Stripper's Guide

A comic strip that ran for over thirty years, was reprinted in at least five books, and was lovingly remembered by readers wouldn't seem to be much of an obscurity. However, if you weren't a reader of the Christian Science Monitor, chances are you never heard of one of their premier features, The Diary of Snubs, Our Dog. 

Although the Monitor wasn't exactly a treasure house of comics content, what little they ran were, generally speaking, quite good. Despite restrictions on content (or perhaps because, one might argue) their low-key, gentle comics managed to be pleasantly heartwarming and entertaining.

The Monitor's first comic was The Busyville Bees, which ran from 1910 to 1918. After a long fallow period with no more comics, The Diary of Snubs, Our Dog was added on June 4 1923. The new feature, which ran under the title A Little Dog's Diary for the first two installments, was by Paul Carmack. Carmack supposedly created the feature for the Prairie Farmer weekly magazine before it began in the Monitor, but I have not been able to confirm that (Carmack was the cartoonist on The Adventures of Slim and Spud for that magazine).

Carmack really had his sights set on being an editorial cartoonist, but if he didn't have his heart in the strip, it certainly didn't show. The episodes, told from the perspective of the pup Snubs and featuring his youthful master, known to the dog as "The Boss", are little nostalgia-tinged anecdotes in the life of a boy and his dog that are quietly thrilling, especially for those of us who were lucky enough to have such a dog companion in our youth (mine was named Trixie). Readers marveled at how Carmack seemed to remember all those little adventures a boy and his dog had together, and skillfully interpreted the bemused mind of the dog, trying to understand what goes on in the world of the humans.

The new strip did not run on a daily basis (generally 2-3 times per week) during Carmack's tenure, and until the 1930s ran in the vertical box format shown above; eventually the feature transitioned into a typical strip format. 

Carmack begged off from the Snubs strip as his editorial cartoons became more and more popular, often reprinted in mainstream papers. On March 1 1939, Richard Rodgers took over on the strip. Rodgers did an impressive job of channeling Carmack, both in art and writing. He did bring a little more continuity into the strip, telling occasional extended stories. Carmack had also engaged in continuities, but they were generally of the type seen above, where a group of strips tells of The Boss and his dog attending a summer boys' camp, not really plot-heavy tales.

Rodgers saw the pup through the war years, but was replaced by another new artist, Ted Miller, on September 16 1947. As with mainstream strips, by 1947 the Monitor's strips had been reduced in size, and Miller simplified and modernized the art a bit to go along with the new format. He also more often strayed from the diary format, in which the strip is narrated by Snubs; more often the narration was now actually dialogue, just not in word balloons. 

On the last day of August 1954, the Christian Science Monitor shut down most of its strips, including The Diary of Snubs, Our Dog. Only Guernsey LePelley's Tubby and Buddy and Company and non-series gag cartoons would survive the change in editorial direction. 

Coming next, Alex Jay's Ink-Slinger Profiles of Snubs' later artists, Richard Rodgers and Ted Miller.

Labels: Obscurities

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

Here's the famous Campbell's Soup Kids, who were created by Grace Drayton in 1904. These promotional cards seem to have been issued as a set of four, and the perforations seen on the cards would seem to indicate that they were attached to each other in pairs. There are also two versions of the cards, one set with the added text "10 cents a can". This card was postally used in 1909, probably the year of issue. 

I can't decide if these cards feature Drayton art or not. Some of the kids seem like they are spot on (the girl in the yellow frock particularly) while others seem just a little off. What do you think? 

Labels: Wish You Were Here

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

February 9 1910 -- The morning after the big upset, Fireman Jim Flynn knocking out Sam Langford, the sports page is abuzz with the news. Herriman, though, for some reason ignores the big sporting news and does a one-shot strip on the sports page.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

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

Frank Ladendorf was a pioneer of the funnies pages, but is little remembered because his material just couldn't compare to others like Outcault, Opper and Dirks. He was with the New York World for years, and his last comics section contribution was no soaring coda, but more of a last gasp. Katy-did is your typical naughty kid strip, the only thing unusual about it is that it stars a girl. It was one of the quarter-page World strips, and only made it into the syndicated version three times, from March 15 to 29 1908. According to Ken Barker's World index, it ran in the flagship paper a few extra times, from March 1 to 29 (apparently the syndicated version used Jay Jones - His Camera rather than the Ladendorf strips). 

