Stripper's Guide

United Friends Entertainment.

The Elmira Telegram, 1/12/1890

They Aquit Themselves Proudly in Welcoming the State Grand Counsellor.

The six local councils of the order of United Friends gave an entertainment at Odd Fellows hall last evening in honor of the official visit of Grand Counsellor Dr. Eli H. Long, of Buffalo….Master Claude Toles did himself proud in his recitation "Adam and Eve." He was decidedly a feature of the entertainment….

The Pupils of School No. 2 Grandly Observe Arbor Day.

The Elmira Telegram, 5/4/1890

...A chorus forest song by the entire school and the audience was invited to witness the dedication of the trees out of doors. The school children marched out to the inspiring martial music of two piccolos, two snare drums and a bass drum. An open air chorus, "Plant the Trees," was sung, and then the first tree was dedicated…Claude Toles and Louis Uttrich, of the sixth grade, dedicated an elm tree to J.T. Trowbridge….

Class Graduation Photo

Williams' Directory of Elmira City 1891

Toles Claude E., clerk, 311 E Water, bds 1306 Maxwell av

Williams' Directory of Elmira City 1892

Toles Claude E., clerk, 311 E Water, bds 330 E Centre

Williams' Directory of Elmira City 1893

Toles Claude E., artist Telegram, bds 324 E Centre

Labels: News of Yore

From 1901 and stretching back to the 1896 inauguration of the International Syndicate weekly page, only C.E. Toles seemed to have any interest in producing a cartoon series. Mr. Toles was also by far the most prolific contributor, but I don't sense that series cartoons were disallowed of the other contributors.

Above we have a sample of the Toles series Reverend O. Shaw Fiddle D.D. I previously thought he had produced this series for the Philadelphia Press, but it turns out they were simply using bits and pieces of the International material in their paper. This series is a revival of the series Reverend Fiddle D.D. that Toles produced for the New York Journal in 1898.

This is the first real series, in the sense of using a continuing character, that ran on the International page. It is also the first series that ran on a regular basis. It ran each week from June 9 to July 14 1901.



The cartoonist who signed himself "Midget" produced many cartoons about bugs, and his style strongly resembles that of Gus Dirks. I thought for awhile that it might be Dirks using a pen name, but much later on, the same 'bug cartoonist' started signing himself as Joe Hanover on the International page.

Although I suppose you could make a case that all the bug cartoons are a sort of series, I didn't count them as such. "Midget" did manage to produce two episodes of Buggum and Snailey's Sideshow (2nd installment titled Buggum and Snailey's 20th Century Show). The first episode ran on June 23 1901, the second not until August 11. Committed to the series concept Mr. Midget certainly was not.


C.E. Toles produced six episodes of Tales of the Orient (later retitled Tales of the East) but it took him the better part of a year. The first episode appeared on November 12 1899, the last on October 14 1900. Each installment was rather text-heavy, just like the first one shown above.



The first continuing series on the International weekly page appeared so infrequently that I nearly didn't recognize it as such. Koon Tracks, a strip about stereotypical blacks with a hunting theme appeared on October 29 1899, December 17 1899, March 4 and March 25 1900.


Our last sample from the International Syndicate weekly page is its first installment in the Rochester Democrat-Chronicle, April 26 1896, and the earliest found in which it is a full page with masthead. Jeffrey Lindenblatt finds good evidence that a page existed as early as July 1895 in the Cincinnati Enquirer, but they chopped it up just enough so as to be uncertain as to the complete contents that were being distributed.

As you can see in the sample above , the early version was a little more text-heavy than it would be later, but right from the first it offered both panels and comic strips. The prolific C.E. Toles was its most frequent contributor right from the start.

Labels: International Syndicate

What you see above is the only reproducible sample I've been able to come up with for one of the greatest yet most mysterious and obscure cartoonists I've ever encountered. Even his name is a mystery -- is it C.E. Toles? T.E. Coles? Something else? From his signature you really can't tell for sure. Ohio State University's index of Bill Blackbeard's collection gives the name as C.E. Toles, but I don't know if that's based on anything more than a guess.

I first encountered this cartoonist's work in the early sections of the Philadelphia Inquirer, but chances are that his work there was reprinted from the New York Journal. Work by Toles is found in the pages of that Hearst paper in the late 1890s -- the sample above was from 1898 -- and he, as did many cartoonists of the times, specialized in one-shot work. And what work it was! Look at the tremendous but seemingly effortless perspective work above and keep in mind that this piece I'm reproducing is chosen only because it's the only one I have in hardcopy. Practically everything Toles did was a masterwork of this caliber or even greater!

