Stripper's Guide

Freyse (William Henry)* 5267

Movie mad Mazie. © 1 c. Aug. 5, 1933; G 12105. 

Freyse, Bill.

Unofficial hysterical facts about old Tucson. Distributed by Tucson News Agency. © William Henry Freyse; 4Jan54; A120622.

William Freyse who drew the “Boarding House” cartoon panel for 30 years died Monday at a Tucson hospital following a month-long illness. He was 70.

Freyse moved to Tucson in the early 1940s because of his wife’s health. He moved from Cleveland Ohio where he had started drawing the cartoon panel. A native of Detroit Freyse joined the Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1939. 

He began the “Copper Penny” comic strip which later proved unsuccessful. Freyse took over the “Our Boarding” panel when former artist Bela Zaboly took over the “Popeye” strip in Sept. 1939. Freyse’s last daily “Our Boarding House” panel will appear Mar. 15. The Sunday panel will end April 20.

His daughter, Mrs. Lynn Borden of Los Angeles Calif., held the title of Miss Arizona in 1958 and later became an actress and fashion model. She played the wife in the television series “Hazel.” Freyse is survived by his widow, Evelyn, a daughter, Mrs. Lynn Borden, and a son, Stephen.

Branagan continues ‘Our Boarding House’

“Our Boarding House” will be continued by artist James P. Branagan, who worked closely with the late William Freyse, who died just two weeks before he was to announce his retirement and turn the cartoon over to Branagan.

The dialogue of Major Hoople and other familiar characters of the Boarding House will continue to be written by Tom McCormack. The feature is distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association.

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

Here are Gene Ahern and J. R. Williams as they looked in 1931 from these syndicate-issued advertisements. Ahern was the creator of "Our Boarding House" (known to many by the name of its star, Major Hoople) and later "Room And Board" an essentially identical feature for a different syndicate.

J.R. Williams created "Out Our Way", and is still well-known among a small but serious fan base for his "Bull Of The Woods" cartoons. These were gags about workers in a machine shop and are fondly remembered by those who worked in such environments. The "Bull of the Woods" cartoons were one of the many topics covered by the "Out Our Way" feature.

I would note that today syndicates practically never produce and distribute such advertising materials as this for newspapers. Back in the 30s this sort of material was supplied constantly to papers. Just one more of the myriad reasons that comic strips are less popular than they once were.

As always, click on the image to see it at full size.

Gene Ahern was proving to be a great catch for NEA in the second half of the 1910s. He not only produced very funny comics in copious quantities, he also did his own column and even helped out with spot cartoons.

But Gene hadn't yet hit his stride as a newspaper fixture. In 1919 in his strip Squirrel Food, which was a pretty close copy of the look and humor of Rube Goldberg's strip, he introduced a new character, Otto Auto, on February 28. Originally Otto was a sprite who inhabited the background of the strip. Otto's schtick was that he drove his car like a bat out of hell and wouldn't let anything or anyone slow him down.

Despite being relegated to the background, Otto quickly became the most popular feature of the strip. On July 20 Squirrel Food was renamed Otto Auto and the mad driver became the star of the show. Ahern made a daily game out of Otto's driving exploits, inviting readers to submit ideas for how to stop Otto's car. Every day Otto would encounter readers' traps and ambushes, and every day Otto would successfully avert them.

This period of the strip was, for my money, one of the funniest slapstick sequences ever committed to newsprint. I know I read an extended reprint of it somewhere but I'll be darned if I can remember where it was. Nemo? StripScene? Hopefully someone will remind us of where it appeared, and I heartily recommend you find a copy and enjoy it yourself.

All good things must come to an end, though. Ahern knew that trying to make Otto Auto a series endlessly plying this single joke was a mistake. So it came that Otto's car was finally stopped and the strip moved to a garage where Otto and his second banana Clem traded jibes as fumbling mechanics. Our samples today are from this era of the strip. Otto Auto continued in this vein until February 6 1921, when the strip was replaced by Crazy Quilt, another obescurity that we'll cover one of these days. It wouldn't be until later in 1921 that Ahern would make his most lasting contribution to newspaper cartooning in the form of the classic panel cartoon Our Boarding House.