Our sample above is the final strip in the series, and bids goodbye to Ladendorf's comic section career by cutting off the right edges of his panels so that his final signature is partially missing. Not quite the gold watch treatment...

Labels: Obscurities

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

Tom Wilson Sr. made his indelible mark on the comic strip world with Ziggy in the 1970s. His son, Tom, Jr., after an unrewarding stint as an artist and product designer, determined to follow in his dad's footsteps in the 1980s. He came up with Ug, a strip starring a gentle and somewhat befuddled furry giant of indeterminate species, and his pal, Bogey, a worldy wise bird who serves as the George to his Lennie. 

Ug was bought by Universal Press Syndicate (which also syndicated Ziggy), and after extensive tweaking the strip was loosed on the world to a claimed 75 newspapers as a Sunday and daily strip. That's not a bad start at all, if true, but evidently it didn't take off to the extent hoped for by the cartoonist or his syndicate. The daily strip ran from April 2 1984 to December 14 1985, and the Sunday ran April 8 1984 to December 8 1985*.

My guess is that Wilson's famous name, while it may have helped him get the syndicate contract, worked against him when newspaper editors were looking at the strip. There's a certain Ziggy-ish quality to the feature that seems much amplified when you know the identity of the creator. I can see editors rejecting the feature, saying that we don't need a another Ziggy, thanks anyway. 

Tom Jr. wasn't to remain on the sidelines for long. Around 1987 he began assisting his dad on Ziggy, eventually taking it over in the 1990s. So if Ug was not a lasting success, it did serve its creator well as training for taking over his dad's feature.

*Source: All dates from John Lund based on Boston Herald.

Labels: Obscurities

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

Cartoonist John F. Hart was a Philadelphia newspaper institution in the 1900s-20s, but his work was mostly in puzzles and non-series cartooning. When he occasionally dipped a toe in that end of the pool his art made you want more, but his lack of ability as a comic strip writer made you wish he practiced a little more before inflicting his work on the unsuspecting public. 

Here is Jawnny Grin, which offered an admittedly out of the ordinary gag for the comics page; the basic idea is the same ole same ole, a bratty kid. But this kid has a beaming smile that can get him out of any sort of hot water. Unusual, yes, but the execution is so inept that the gag needs to be explained in the title bar. 

Philadelphia North American readers only had to put up with this stinker once, but it ran in the North American's syndicated comic section several times between June 3 and July 29 1906*. 

Thanks tyo Cole Johnson for the scan.

* Source: Boston Post

Labels: Obscurities

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

Here's a postcard issued by the Illustrated Post Card and Novelty Company during the U.S. involvement of World War I, so presumably in 1917 or '18 though the card itself is undated. It bears a code number of  136B.

Archie Gunn was a somewhat renowned 'pretty girl' artist who produced many postcards and posters. He was a regular feature in the newspaper Sunday supplements of the 1890s and into the 20th century. 

Our hard and fast rule here at Stripper's Guide is that only newspaper cartoonists rate being featured on Wish You Were Here, and Gunn admittedly has no known strip series in his credits. I believe he did, however, produce the first installment of Rice and Tapioca the Famous Pudding Brothers, albeit anonymously. So we won't make a habit of running Gunn's cards, but we'll offer him this one appearance as his due.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

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

Herriman attends an auto show and meets representatives from the various companies. Other than the Auburn, which is still well-remembered today as one of the premier luxury car makers of the 1900s-1930s, all the rest are pretty much in the dustbin of history -- Rambler (revived as a nameplate decades later by Nash), Petrel, Badger and Pennsylvania.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

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

Willard started out at the Herald doing a daily strip with no continuing title, but his first Sunday feature was Tom, Dick and Harry, which started February 7 1915. The strip starred a kid gang trio who engaged in the typical shenanigans, offering no particular hint of genius on the part of the cartoonist. Who would have guessed that Willard would soon create Moon Mullins, a strip whose popularity would keep it going for nearly seven decades. 