The only series I know for certain he did was The Reverend Fiddle D.D. which ran for three months in the New York Journal in 1898. A later series titled The Reverend O. Shaw Fiddle D.D. ran in the Philadelphia Press for three months in 1901, but I haven't been able to compare the two side by side to determine if they are actually two separate series or if the Press version is just reprints with a longer title.

According to OSU's database Toles also did a lot of work for the New York Herald in 1896. Alfredo Castelli's Here We Are Again adds to our tiny knowledgebase with the information that he was doing editorial cartoons at the Washington Post in 1894. He also cites another series, Miss High Kick, in the New York Herald in 1896 but the info is pretty sketchy (not to mention in Italian). Here's a very minor effort, a spot cartoon, by our man Toles on Yesterday's Papers.

So who the heck was this guy, and what did he do with the rest of his life? Surely a cartoonist of his caliber didn't switch professions and spend the rest of his existence as a butcher! I know only of his work from 1894-1901 -- does anyone know anything more about the man or his work?

EDIT: Sara Duke at the Library of Congress has solved the mystery! The fellow's name is T.E. Coles, as evidenced by a byline in an 1895 issue of the Comic Sketch Club. This appearance further tells us that Coles was being syndicated by the International Syndicate of Baltimore at that time (Comic Sketch Club was the 'periodical' containing the weekly press proofs of their syndicate offerings).

Thank you Sara!!

Tom Toles is one of the leading lights in editorial cartooning and has a Pulitzer to prove it. And that's only about a half-dozen Pulitzers short of what he deserves, in my humble opinion. Back in the 1990s, when he was still with the Buffalo News but had already gained national fame he took the plunge and created a comic strip. This is no great surprise, as it seems most every editorial cartoonist of any note gives it a go at one time or another.

Tom Toles' Curious Avenue, distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, debuted on April 19 1992 to a lukewarm reception. I'm betting that feature editors who liked Toles' political cartoons grabbed the strip on reputation alone, while others wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. The strip, however, was completely apolitical. It featured a cast of rather goofy tykes who sport a host of neuroses. They generally act like kids, but they can express themselves like adults. So yeah, somewhat like Peanuts, but with an edgier and overtly darker sensibility. The strip tended to be a bit on the violent side, with physical encounters between the kids a pretty commonplace occurrence, and sarcasm was as rampant in the strip as in Toles' editorial cartoons.

I found the strip intriguing and the drawing style attractive. I rather liked it, although I did feel it suffered for a lack of likeable characters . Apparently I was in the minority for liking the strip because it went belly-up in less than two years; the latest I've found it running is December 31 1994. I imagine Toles pulled the plug, seeing that it wasn't going to be a major income-producer.

If the samples intrigue you, look for an Andrews-McMeel reprint collection of the strip issued in 1993; it's on the scarce side, but not particularly expensive.

Labels: Obscurities

 

Here's some very early C.E. Toles work from the July 28 1895 issue of the New York Herald. The Herald actually had a colour press by this time, but they often squandered it on non-comic material. The fools! 

The Toles gag cartoon is nothing to write home about, but the comic strip is a wonderful example of Toles' inventiveness, ably abetted by his incredible drawing ability. The third cartoon is by A.D. Rahn, who was unknown to me but a Google search shows that he did some very impressive work, mostly straight illustration.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

Working our way backward now, we find W.M. Goodes making some contributions to the International weekly page. His only series, which managed just two installments quite far apart, was Illustrated Interviews. Above is the first installment on October 12 1902, and the other was on December 7 of that year.

On this page we also see cartoons by F.L. Fithian and William F. Marriner. Lillian Steinert and Jean Du Bois are both unknown to me, but pretty good cartoonists.


A longer series was Mr. Henry Peck, also known as The Henpecks, and Mr. Peck. As with other series that went by this same name, it is the tale of a henpecked husband. This series couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be a panel or strip, appearing three times in each guise. The series ran from July 6 to September 7 1902. The series was signed only "McK", which I suppose is most likely to be McKee Barclay. He was active in Baltimore at this time.