Labels: Obscurities

As far as I can tell Gene Ahern didn't serve in World War I, but that didn't stop him from doing a strip about a doughboy in the trenches.

His screwball NEA strip Squirrel Food had been running since 1915, often featured a dimwitted nut named Balmy Benny. The strip was retitled in his honor on July 25 1918 when the little fellow and his faithful companion George the dog were inducted into service in Europe. In order to be somewhat respectful of our boys in uniform Benny's lunacy was toned way down for the newly refocused feature, a change that definitely dampened the hilarity. Ahern's writing on this strip is tentative, searching for gags in a war zone of which he had no first-hand knowledge. Real soldiers like Percy Crosby, Wally Wallgren and Bruce Bairnsfather could serve up wartime gallows humor, but Ahern had to content himself with derivative gags, most of which dropped like lead balloons.

Luckily for Ahern the war ended mere months after Benny arrived in the trenches. Our screwball hero got to come back stateside and resume his screwball ways. The strip was renamed back to Squirrel Food on February 3 1919.

Labels: Obscurities

 

While NEA offered some very fine comic strips among their blanket service offerings, one real stinker was the Sunday version of J.R. Williams' fine daily panel, Out Our Way. The Sunday version took one occasional aspect of the daily, a typical suburban family named the Willets, and made them the star of the Sunday show. Despite the Sunday debuting a mere eight months after the daily in 1922, Williams evidently fely secure enough in his position that he probably never touched the Sunday strip. Instead it was handed off to Neg Cochran, who worked on it anonymously until after the death of Williams in 1957 -- surely some sort of record for longevity in ghosting a strip? 

But why did the Out Our Way Sunday last so long, you ask, if it was such a stinker? Well, I'll tell you that Neg Cochran was the son of NEA editor Hal Cochran, and you can draw your own conclusion. But nepotism can't be the whole reason, because the Sunday Out Our Way, as hard as it for me to believe it, was a popular inclusion to Sunday sections for NEA subscribers even though there were other and better Sunday strip options distributed by the syndicate. Perhaps it was simply that newspaper editors didn't really catch on that their very popular daily series was, in its Sunday version, a deathly pale imitation. I dunno. 

Anyhow, this post is supposed to be about the topper, not Out Our Way, so excuse my digression. As with most NEA full page Sundays in the 1920s and 30s, Out Our Way's toppers were produced mostly by different creators than the main strip. This interesting innovation allowed other bullpen cartoonists to share the Sunday color section limelight, and meant that the presumably hard-working cartoonist of the main feature was given a bit of slack. 

Out Our Way went through several toppers that were Sunday versions of NEA daily strips; the first was Mom 'n' Pop, and that was followed by Roy Crane's Wash Tubbs. After that there was a strange long foray into activity and puzzle features, often wasting the talent of Crane. On August 19 1934* the puzzles were finally dropped and a new topper debuted. This was Otto Honk, featuring a goofball title character who walks into the same sorts of gags that readers older then six have already seen a million times. Penning this was Bela Zaboly, a young NEA bullpenner at this time. It was an inauspicious debut for Zaboly, but you might say that the quality of Otto Honk meshed perfectly with the Sunday Out Our Way. 

Zaboly got lucky in 1936 when Gene Ahern, creator of the popular NEA feature Our Boarding House, decided to jump ship. Zaboly got yanked off the Otto Honk assignment to help continue Ahern's orphaned feature; his last Otto Honk ran on March 15 1936**. Left with no creator to handle the topper, NEA opted to assign it to Neg Cochran himself, which finally gave Neg the opportunity to see his name on the Sunday page, albeit only on the topper. Evidently this didn't strike him as that much of an honor, because he dropped Otto Honk as soon as a replacement could be found. The last Otto Honk appeared on June 21 1936**, and on the next Sunday there debuted the best thing there ever was about the Out Our Way Sunday -- George Scarbo's fabulously drawn Comic Zoo topper.

* Source: Brooklyn Eagle

** Source: NEA archives at Ohio State University

Labels: Topper Features

I have a great assortment of items in this week's Heritage Internet Comic Auction, which closes today. There are a lot of great items, some of which have VERY low bids at this point. You may be able to pick up some bargains -- my loss, your gain.

