature Service
9/11/21	The New Beauty Doctor -- The Baby	International Feature Service
9/18/21	Fashion Now Fancies Fish Scales	International Feature Service
9/25/21	What Is Your Husband Worth To You?	International Feature Service
10/2/21	Italy's Astonishing Matrimonial Lottery	International Feature Service
10/9/21	Love's Newest Triumph -- The Germ-Proof Wedding	International Feature Service
10/16/21	Fashion's Astonishing Flop -- From Knees to Trains	International Feature Service
10/23/21	How Would You Solve this Mother-Love Problem?	International Feature Service
10/30/21	Has a Wife the Right to Choose Her Successor?	International Feature Service
11/6/21	Fashion Reflects the Red Man's Robes	International Feature Service
11/13/21	Good-bye to the Overalls	International Feature Service
11/20/21	Thanksgiving Time	International Feature Service
11/27/21	The New Romances Tell Everything	International Feature Service
12/4/21	No More European Women For Me	International Feature Service
12/11/21	Will Chicago's Social Leader Seize the New York Sceptre	International Feature Service
12/18/21	The King and Queen of Christmas	International Feature Service
12/25/21	Christmas	International Feature Service
1/1/22	Will 1922 Bring Romantic Clothes?	International Feature Service
1/15/22	The American Makes the Best Lover	International Feature Service
1/22/22	"I Want a Cave Man Husband"	International Feature Service
1/29/22	Why Europe's Most Picturesque Queen hanged Her Mind	International Feature Service
2/5/22	The Greatest Wedding of the Year	International Feature Service
2/12/22	Marrying a Pilot on the Wing	International Feature Service
2/19/22	The Much-Watched Marriage of the "Wonder Girl"	International Feature Service
2/26/22	Has the Lipstick Come To Stay?	International Feature Service
3/5/22	Life-Size Dolls for Tea Company	International Feature Service
3/12/22	America's Pyramid City of the Future	International Feature Service
3/19/22	Science Finds the Secret of the Poison Pen	International Feature Service
3/26/22	Will the Tom-Tom Displace Jazz?	International Feature Service
4/2/22	He Followed Her Fandango Feet for 20,000 Miles	International Feature Service
4/9/22	Love -- Or a Million Dollars?	International Feature Service
4/16/22	The New Search for the Holy Grail	International Feature Service
4/23/22	They All Want Red Hair	International Feature Service
4/30/22	Society and Science Turn to Spiritualism	International Feature Service
5/7/22	Sport and Romance Behind the Dog Team	International Feature Service
5/14/22	The Excitement of Marrying an Indian	International Feature Service
5/21/22	The Girl and the Buried Treasure	International Feature Service
5/28/22	The Daisy's Memorial Day Message	International Feature Service
6/4/22	Has Prohibition Boomed the Beauty Parlor?	International Feature Service
6/11/22	The Flapper Jockey's in the Lead	International Feature Service
6/18/22	Painting Pictures Under The Sea	International Feature Service
6/25/22	New Complexions Mean a Color Bath	International Feature Service
7/2/22	A Radio "Fourth" the Season's Novelty	International Feature Service
7/9/22	Today's Priscilla Saves a Town	International Feature Service
7/16/22	The Ending of the Wild Life Era	International Feature Service
7/23/22	The Prince's Eleven Black Cats -- And the Bishop's Tirade	International Feature Service
7/30/22	America's Greatest Girl Rider	International Feature Service
8/6/22	The Girl Who is Hiking Alone 'Round the World	International Feature Service
8/13/22	Zoo Fans	International Feature Service
8/20/22	The Romance of the Olympic Champions	International Feature Service
8/27/22	Beach Ball for Girls Only	International Feature Service
9/3/22	Ears to be Worn Again	International Feature Service
9/10/22	Back to the Dashing Sport of Robin Hood	International Feature Service
9/17/22	Is She America's Bravest Girl?	International Feature Service
9/24/22	Rugs and Curtains for Costumes	International Feature Service
10/1/22	Sees New York -- "Give Me Oklahoma," Says Indian Heiress	International Feature Service
10/8/22	Make Way for the Biggest Hats Ever	International Feature Service
10/15/22	The Craze for Strange Pets	International Feature Service
10/22/22	The Strange Furore over Russian Color	International Feature Service
10/29/22	The Return of the Bull Dog	International Feature Service
11/5/22	The Girl Who Must Not Marry	International Feature Service
11/12/22	The Newest Sport Thrill - Gliding	International Feature Service
11/19/22	When Spain's Queen Comes To America	International Feature Service
11/26/22	Harvest Home	International Feature Service
12/3/22	The Sensation of Silk Wigs	International Feature Service
12/10/22	The Hockey Girl	International Feature Service
12/17/22	In Santa Claus's Workshop	International Feature Service
12/24/22	Christmas Friends	International Feature Service
12/31/22	Miss 1923-Athlete And Worker	International Feature Service
1/7/23	Now The Game Is Mah Jongg	International Feature Service
1/14/23	The Strangest of all Honeymoons	International Feature Service
1/21/23	The Ice Girl	International Feature Service
1/28/23	Tattooing Helps The Health, Says Science	International Feature Service
2/4/23	The Fascinating Fad of Earrings	International Feature Service
2/11/23	An Aurora Borealis Wedding	International Feature Service
2/18/23	Science Has a New Theory About Fighting Bulls	International Feature Service
2/25/23	Painting Beauty's Secret Soul	International Feature Service
3/4/23	The Camel's Domain Conquered By The Tank	International Feature Service
3/11/23	The Accordion Has Come Back	International Feature Service

