Wednesday, June 28, 2006
The Last Hurrah of Ryan Walker
Ryan Walker, the Communist cartoonist, was well known in their circles for his tireless cartooning in service of The Cause. His Henry Dubb character, created in the 1910s, was considered a classic of the genre. His last comic strip offering was The Adventures of Bill Worker, which ran in the Daily Worker 9/8/1930 - 10/21/1931. Submitted here for your perusal, an example from that series.In my latest work at indexing the Worker I also found Walker's death notice, obituary and an article of remembrance by a friend. The microfilm is almost unbelievably bad, but I've managed to transcribe the material. Here's the death notice; tomorrow I'll post the other material and another Bill Worker cartoon.
A few sites of note; here's one that has Henry Dubb cartoons (long load time; dial-ups beware!), and here's one that reprints an article written about Walker in 1905.
6/24/32
Ryan Walker Is Dead
Revolutionary Artist for 32 Years
Moscow, U.S.S.R., June 23 -- Ryan Walker died yesterday in Rotkinsky hospital of pleuro-pneumonia. He was a staff cartoonist for the Daily Worker and a member of the Communist Party of U.S.A.
Ryan Walker had been active in the revolutionary movement for 32 years. He worked on the New York Call and the old Leader and other Socialist Party dailies. He toured the United States for the Socialist Party giving chalk talks on current political topics.
After the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Ryan Walker broke with the Socialist Party and gave his support to the Soviet Union and the program of Lenin.
In the autumn of 1930 Ryan Walker joined the Communist Party. He became also an active member of the John Reed Club and gave all his great talent and energy to the revolutionary movement.
In October 1931 Walker went to the Soviet Union, being then quite ill, but determined to see the Worker's Fatherland. After a tour of the U.S.S.R. he contracted pneumonia in Moscow, and was sent to the hospital where four months later he died.
Labels: Obscurities
Comments:
Blah, the Boondocksnet.com link is dead (as is the whole domain), and it's not on archive.org; I don't suppose you remember what the original source of the 1905 article was?
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