This page has a contribution from C.A. David, about the latest he'll be found on International's page.  He was a major contributor to the page in the 1890s, though he never once deigned to pen a series.


Going back to 1901, we finally get to see a series by the great C.E. Toles. This one is a panel series titled The Summering of Miss Frivolity, and each pretty girl picture is accompanied by some verses by Toles. This series ran for ten episodes from July 7 to September 15.

Labels: International Syndicate

Baltimore's International Syndicate was one of the earliest distributors of newspaper cartoon content, starting in 1899*. Unfortunately their output is hard to track because the syndicate very rarely displayed a copyright on their material. The earliest features I was able to include in my book were Zimmie (a weather cartoon) and the long-running Scoop the Cub Reporter, both of which debuted in 1912 (Zimmie had been distributed earlier but not by International).

That leaves at least a decade of the International Syndicate unaccounted for before the advent of their first known series. That was in no way alarming to me, because it was my belief that the syndicate specialized in non-series gag panels.

International Syndicate did in fact specialize  in gag panels and text jokes. In that I still seem to be correct. However, what I didn't know until very recently is that they offered this material not only as a collection of bits and pieces for newspapers to use willy-nilly, dropping in a panel here, typesetting a joke there, but also as a cohesive page. This page went under the consistent title The Funny Side of Life for many years.


The above page is among a small selection I purchased recently. All from the Detroit Free Press of early 1903, the pages have a recurring series by William F. Marriner on many, plus a selection of gag cartoons and text jokes. The text jokes are all credited as originally appearing in various publications.

A question you may be asking is why I believe that these pages came from International Syndicate. After all, there are no copyright stamps on them. The thought came to me based on this page and several others having cartoons by 'Hamb' -- that's A.Y. Hambleton, a Baltimore cartoonist.

That wasn't nearly enough to pin the blame for those pages on International, but it piqued my curiosity enough that I selected some nice clear text from one of the cartoons and started searching online. To my surprise, I found a few newspapers that ran the complete page on a regular weekly basis, some for long periods. Many others cut the material apart, but these papers offered the material as I imagine it was supplied by the syndicate, masthead and all.

I began tracing the page backward and forward in time, and I had to get back all the way to 1901 for the real "ah-ha" moment. In that year The Funny Side of Life was replete with cartoons by the fabulous C.E. Toles, who we know from John Adcock was the editor of the International Syndicate. As far as I'm concerned, that sewed up the case.

The fun part was that although the vast majority of the cartoons on these pages are one-shot gags, the syndicate did actually offer some half-hearted series. In the coming days I'm going to feature these series on the blog. All of our samples from here on will come from digital microfilm, so bask in the quality of today's sample, which comes from real live pulp paper. Today we'll start with the first series I found ...

Tweedledum, Tweedledee and the Other Triplet

This series by William F. Marriner has been featured on the blog before, way back in 2006. That previous appearance, unfortunately, turns out to have offered only misinformation. At the time I believed that this series originated with the Chicago Chronicle. The Chronicle called their 1903 comic section a production "by Chicagoans for Chicagoans", so you can see where I could have been misled.