I tired of typing in all these titles after a few year's worth, because as you probably know, my primary interest is in cover series -- these one-shot covers are interesting, but sort of tangential. In this first section of the Dan Smith index I used as my sources Buffalo Times for the 1921 material, then switched over to the Minneapolis Tribune for 1922-23. If some reader would like this index to be complete and is willing to put in the work of writing the index, I'll gladly add your information for the March 1923 - March 1926 material I jumped.

So having tired of the one-shot indexing, I jumped forward to looking for some change to the pattern. I finally found the Dan Smith covers changing in 1926. Let's pick back up in April 1926 with the last few one-shot covers. The first change is on May 9 1926, when the cover design switches from including text and photos along with the art, to a full page art piece. Then on May 23 Smith's syndicate slug transitions from IFS to King Features. At the same time, the 'newsy' covers end and the subject becomes attractive women in history and fiction. Obviously the syndicate change and the cover design change have something to do with each other.

Unfortunately, my source for Dan Smith covers (El Paso Times) dries up in June 1927, and so we're going to have a long gap just when things are getting interesting.

Date	Title	Syndicate
4/4/26	The Varied Splendors of Easter Time	International Feature Service
4/11/26	Lacrosse Comes Back	International Feature Service
4/18/26	The Smock Captures the Office Girl	International Feature Service
4/25/26	Archery on Horseback	International Feature Service
5/2/26	Front Lawn Golf	International Feature Service
5/9/26	If Spring Were Like the Artist Dreams It	International Feature Service (now full page illustration, no photos,text)
5/16/26	A Dream of the Horse	International Feature Service
5/23/26	The June Bride in Fairyland	International Feature Service / King Features Syndicate
5/30/26	A Mermaid Afternoon Tea	King Features Syndicate
6/6/26	A Pirate Story Without Words	King Features Syndicate
6/13/26	The First "Charleston" in Fairyland	King Features Syndicate
6/20/26	The First Air Flight in Fairyland	King Features Syndicate
6/27/26	American Heroines - Pocahontas	King Features Syndicate
7/4/26	American Heroines - Betsy Ross	King Features Syndicate
7/11/26	American Heroines - Priscilla	King Features Syndicate
7/18/26	American Heroines - Minnehaha	King Features Syndicate
7/25/26	American Heroines - Evangeline	King Features Syndicate
8/1/26	American Heroines - The Girl of the Golden West	King Features Syndicate
8/8/26	American Heroines - Molly Pitcher	King Features Syndicate
8/15/26	American Heroines - Dolly Madison	King Features Syndicate
8/22/26	American Heroines - Martha Washington	King Features Syndicate
8/29/26	American Heroines - The Pioneer Bicycle Girl	King Features Syndicate
9/5/26	American Heroines - The Settler's Wife	King Features Syndicate
9/12/26	American Heroines - Nancy Hanks and Young Lincoln	King Features Syndicate
9/19/26	American Heroines - The War Nurse	King Features Syndicate
9/26/26	American Heroines - The Pioneer Suffragist	King Features Syndicate
10/3/26	American Heroines - The Girl Rancher	King Features Syndicate
10/10/26	American Heroines - The Doctor	King Features Syndicate
10/17/26	American Heroines - The Girl Skipper	King Features Syndicate
10/24/26	American Heroines - The Lighthouse Girl	King Features Syndicate
10/31/26	American Heroines - The Farmerette	King Features Syndicate
11/7/26	American Heroines - The Big Game Hunter	King Features Syndicate
11/14/26	Famous Women - Joan of Arc	King Features Syndicate
11/21/26	Famous Women - Cleopatra and Anthony	King Features Syndicate
11/28/26	Famous Women - Lady Godiva	King Features Syndicate
12/5/26	Famous Women - Judith	King Features Syndicate