Something for everybody this week, no matter your budget or interests: great original art, gold, silver and bronze age comic books, platinum age comic strip-oriented books, big bargain lots, etc.To view and bid on any of my lots in this week's auction follow this link.

Here are photos and my thoughts on this week's auction items:

Great Room and Board Sunday by Gene Ahern --  very Munchausean

Incredibly rare -- masthead art for the NY American Sunday comics section, by 'Bunny' Schultze

Delightful E. Simms Campbell Cuties panel

Beyond rare -- a Little Bobby Bowser original and proof sheet by Bert Cobb -- gorgeous art

Early Stan Drake Heart of Juliet Jones daily

Top tier from 1959 Heart of Juliet Jones Sunday

One of my very favorite pieces -- classic Clare Briggs When a Feller Needs a Friend -- this was tough to let go

Super-sexy Flamingo daily -- and price should be reasonable since its by Thornton, not Matt Baker

Ozark Ike wins the 1948 World Series! Oh my, Dinah is in that striped sweater.

Mel Graff Secret Agent X-9 daily -- no main characters so probably will go very cheap (oops, I mean undervalued!)

Super Sidney Smith Gumps daily from Andy's presidential campaign -- very timely subject matter

Here's a real treasure -- Burris Jenkins anti-comic book editorial cartoon from 1946

Man that John Lehti sure could draw, couldn't he? Should have taken over Prince Valiant IMHO

Delightful Lichty Grin and Bear It daily panel

Superb Bobby London Thimble Theatre daily with three main characters!

The sleeper of the auction, literally! Amazing and HUGE J. Norman Lynd Sunday about dreams!

Very rare item -- a Sugar and Spike single-page gag by the great Sheldon Mayer

The earliest Fred Opper cartoon you're ever likely to find -- 1880!!

Sweetly drawn C.F. Peters gag cartoon about the stock market. Check out the nice framing on this one!

Oh man, the fine linework of Paul Robinson just blows me away -- Just Among Us Girls panel

Snookums topper -- not really by McManus of course, this would be the great Zeke Zekely ghosting,. Pantomime gag!

Terry and the Pirates by Wunder -- fabulous drawing, and no face-front stars to make the bidding go overboard

Denny O'Neil comic book script with probably Michael Kaluta sketches!

A group of 16 different issues of 4Most -- I used to really get a kick out of reading these, and they're very inexpensive

Group of 9 Airboys and Air Fighters -- lot of really nice condition copies thrown into this lot!

Group of 15 nice silver age Batman and Detective issues

Group of 34 silver and early bronze age Batman, Detective, Man-Bat -- what a deal!

1933 Kellogg's Buck Rogers giveaway booklet in nice condition

Very scarce Bringing Up Father Big Book in really sharp condition

Lot of 8 Bringing Up Father Cupples and Leon books in lesser condtion -- lotta cheap reading!

The whole series of Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers books -- I hate to think what I paid for these, and they threw them into one lot! Ouch! Mostly beautiful condition for these fragile items.

2 different delightful Foxy Grandpa books by Bunny

Quite rare 1918 Landfield-Kupfer Gumps book

Two really nice early Iron Man issues -- I think they under-graded these frankly.

OMG! They threw all my DC Kirby's into one enormous box lot. Huge lot and plenty of high grade issues in there. Gosh I loved these series as a young 'un.

Ultra-rare Mammoth Comics, poor condition but find another!

Lovely copy of the Cupples & Leon Mutt and Jeff Big Book

4 Cupples and Leon Mutt and Jeff books in lesser condition. Bargain reading material!

Ultra-rare New York American Mutt and Jeff Joke Book -- only one I have ever found from this series!

Rare Saalfield color interior Popeye Cartoon Book in reasonably nice shape

Group of 36 (!) Target Comics. What a treasure-trove of great 1940s reading, probably at a bargain price.

7 wonderful reprint books in nice shape. Sorta weird grouping, so will probably go cheap!

Great group of Eisner, Kurtzman and other reprint books. Wally Wood and R.C. Harvey are adults-only btw.

Set of 42 proof books for King Features' North America Syndicate. Mostly July-December 2001, plus more from 1996-97

Relive your military days in these three scarce books. Two slightly risque WWII digests up top, plus the incomparable Wally Wallgren's WWI Stars & Stripes strips.