Tweedledum, Tweedledee and the Other Triplet offered the typical Marriner big-headed urchins. In this case it's a trio of little terrors who send their victims into a neurotic fit thinking that they've been drinking too much and are seeing triple. This series first appears in the January 3 1903 page, and is last seen on April 5 of that year**.

~~~~~~~


* This date and lots of other info provided in John Adcock's biography of C.E. Toles. My spidey sense says that the real start of the syndicate is 1892, though, when it was known as the Comic Sketch Club of Baltimore.  Adcock doesn't say that the two companies are related, but the similarity of their business models and personnel make the connection seem very likely. I prepare to stand corrected. In my favor, though, I'll let the cat out of the bag now and say that I was able to trace the International page back to 1896, so no matter what company name it went by then, it was active in distributing this page. Jeffrey Lindenblatt has traced it even further, to July 1895 in the Cincinnati Enquirer.

** Source: Louisville Courier-Journal.

Labels: International Syndicate

The 80s and 90s saw a bumper crop of new features penned by editorial cartoonists. Although there's been a long history of comic strip cartoonists starting out in the political cartoon genre, in the old days if they made the leap they typically did it early in their careers and dropped their editorial work if they met with any success.

In the past score of years though, a lot of well-known editorial cartoonists have tried their hands at strips while retaining their editorial cartoon posts. Tom Toles, Jim Borgman, Bill Schorr, Mike Peters, Bruce Beattie, and many others all tried strips with widely varying degrees of success. One of the very least successful, though, was one of the biggest names in editorial cartooning, Patrick Oliphant.

Sunday Punk starred Oliphant's trademark penguin character from his daily editorial cartoons, and the character was pretty much used in the same way in the Sunday-only comic strip -- making wry comments on politics and current events. The strip debuted on March 18 1984, and the latest I've been able to find is from September 16 of the same year, a run of just a little more than six months.

The strip was reasonably good, so it's unclear why it had such a short run. Perhaps Oliphant lost interest in the project, perhaps the sales weren't good, I dunno. I like to think it's just desserts for Oliphant's earlier attitude toward comic strips. He was the guy who yelled foul the longest and loudest when Doonesbury won a Pulitzer in 1975. Oliphant belittled the feature and the form of being unworthy for such recognition. Now less than a decade later he was drawing a comic strip with political content. What goes around comes around?

Labels: Obscurities

If the excruciatingly awful rhymes perpetrated in the samples above haven't turned your gray matter into a bubbling ooze pooling around your ankles, let me tell you that this is some mighty rare stuff you're looking at. The Theatrical Alphabet is a series Cole Johnson found in the Baltimore Herald, an obscure newspaper of 1900-1906 that might be totally forgotten had not H.L. Mencken alit there for a few years.

Cole says of this item:

Here's a local strip from the Baltimore Herald. I've seen "Hamb"'s work before. This is a very primitive section, with a mix of real artists and cro-magnons, such as Morrison, T. Barnes, Fenderson (unsigned), W.M. Goodes, C. Toles, Sissel, J.C. Mayer, Mark Dintenfass, Fithian (dated "99"), all one-shots but for this item, in April and May, 1901. The insides feature "M. Quad's Page", and the saga of "Mr. Bowser" , illustrated by McDougall, longtime staples of the McClure syndicate. In September, this paper picked up the McClure comic section. Did McClure syndicate cartoons before the section was introduced?

Whether this section of the first half of 1901 in the Herald was indeed some sort of proto-McClure section I don't know. McClure's 'official' comics section debuted on 4/28/1901 and had continuing series from the start. I do, however, think I can ID "Hamb" -- I think this is A.Y. Hambleton, who later did a little work for the Philadelphia North American.

Update: Acting on a tip from alert reader Fram,  I have determined that the poem "The Theatrical Alphabet" is indeed considered part of the H.L. Mencken canon by S.T. Joshi, who is an authority on the subject. The poem, properly attributed to the Sunday comic section of the Baltimore Herald, is included in Joshi's book of Mencken verse, Collected Poems. I had wondered if the poem might have been previously published elsewhere and then later re-used by Hambleton, but it appears that the Sunday comics were the original publishing locale of the poem. However, though I am a definite Mencken fan, I still stick by my opinion that the poem is awful. But pretty cool that one of the most erudite writers of the 20th century actually penned a comic strip!

Labels: Obscurities

We'll quickly cover three more William F. Marriner International Syndicate series today.

First up,  Rollo and his Tutor (above), which ran each week from April 19 to June 28 1903*. This one offers a daffy teacher who gets his facts mixed up.


Above we have Stunts of Strenuous Sammie, a satire based on President Theodore Roosevelt's flamboyant calls for men and women to engage in physically strenuous outdoor pursuits. Most kids were crazy for Teddy and many took his example and philosophy to heart. This series ran from July 12* to September 27** 1903.

Note on the page above that Dwig is now contributing to the page (upper right), and a fellow named Hugh Morris is doing a passable imitation of F.M. Howarth. I'm told that this is one of the many  pseudonyms of C.E. Toles,  but he was dead by this time. Were these 'Hugh Morris' cartoons material from the slush pile, previously printed, or is Mr. Morris actually a living breathing person?


Above is the first installment of Holdup Harold, about a light-fingered hobo. This series changed titles to Holdup Herbert with the second episode through November 8, then returned on December 27 with the fellow's name changed back to Harold. The series then ran through April 17 1904*. In 1905 he popped up again for two episodes, on February 26 and March 5***.


* Source: Louisville Courier-Journal
** Source: Oakland Tribune
*** Source: Rochester Democrat-Chronicle

Labels: International Syndicate