12/12/26	Famous Women - Salome	King Features Syndicate
12/19/26	An Old Time Christmas Eve	King Features Syndicate
12/26/26	Famous Women - Madame Dubarry	King Features Syndicate
1/2/27	Pythia, the Prophetess of Delphi	King Features Syndicate
1/9/27	Famous Women - Charlotte Corday	King Features Syndicate
1/16/27	Famous Women - Mary Queen of Scots in the Tower	King Features Syndicate
1/23/27	Famous Women - Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh	King Features Syndicate
1/30/27	Famous Women - Lucrezia Borgia	King Features Syndicate
2/6/27	Famous Women - Phyrne Before the Tribunal	King Features Syndicate
2/13/27	Famous Women - Circe	King Features Syndicate
2/20/27	Famous Women - Hagar and Ishmael	King Features Syndicate
2/27/27	Famous Women - Delilah	King Features Syndicate
3/6/27	Famous Women - The Daughter of Pharaoh	King Features Syndicate
3/13/27	Famous Women - Helen of Troy	King Features Syndicate
3/20/27	Famous Women - Madame Pompadour	King Features Syndicate
3/27/27	The Christian Martyr	King Features Syndicate
4/3/27	Salammbo	King Features Syndicate
4/10/27	Hero, Priestess of Venus	King Features Syndicate
4/17/27	The Spirit of Easter	King Features Syndicate
4/24/27	Famous Women - The Queen of Sheba	King Features Syndicate
5/1/27	Famous Women - Anne of Brittany	King Features Syndicate
5/8/27	Famous Women - Isabella of Spain	King Features Syndicate
5/15/27	The One-Two Ear Ring Love Code	International Feature Service (looks like a re-used old cover)
5/22/27	Famous Women - Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi	King Features Syndicate
5/29/27	Penelope	King Features Syndicate
6/5/27	Famous Women - Queen Margaret of Denmark	King Features Syndicate

If anyone can find a paper online that ran the Dan Smith material in this gap, I'd very much like to know about it.

We pick up the Dan Smith thread at the Montana Standard in September 1928. The covers are now story illustrations. Unfortunately I lost this paper at the end of the year and was forced to switch again. :

Date	Title	Syndicate
9/16/28	Out of the Sky (uncredited story illo)	King Features Syndicate
9/23/28	Out of the Sky (uncredited story illo)	King Features Syndicate
9/30/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
10/7/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
10/14/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
10/21/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
10/28/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
11/4/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
11/11/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
11/18/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
11/25/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
12/2/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
12/9/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
12/16/28	The Circus Baby by James Aswell (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
12/23/28	The Eternal Flapper by Don Warren (story illo)	King Features Syndicate

I switched to Indianapolis Star, but that turned into a dead end -- got barely more than a month out of it (see below). However, it did fill in an interesting interlude when Dan Smith lost his spot temporarily to Louis Biedermann. Maybe Dan was given a well-deserved vacation. Note that the Star begins The Eternal Flapper two weeks earlier than the Standard did. Also, notice that in the Star on 12/2/28, Smith was still working on his historical women covers. This could well be a case where we have a couple strands of magazine cover DNA curling around each other, if you know what I mean. Maybe starting with the Standard we are actually seeing an entirely separate cover series, and Dan Smith was actually working on two parallel series? I told you that this index would be messy!