Tom, Dick and Harry initially ran until October 17 1915, then went on a hiatus, then returned on January 30 1916 and ran until March 25 1917. On the following Sunday Willard unveiled a new strip called Mr. and Mrs. Pippin, which was much more in keeping with Willard's interest in portraying the lower classes. 

Labels: Obscurities

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

Joe Palooka had many toppers, but it was only the very luckiest Palooka fans who got to see them. The early toppers ran in both full and tabloid version of the strip, but starting in 1936, toppers began getting lopped off of certain formats. By the 1940s they were very rarely seen because they were dropped from pretty much every format except some oddball ones. 

But that's as much as I'll say about that today, because today we're covering Fisher's History of Boxing, a topper that was included in the full and tab versions of the Sunday page in an era when anything less than that was relatively rare. This topper debuted on September 3 1933, and each week offered up short vignettes from (surprise, surprise) the history of boxing. The text on these strips was relatively mundane, but sometimes the drawings added a little levity to the proceedings, like in the sample above.

The strip ran for almost three years, finally ending on June 20 1936 by chronicling James J. Braddock's win over Max Baer, which happened in 1935. By 1936 the topper was no longer included with all tab formats; it was still available but the paper had to employ an extra long tabloid format to accommodate it. Fisher's History of Boxing would prove to be the last Joe Palooka topper seen by most readers of the strip, as subsequent series were used by fewer and fewer papers. 

Labels: Topper Features

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

Raymond "GAR" Garman was the king of the jungle animal strip on the Chicago Daily News weekday funnies page. He started contributing to the page in 1900, and did lots of panel cartoons starring jungle animals from early on, but it wasn't until 1902 that he really applied himself to a strip with a continuing jungle character. Eventually this jungle strip would devolve into having no consistent continuing characters, but originally it started out starring a monkey named Jocko ... or sometimes Chatters. This first installment of what I'm calling the Jocko series was on August 4 1902. The continuing thread to this series, as was true of most of his jungle material, was to assume the jungle kingdom had a society and personalities much like ours, just populated with hairy creatures instead of us. 

It is impossible to pin down an end date for the Jocko series, because it dovetails with lots of other jungle material, and when monkeys were featured for years to come Garman would recycle the same names over and over. About all I can say for this Jocko series is that the derby-wearing ape by that name was seen less and less in 1903, so that's about as specific an end date as I can manage. Garman continued doing jungle strips and panels throughout his tenure on the back page of the Daily News, which ended about 1912. Occasionally he would carve out an actual series, and I have documented those in my book, but a case could be made that the real listing for "GAR" is simply Jungle Strip and Panels, 1900 - 1912.

Labels: Obscurities

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

Here's another one of those Magic Slate postcards that were distributed in the major Hearst papers in 1907. This one features a nice portrait of Buster Brown revealed once junior sloshes water all over the thin paper card.

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

February 7 1910 -- Herriman offers vignettes from Sam Langford's training camp on the day before his big fight against Fireman Jim Flynn.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

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

The aviation strip Tailspin Tommy would eventually be responsible for quite a few toppers, but in the early years it could only manage a single panel, titled Progress of Flight (not counting the comic stamp feature, which we here at Stripper's Guide don't deem worthy of tracking). 

Tailspin Tommy was one of a long list of strips that owed its existence to Charles Lindbergh's historic flight, and despite lackluster art it was consistently one of the most popular of the genre through the 1930s. I think much of that initial success must be due to the slam-bang writing of Glenn Chaffin, which though a bit wordy, really gave flying-mad kids a strong dose of high-flying medicine. Artist Hal Forrest, on the other hand, who semed much more comfortable with doing art for humour strips, always seemed to produce terribly rushed looking work until he evidently found a good assistant in the mid-1930s.

According to a contemporary article in Editor & Publisher, the Tailspin Tommy Sunday page was added for a release date of October 6 1929. However, I've never been able to find a sample of that first page earlier than October 20. Bell Syndicate muddied the waters by allowing papers to run their strips late, making such determinations a bit of a crapshoot. Progress of Flight, a panel offering factoids about early models of airplane and famous aviators, was added with Sunday page #28; counting from October 6 1929, that would put the start date on April 13 1930, but it's not been seen appearing earlier than April 27 1930. Yes, dealing with Bell Syndicate strips can be a trying task. 

Progress of Flight started it's timeline as early as you could, discussing early mythological stories of flying. The feature slowly gamboled through the Renaissance, the Montgolfier brothers, and finally to modern aviation. Early panels were numbered, but that practice eventually stopped. The feature ended with Sunday page #220, after which the top spot went to a new strip, The Four Aces. 

Calculating from the supposed start date, that would put Progress of Flight ending on December 17 1933, but once again, I've not seen that occurring any earlier than the Sunday page run on December 31 1933, which seems frankly like a more auspicious date on which to usher out the old and welcome in the new. It is also the last Sunday written by Glenn Chaffin; artist Hal Forrest would be credited from then on.

If anyone can offer any direct evidence that the Tailspin Tommy Sunday began on October 6 1929 in any paper, I'd be thrilled to hear from you. 

UPDATE PRIOR TO PUBLICATION: I looked at a sampling of Tailspin Tommy Sunday original art at the Heritage auction site, and I think I have the final answer. On most of the originals there is a pencil notation written outside the art area giving the strip number and publication date. The same hand seems to be responsible for other presswork notations, so I don't believe the dates were added later. In each case, the date combined with the number calculates back to a date for Sunday page #1 of October 20 1929. I'm calling this mystery solved, and saying that was the official release date; the article in Editor & Publisher had it wrong.

Labels: Topper Features

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

Couchey was born in Cleveland. As a child there, he dreamed of being a cartoonist. He would layout the Sunday funny papers on the floor and study them for hours.

“That’s how I first got interested in cartooning,” Couchey said.

… Sid was born in Cleveland, Ohio on May 24, 1920 [sic], the son of Lester Couchey and Elizabeth Lasher Couchey. His mother came from Broadalbin. She and her sister studied music at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Sid’s father’s family are North Country people; Lester was born on the Bert Walker farm in Whallonsburg. He was a salesman who had the entire country as his territory. As a boy, he had been a lab assistant to Charles Steinmetz, the electrical wizard of Schenectady. In his later years, Sid’s father, a trouble shooter for Union Carbide, and the family moved around a bit.

Sid went to school in Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois, in his sophomore year, the family moved back here and he graduated from the Essex High School. He went to work for a short time in Schenectady before being inducted into the army, where he served for four years. …

… he graduated from Essex High School, one of a class of five. “I once mentioned to my wife, Ruth, that I had been valedictorian. She was impressed until we moved to Essex and she learned how small the class was,” he said.

… When he was discharged, he went to New York City to study art at the Art Career School in the old Flatiron Building, and to the School for Visual Arts. He had always wanted to be a cartoonist, and after three and a half years of study he found his first job, working for the well-known cartoonist, John Lehti, on the comic strips, “Tommy of the Big Top” and “Tales from the Great Book”. Lehti had had several young men working for him before this, none of whom stayed long, but Sid stayed for almost nine years. It was a successful partnership. Sid worked on other comics too: Flash Gordon, Lassie, and “Space Cadet.” …

… For awhile, Sid worked for Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster who invented and owned Superman. They were looking around for a cartoonist to help them. Shuster had started to go blind then. Sid applied and was chosen out of 125 applicants. … the trio experimented with other characters, none of whom reached success. They split up and Sid went free-lance.

Manhattan, New York City directories from 1953 to 1959, listed Couchey at 237 9th Avenue.

… The firm of Harvey Comics owned the three characters with whom Sid became best-known: Richie Rich, Little Lotta and Little Dot. He invented the secondary characters for their stories and did the story line. At first he was under editorial supervision but the editors soon realized Sid could operate on his own. This was the release Sid was waiting for. He and his family “hotfooted it up here” in his words. They were able finally to live where they most wanted to, and Sid could do his work from a distance.

For the past three years Couchey has been working on a cartoon character for Vermont’s Department of Human Services. “Rascal Raccoon” was chosen by school children from three characters that Couchey submitted. The story line involves the dangers of alcohol abuse, and the targeted audience is the early grades, kindergarten and up.

“I had never done animation before. It was a tremendous undertaking. For a spot 30 seconds in length, I had to make 400 drawings. But once I got the hang of it, it went well. You created the background, then draw the action on acetate overlays. I’d draw the outline on the top, and color it in on the other side.” However, it nearly drove Ruth crazy. “There were sheets of acetate hung out to dry all over the house,” Couchey remembered.

Rascal Raccoon was a howling success. The spots were aired on local television, posters hung in the schools, and the teachers had lesson plans. “It was a one-two-three punch,” Couchey said. A survey revealed that after the first two spots aired, 95 per cent of the students knew who Rascal was and remembered his message; and 65 per cent had discussed Rascal with their parents. …

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Lehti,—John A., beloved husband of Christine W. (nee Clayton), on May 28, 1913, at Montreal, Canada. Recently of Washington, D. C, formerly of Bay Ridge. Services will be held at 453 Eighty-first st. on Saturday evening, May 31, 1913, at 8 P. M. Interment at the convenience of family.

…[he] studied at some of the finest art schools in the nation: the Art Students League (under George Bridgman, Frank Dumond, and Nicholaides), the National Academy, the Beaux Arts Institute, and Grand Central Art School under Harvey Dunn, probably the greatest influence on his art and approach to work.

Lehti started in the 30s as an illustrator and writer of westerns and detective stories. In 1936, he started in the new field of comic books. Among the many ‘union suit’ heroes of that era, his famous Crimson Avenger has long since become a collector’s item.

Jack Lehti, as he was known in the early days, jumped from the pulps to National Comics such as “Steve Conrad,” “O’Malley of the Red Coat Patrol,” and “Crimson Avenger.” Lehti was in the Army reserves when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor; he quickly told DCs Whit Ellsworth to hire his inker, Charles Paris, then headed to Europe. “Jack Lehti was a dogface,” Paris said. “He told me one time that he jumped into a foxhole in France and there was a copy of Detective Comics, with the Crimson Avenger. It gave him a funny damn feeling. Here he is lying out in the middle of nowhere, he might as well be on another planet with shells falling around and dead people and mud and dirt…and there’s a copy of a DC comic book.

When war came he joined the 104th Infantry and served in “Terry Allen’s Timberwolves.” He became a sergeant. He won the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and four campaign ribbons. When the war in Europe ended he was shaking hands with Russian soldiers 70 miles southwest of Berlin. Mr. Lehti illustrated a book published by his outfit.

Picture News … made its debut in January and is the size of regular comic books. Its publisher and editor ([Emile] Gauvreau is “executive editor”) is Leigh Danenberg, publisher of the Bridgeport (Conn.) Sunday Herald.

Danenberg conceived the idea of presenting news in comic strip technique, with sketches and balloons, and about six months ago he persuaded Gauvreau to join him in introducing the idea.

They assembled a staff that includes John Armas Lehti as art director, Henry J. Cordes and John Milligan, artists; Jane Brower Wyckoff, editorial research assistant, and Judson Lahaye, Jr., promotion manager.

The first issue of Picture News, which is printed at at Bridgeport by the Lafayette Color Press and sells for 10 cents per copy, featured a story on the atom bomb, containing George Bernard Shaw’s observations on the subject; reviewed Henry Wallace's “Sixty Million Jobs” and had personality features on Barbara Hutton and Hoagy Carmichael, among others. … Books, plays and movies will be reviewed regularly in Picture News. … and other regular features will be “Laughs by Milt Gross” and beauty hints and advice.

Increasing the book’s new coverage, Colonel Bob Allen, who with Drew Pearson established the “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” will supply the artists with regular Washington news to illustrate. ...

His marriage to Jean Tighe, radio and TV singer who has appeared on the Kate Smith Show, the Carnation Hour, and starred on Mutual Broadcasting System’s “Jazz Nocturne”. The Lehtis live in Syosset, Long Island. They have a ten-year-old daughter, Sandra.

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

By the 1920s, comic strips were apparently a mature enough bit of newspaper content that they could be trusted to offer serious content. This was when the story strips really got going, and factual and educational strips began to be offered and become popular with readers. 

One of the last realms to be conquered was religion, but biblical stories in comic strip form began being offered in this decade, too, though not with any notable popularity. The idea with these strips seemed to be to ingratiate the newspaper with religious folks, or at least to enliven their Saturday church pages. Quite a few were tried, and some lasted many years, but none exactly set the newspaper world on fire.

No religious strip made any real dent in the syndication world until 1954, when John Lehti convinced Publishers Syndicate that his version of a bible strip would sell big. What was different about it? Well, a combination of ideas coalesced to make Tales from the Great Book a hit. First, it was a very colourful and well-drawn Sunday, not a weekly black and white strip as many had been before. Second, while scrupulously researched, Lehti picked his stories for their ability to translate into exciting graphic narratives. Third, he kept his stories short, rarely more than eight or so episodes, so that the stories moved along and didn't get bogged down in lots of speeches and philosophizing. Fourth, he told stories that weren't the endlessly repeated stuff like Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, and so on; readers were presented with stories that many of them didn't already know. Finally, Lehti stuck to the Old Testament so that both Christians and Jews would feel comfortable with the material. 

Here is the article announcing the new strip in Editor & Publisher, March 20, 1954:

Tales From The Bible For Sunday, In Color

By Mather Wallis

 A Sunday release from Publishers Syndicate dealing with great biblical stories is due to make its initial appearance March 21. To be done for color comics sections by John Lehti, ‘Tales from the Great Book” will deal with episodes from such stories as Samson, Joshua and the Walls of Jericho, and Daniel. Plans call for them to appear in that order. Mr. Lehti said titles beyond that re somewhat tentative.

The creator of this feature, who lives with his wife and daughter in Syosset, N. Y., did “Tommy of the Big Top” from 1946 to 1950. A member of the 104th Infantry Division during the war, and wounded in action, Mr. Lehti said he has had the idea for this work in mind for about six years.

 “I’m really keyed up about this,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of biblical and archeological research under my belt, and I’m having a lot of fun doing it. The reason I wanted to do it is not just for the story value, and these stories are the basis for all literature, but to show the feelings of people and how they did things in those days — how they cooked, what they wore, what kinds of door hinges they had on their houses.”

 Prior to service in World War II Mr. Lehti did. as he put, “a little of everything, but mostly advertising art.” For this new feature he said he has been doing “a lot of heavy research for the past six years.

 Born in 1912, Mr. Lehti studied at the Beaux Arts Institute, the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. Some of his New York sketches have appeared at the Modern Museum of Art. His wife is Jean Tighe, radio and television singer, and he is the grandson of Johann Gustave Lehtinen, chapel designer in Finland and later founder of one of the first Finnish language newspapers in the United States.

 The style of ‘Tales from the Great Book” is clean but immensely detailed with great attention being devoted to dress, artifacts and the tools of war.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Above, sample strips from the first 1954 story and the final 1972 story

Lehti's strip was practically an instant success. It ran from March 21 1954 and ended April 16 1972. During that time Lehti's art style changed a bit, but never for the worse. It was consistently one of the most attractive strips in the comics section. He is known to have had at least one assistant, Sid Couchey. 

It is unknown why Tales from the Great Book was cancelled in 1972, but Lehti still saw a clientele for it. He reworked the old material and came up with a new feature he titled Facts About the Bible; the new feature was black and white and was marketed mainly to smaller papers. According to Lehti's daughter, he prepared ten years worth of weekly material, and it was known to have been still in circulation in reprints until quite recently. 

Here is a complete list of the stories serialized in Tales from the Great Book. Though several titles were reused, as far as I can tell the only story that was actually re-run was Nebuchadnezzar's Second Dream, in 1961 and '71. Apparently the end of syndication came unexpectedly, because a new story (Joshua And The Promised Land) was announced to follow Zechariah a Young Prophet.

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 3 comments

Here's another from August Hutaf's series on apples, published by A.B. Woodward Co. in 1907.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

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

"Boots" Repeti is reported to have broken the world eating record (whatever that might be). He did so with an oddly timed mid-winter Thanksgiving dinner. At the Washington Navy Yard, Mr. Repeti sat down for a refreshing repast of the following:

9 pound roast turkey

1 quart cranberries

3 quarts sauerkraut

1 loaf bread

1/2 pint olive oil

1/2 gallon raw oysters

1 pint ketchup

12 stalks celery

2 gallons beer

4 glasses water

Isn't it amazing how far we've progressed in a hundred years? Isn't this pretty much the same list as the McDonald's Super-Size Meal #6? Well, with Mountain Dew instead of beer, of course.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

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

Rock Island Youth Hunts Interesting Things to Sketch

Richard Steenburgh, youthful Rock Island artist who resides at 102 Sala apartments and who has been drawing, sketching and modeling ever since he has been old enough to hold a pencil in his hands, has just one ambition: sketching and illustrating. He thinks the essentials of cartoon and caricature are finding outstanding characteristics of a person and transcribing them on a piece of paper. “You don’t have to go far away to find interesting things to sketch,” he said. “There’s a life’s work right in the tri-city' area, and I find a lot of my material in Bettendorf.” Asked what he looks for when he begins a caricature of a person, he replied: “Outstanding facial differences, teeth, the way the hair is combed, the nose and the chin. Take a look at President Roosevelt, that chin of his calls attention of the cartoonist, and with Calvin Coolidge, it was his nose.”

… Fletcher’s mother is the former B. Elizabeth Pletscher of Burlington. An aunt, Mrs. Mary Lenhart, lives across the street at 2900 division. 

Fletcher became interested in art through the efforts of his mother, has done various kinds of art work for a number of years, and has been connected with comic strips for about 15 years. … 

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

In this survey we did not lose any papers over the last year, but out of the remaining 286 papers, the information for January 1984 was not available online for seven papers, making this survey coverage only 279 papers.

Starting with this year we are going to look at the development of what I call the Universal Comic Section. Over the past 80 years when you picked up a paper from another town or city in most cases you would read some of the strips that appeared in your local paper but mostly you would see strips that you have never seen before. By the 1980s, with the slow demise of newspapers beginning and less papers around to compete for features, more papers had the opportunity to buy strips that were not available to them before. This could lead to more variety from one paper to another, but instead, the editors of these papers would do the opposite and just pick the most popular strips. As this way of filling a comics page became more and more prevalent, you would now see many of the same comics in every paper. In future articles, we will keep a watch on this process. 

Let’s start this year by examining how many of the most popular strips appear in each paper. In our 1984 survey, out of the 279 papers 162 ran the top 2 strips. 141 ran the top 3 strips. 106 ran the top 4 strips. 63 ran the top 5 strips. 29 ran the top 6 strips. 18 ran the top 7 strips. 10 ran the top 8 strips. 8 ran the top 9 strips. 3 ran the top 10 & 11 strips. One paper, the Austin American Statesman, ran the top 14 strips. The Austin paper ran 27 strips in its paper, so over half were the most popular overall.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the Top 30 for 1984, Blondie joined the 200 paper club, making it the second strip do to this. B.C. and Hi and Lois gained enough papers to enter the 100 paper club. That now makes  10 strips that are in 100 papers or more. The powerhouse Walker family can now boast having two strips that appear in over 100 papers. Marvin, Berry’s World and Heathcliff entered the Top 30 while Amazing Spider-Man, Alley Oop, Dick Tracy and Eek and Meek fell out the top 30. (Last year we had 31 strips in the Top 30 because there was a tie at 30). Bloom County made a big move in the Top 30 going from 26 to 18 while Nancy had the biggest drop, from 22 to 29 – apparently Jerry Scott taking over was a signal to jump ship.

Here are the top 30 features:

And here are the rest of the rankings:

As always, if you would like the long form of The 300, a list of each paper that used each strip, send Allan Holtz an email with your request. He will send you a Word document with the data.

Labels: Paper Trends

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