Date	Title	Cover Artist	Syndicate
12/2/28	Famous Romances - Princess Mary of the House of Tudor	Dan Smith	King Features Syndicate
12/9/28	The Eternal Flapper by Don Warren (story illo)	Louis Biedermann	King Features Syndicate
12/16/28	The Eternal Flapper by Don Warren (story illo)	Louis Biedermann	King Features Syndicate
12/23/28	The Eternal Flapper by Don Warren (story illo)	Louis Biedermann	King Features Syndicate
12/30/28	The Eternal Flapper by Don Warren (story illo)	Louis Biedermann	King Features Syndicate
1/6/29	The Eternal Flapper by Don Warren (story illo)	Louis Biedermann	King Features Syndicate
1/13/29	The Eternal Flapper by Don Warren (story illo)	Louis Biedermann	King Features Syndicate

Now our paper has switched to the Detroit Free Press. It appears to me that the Free Press is one week late compared to the Indianapolis Star. in other words, if the Star had continued, they would have run the first installment of Nora's Ark on the 20th.

Noteworthy here is that we have another syndicate change, this one from King to NFS on 3/10/29. There is no obvious reason for this change, and the format and focus don't change. In fact, it happens right in the middle of a series.

What is more exciting is that we finally get to a couple series that are of special interest to me, in that they are continuing comic strip series by my definition. Honeymoon Island and Pancho Rancho finally get Dan Smith a couple spots in my book. A note on those two series: although the writer is uncredited, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if it is Don Warren, who wrote a number of stories in the same vein that Smith illustrated. 

Date	Title	Syndicate
1/27/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo) [start]	King Features Syndicate
2/3/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
2/10/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
2/17/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
2/24/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
3/3/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	King Features Syndicate
3/10/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
3/17/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
3/24/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
3/31/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
4/7/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
4/14/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
4/21/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
4/28/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
5/5/29	Nora's Ark by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
5/12/29	Rocky Ranch by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
5/19/29	Rocky Ranch by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
5/26/29	Rocky Ranch by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
6/2/29	Rocky Ranch by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
6/9/29	Rocky Ranch by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
6/16/29	Rocky Ranch by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
6/23/29	Rocky Ranch by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
6/30/29	Rocky Ranch by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
7/7/29	Rocky Ranch by Don Warren (story illo)	Newspaper Feature Service
7/14/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service (writer uncredited)
7/21/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
7/28/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
8/4/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
8/11/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
8/18/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
8/25/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
9/1/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
9/8/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
9/15/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
9/22/29	Honeymoon Island	Newspaper Feature Service
9/29/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service (writer uncredited)
10/6/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
10/13/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
10/20/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
10/27/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
11/3/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
11/10/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
11/17/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
11/24/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
12/1/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
12/8/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service
12/15/29	Pancho Rancho	Newspaper Feature Service

I'm calling this the end of Dan Smith's reign as a one-man magazine cover-producing machine. I know of one additional series he did in 1930, but after Pancho Rancho ends, he's definitely not even a regular contributor anymore.So that's it for this post, and yet we're really just getting started on the Hearst magazine covers.

Tomorrow we hit an exciting stretch, so see you then!

Labels: Magazine Cover Comics

The blog has been silent since Wednesday because that evening I spent several hours writing an erudite, perceptive and artful review (first time for everything, right?) of the reprint book Betsy and Me. I left final proofing for the next morning. I returned to the office and my computer was sitting at a login prompt. My review had disappeared into the ether. A little investigation revealed that sometime during the night Microsoft decided that it needed to download an update and reboot my machine to put it into effect, in process of which my review had been bid adieu. Thanks Microsoft -- you're swell! I've been pouting for the last two days.

Anyway, today is another Herriman Saturday, so I've been aroused from my torpor. Twasn't easy, I tell ya. Today we have Herriman observing Christmas day with a reminder that not everyone has a merry Xmas.

On the 26th we get a caricature of Walter Parker on the occasion of his announcement that he is quitting his puppeteer role in California politics. To no one's surprise his political string-pulling activities scarcely slow down.

Finally on the 27th we learn that boxer Jim Jeffries agrees to discount his asking price from $50k to $30k to face Australian champion Bill Squires in the squared circle. The telegram, which is no more legible in the original as it is here in this scan, reads "To B.F. Taylor, Athletic Club. Will meet Squires, April, thirty thousand purse. Write particulars. Jim Jeffries". The fight never came off, though. Perhaps Herriman will cover the circumstances in subsequent cartoons.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons