Stripper's Guide

Labels: News of Yore

Labels: News of Yore

CHAPTER VIII

Recent Developments in Syndicate History 1921-1935

The third decade of this century marked the beginning of a period of adding an even greater variety of "big names" to the list of those whose writings the syndicates had made available to the newspaper reading public. But even more significant was the service of one of these organizations in "bridging the gap between science and the public."

From time to time various syndicates had offered science features as a part of their service but they were either too "popular" to be scientific or too technically scientific to be "popular." The need for features which would reconcile these differences was met on January 1, 1921, by the founding of Science Service, Inc., in Washington, D. C. Endowed by E. W. Scripps of the Scripps-McRae newspapers, it was an institution for the popularization of science. All the preliminary work had been done by Dr. William E. Ritter. Traveling about the country, he consulted leading scientists and journalists in all parts of the United States, checking with them the most practical means for launching the enterprise. The result was the formation of a governing board of 15 trustees, ten of whom were scientists and five, journalists.1 The purposes of the organization were stated as follows:

To bridge the gap between modern science and the public by disseminating scientific information in popular form, Science Service was established. It is chartered as a non-profit-making corporation and all receipts from the sale of articles, books and films will be devoted to the development of new methods of popular education in science ... It is not under the control of any clique, class or commercial interest. It is not the organ of any one association. It serves all the sciences. It does not indulge in propaganda unless it be propaganda to urge the value of research and the usefulness of science.

With Dr. Edwin E. Slosson as director and editor-in-chief and Watson Davis as managing editor, Science Service began issuing the Science News Bulletin in April, 1921, and a News Letter for teachers and librarians in March, 1922.2  The slogan was "Not 'Interesting, if True,' but ‘Interesting and True.’"




Starting with 25 clients, mostly daily papers, Science Service doubled that number within a year. Since that time the service has increased steadily each year and its scope has widened until it includes a complete text and picture coverage of every type of scientific material.



The year 1922 saw the beginning of three syndicates which have had varied careers—the McNaught Syndicate, the Metropolitan Syndicate and the North American Newspaper Alliance. On January 1, V. V. McNitt organized the McNaught Syndicate to take over the business of the Central Press Association of New York.3

McNitt began immediately adding to his staff some of the best-known names in the feature world today. Irvin S. Cobb contracted to write an anecdote a day for six months and his fund of stories lasted four years. O. O. Mclntyre was the next to join the new service and Will Rogers began his cowboy philosophizing for it soon afterwards. In recent years these two (until Rogers' death this year) with Arthur Brisbane's column ("Today," syndicated by Hearst and "This Week," by Western Newspaper Union) have been the most widely used of any syndicate text features offered at the present time.

In 1933 the McNaught Syndicate scored a beat by securing a contract from Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt for a daily article. It was the first time in history that a President's wife had written regularly for newspaper publication. Other writers for this service now include Albert Payson Terhune, Roc Fulkerson, Charles B. Driscoll, Frank R. Kent, Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Zoe Beckley, and its leading cartoonists are Ham Fisher, John H. Striebel, John H. Hix ("Strange as It Seems"), Gus Mager and Julian Ollendorff.

In the same month that the McNaught Syndicate started, the Metropolitan Newspaper Service commenced as an independent syndicate. Founded in 1919 as a department of the Metropolitan magazine, it was purchased a few months later by Maxmilian Elser, Jr., and was conducted in combination with the Bell Syndicate until January, 1922. Mr. Elser operated the Metropolitan, which specialized in original fiction by prominent authors, until 1930, when his syndicate was absorbed by the United Features Syndicate.

The third syndicate founded in 1922 was the North American Newspaper Alliance. It was a cooperative organization promoted by Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and Loring Pickering of the San Francisco Chronicle. Backed by some of the same publishers who had started Associated Newspapers, its purpose was to provide its member newspapers with important news feature stories and similar material to he used in conjunction with "spot news."


 In 1930 John N. Wheeler, who had returned to the syndicate business after resigning from Liberty, became general manager of the North American Newspaper Alliance which was then composed of more than 50 of the leading newspapers in the United States and Canada. At the same time the organization absorbed Associated Newspapers and a short time later it also took in the Consolidated Press Association of which David Lawrence was then head. It continued all of the features in this syndicate under the name of Consolidated News Features, Inc., except Lawrence's daily dispatches, which he now sells direct but distributes through the wire facilities of the Consolidated News.



In 1927 the Central Press Association, which had previously absorbed the North American Press Syndicate, took over the Editors' Feature Service owned by Mrs. Mary H. Rumsey. Three years later Joseph V. Connolly, who had been with the King Features Syndicate since 1920, acquired these combined feature services and they became a part of the Hearst chain. Connolly, who is one of the younger leaders in the syndicate field, was a reporter on the New Haven (Conn.) Union for six years before joining the editorial staff of the New York Sun in 1919. After serving in the world war he joined the Hearst forces and now, in addition to being president of King Features Syndicate, he also heads the International News Service. Universal Service, Central Press Association and International News Photos.

 In 1928 the McClure Newspaper Syndicate was sold to a group headed by Richard Waldo, former business manager of the New York Tribune. Two years later Waldo contracted with ex-President Calvin Coolidge to write a daily series of short articles. This arrangement continued for a year. During this time the sales of the feature amounted to nearly $425,000, which is said to be the largest return ever received for any feature for that length of time. Waldo is also credited with developing the Washington gossip column which has been widely copied among other syndicates since Paul Mallon started his "Washington Notebook" in 1931.

An interesting development during this period was the entrance of book-publishing companies into the syndicate field. It began in 1923 when Frank N. Doubleday established a syndicate department in his publishing house, Doubleday, Page and Company, with the idea of distributing to newspapers a variety of book material, particularly biographies and discussions of current affairs.

After this publishing house became Doubleday-Doran and Company, Ralph H. Graves resigned as Sunday editor of the New York Times to organize the Doubleday-Doran Syndicate and its syndicating operations expanded rapidly; its sale of periodic features yielded more than a million dollars in a decade. During this time it sold to newspapers as first rights serials material from such books as “The Letters of Archie Butt," containing the military aide's anecdotal story of Theodore Roosevelt's days in the White House; "Prohibition Inside Out," the first-hand narrative of Roy A. Haynes, head of the federal enforcement bureau; "Eight Years in Wilson's Cabinet" by David F. Houston; "The Open Conspiracy" and "The Science of Life" by H. G. Wells; the Roosevelt-Lodge letters; the memoirs of Gen. Robert L. Bullard; two books by Henry Ford; the Carter Glass banking reminiscences; two more volumes of Archie Butt letters covering the Roosevelt-Taft feud; the memoirs of Marshal Foch; and the biography of Woodrow Wilson by Ray Stannard Baker.

The latter two were among the record-breakers in syndicate history. Sales of the Foch memoirs totaled nearly $120,000 and contracts for $400,000 were signed by newspapers for the Wilson biography which was to appear in four volumes in successive years. Owing to Baker's illness, however, the syndication of this biography was abandoned after an amended schedule left the work still uncompleted with the fifth volume in 1935.

From time to time the Doubleday-Doran syndicate has also syndicated regular newspaper features unconnected with books. These have included fashions, puzzles, articles on golf, tennis and boxing, and a daily aviation column by Maj. Al Williams, speed flyer. Its main business, however, has been short-run features extracted from books about to be published or already issued.

Since 1930, syndicate history has been more a matter of journalistic coups by the established organizations than the founding of any important feature services. The United Features Syndicate scored one such "beat" when it secured the rights to the hitherto unpublished "Story of Our Lord," written by Charles Dickens for his children. In 1931 the North American Newspaper Alliance paid Gen. John J. Pershing $275,000 for his narrative of the world war for publication in its member newspapers and he received an additional $50,000 for publication rights in the New York Times, which was not then a member of the alliance. The narrative was also syndicated to a large number of rural newspapers by Western Newspaper Union.

In 1933 Henry P. Martin, Jr., manager of the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate, created a sensation by purchasing the syndicate rights to the war pictures in Lawrence Stallings' "The First World War."4 He followed this up with such photographic features as "Hollywood (Uncensored)", "Behind the Scenes in Radio," "Picture Sideshow of Life" and "Picture Story of Shirley Temple."

The syndicating of unusual pictures promises to be an interesting future development for during the past year the Yale University Press began syndicating historical pictures from their series, "The Pageant of America," to a large number of newspapers. The latest development in syndicate history took place on February 24, 1935, when a weekly newspaper magazine titled "This Week" appeared as a part of the Sunday editions of 21 metropolitan newspapers which have a combined circulation of more than 4,000,000.5 "This Week" is published by the United Newspaper Magazine Corporation of New York City, headed by P. Gilleaudeau. It is printed in full color gravure by the newly patented Weiss Speedry process. Its cover page is the work of noted magazine illustrators and the table of contents is a parade of the biggest names in American fiction.

Thus the cycle of syndicate history is completed. It began with a printed service, a two-page supplement issued by Moses Y. Beach in New York City in 1841 and sold to a score of papers in the surrounding territory. In 1935 it returns to the original form of printed service in a gaily colored 16-page magazine issued from the same city to a score of newspapers in every part of the United States.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
FOOTNOTES
1. The scientists were W. E. Ritter, director of the Scripps Institution for Biological Research; Vernon Kellogg and R. M. Yerkes of the National Research Council; J. McKeen Cattell, editor of Science; George B. Hale, director of the Mt. Wilson observatory; D. T. McDougal, director of the Desert laboratory; J. C. Merriam, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington; R. A. Millikan, director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at the California Institute of Technology; George T. Moore, director of the Missouri Botanical Gardens; A. A. Noyes, director of chemical research, California Institute of Technology. The journalists were Edwin F. Gay, president of the New York Evening Post company; E. W. Scripps and R. P. Scripps of the Scripps-McRae newspapers; and William Allen White, editor of the Emporia (Kan.) Gazette.

2. Doctor Slosson, who was one of the first to recognize the journalistic value of science, was born in Kansas in 1865. After graduation from the University of Kansas he became professor of chemistry at the University of Wyoming, resigning there in 1903 to become literary editor of the Independent. He held this position until 1920, serving as an associate of the Columbia University School of' Journalism at the same time. He died in 1929.

3. The Central Press Association of New York was organized by McNitt in April, 1920. He was also the founder of the Central Press Association of Cleveland and although similar in name the two companies were financially separate.

4. Martin organized the syndicate branch of the Register and Tribune in 1922. Besides its photographic features it is also noted for its serial story service, its authors including Rob Eden, Vida Hurst, Anne Gardner and Priscilla Wayne. It also syndicates numerous other features and serves some 300 newspapers in the United States and foreign countries.

5. These papers were the Chicago Daily News, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dallas Morning News, Detroit News, Indianapolis Star, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Milwaukee Journal, Minneapolis Journal, New Orleans Item-Tribune, Omaha World Herald, St. Louis Globe Democrat, Washington Star, Atlanta Journal, Baltimore Sun, Birmingham News, Boston Herald, Buffalo Times, New York Herald Tribune, Philadelphia Record, and Pittsburgh Press.

Labels: History of Newspaper Syndicates by Watson

After going through 300 daily papers we have our finger on the pulse of the daily comic strip back in January 1978. First, of the many papers most only had one page of comics plus a few running on the op-ed pages (most popularly, Doonesbury, Dunagin's People, Small Society and Berry’s World). Quite a few papers also ran a few features in the their classified sections (most popular being panels like They’ll Do It Every Time).

There were a total of 220 different strips and panels that ran in the 300 papers. The popularity of these features ranged from 35 that ran in only a single paper (a few were locally produced) to three strips that ran in over 150 papers.

First let’s give the crown to the most popular single panel feature running in 1978. It came down to three contenders. Coming in third was Berry’s World with 60 papers, second was Family Circus with 63 papers and the winner was Dennis the Menace with 80 papers.

Three fairly new strips (debuting in the 1970s) did very well. Hagar the Horrible (1973) had at this time 76 papers putting it in 16th place overall. Frank and Ernest (1972) had 86 papers putting it in 7th place and Doonesbury (1970) had 91 papers putting it in 5th place. Other strips debuting in the 1970’s had a slower start but grew greatly in popularity later. For example, Cathy (1976) only had 19 papers at this time.

A second notable race is for the most popular story strip running in 1978. Before I get to the result one thing has to made clear: if we counted Sunday sections, Prince Valiant would have been either number one or two on this list. The top 6 daily story strips at this time are as follows: coming in at number 6 is a new entry, The Amazing Spider-Man which had 50 papers putting it in 27th place. That’s a pretty phenomenal start. In fifth place is Dick Tracy with 55 papers; this was Chester Gould’s last year on the strip before passing it over to Max Collins and Rick Fletcher placing this strip in 23rd place. It will be interesting when we look back at the 40’s and 50’s to see how much higher this strip will rank. Third and fourth place is a tie between Steve Canyon, the highest rated adventure strip, and Rex Morgan MD, both with 62 papers. Edging out those two with 63 papers is the adventure/comedy strip Alley Oop, which is also the third highest circulation for the NEA syndicate. Number one with 80 papers is the soap opera strip Mary Worth.

Another crown to bestow is for most successful syndicate. This can be determined by counting up the total number of papers that run their combined feature output; in other words, how many 'slots' did their features take up in total for the 300 papers. Here are the top ten, which accounts for all the major syndicates. The second number shows the average papers per feature for the syndicate. You can look at it as a gauge of the syndicate's sales ability, the quality of their features or perhaps as an indication of how many papers had to take a feature for the syndicate to continue offering it :

Syndicate	Total ‘Slots’	Avg Slots per Feature
King Features	1154	22.1
Field Enterprises	947	27.8
NEA	766	45.0
United Feature	442	19.2
Chicago Tribune	325	14.1
Universal Press	257	17.1
Register & Tribune	160	17.7
McNaught	114	14.2
Los Angeles Times	67	5.1
Washington Star	35	17.5

The Washington Star Syndicate, the least successful of the major syndicates, would disappear very soon, selling off their last remaining assets to Universal in early 1979. Also, although King Features shows an apparently commanding lead in slots, if we consider that United Feature and NEA are both run through the same parent company by this time, the combination of the two actually hold the crown with 1208 points. Also, NEA's average for slots is a huge outlier because they offered their features under a blanket service (one price gets you everything offered by the syndicate) -- at smaller papers, if they have all those features available the tendency is to run most if not all of them.


The top three strips overall are interesting in that they all came very close to being cancelled by their syndicates early on for having low sales. Coming in at number 3 with 169 papers is a strip that only became successful after the creator had his star inducted into the army, Beetle Bailey. Coming in at number 2 with 191 papers is a strip that had to change from a flapper strip to a family sitcom to become successful, Blondie. The number one strip started as a kind of filler strip but grew in popularity over the years to become the most successful comic strip of all time, Peanuts at this time had 194 papers. That’s almost 2/3 of the newspapers surveyed!

Here is the complete list, ranking the features from most to least papers. If you would like the giant whopper version of this in which each feature is listed with the specific papers in which I found it, send an email to Allan (strippersguide@gmail.com) with subject line "1978 Paper Trends List" and he'll send you a PDF:

Title	Number of Papers	Syndicate	Debut Year
Peanuts	194	United	1950
Blondie	191	King	1930
Beetle Bailey	169	King	1950
Andy Capp	95	Field	1963
Doonesbury	91	Universal	1970
Born Loser	90	NEA	1965
Frank and Ernest	86	NEA	1972
Wizard of Id	85	Field	1964
B.C.	85	Field	1958
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith	81	King	1919
Dennis the Menace	80	Field	1951
Mary Worth	80	Field	1934
Hi and Lois	79	King	1954
Hagar the Horrible	76	King	1973
Nancy	72	United	1938
Alley Oop	63	NEA	1933
Family Circus	63	Register & Tribune	1960
Rex Morgan MD	62	Field	1948
Steve Canyon	62	Field	1947
Archie	61	King	1946
Berry's World	60	NEA	1963
Bugs Bunny	59	NEA	1943
Dick Tracy	55	Tribune	1931
Priscilla's Pop	55	NEA	1946
Short Ribs	55	NEA	1958
Winthrop	55	NEA	1956
Amazing Spider-Man	50	Register & Tribune	1977
Eek and Meek	49	NEA	1965
Shoe	47	Tribune	1977
Our Boarding House	45	NEA	1921
Tiger	44	King	1965
Buz Sawyer	42	King	1943
Captain Easy	42	NEA	1924
Gasoline Alley	41	Tribune	1918
Marmaduke	41	United	1954
Funky Winkerbean	38	Field	1972
Funny Business	38	NEA	1966
Judge Parker	38	Field	1952
Best Seller Showcase	37	Universal	1977
Side Glances	37	NEA	1928
They'll Do It Every Time	37	King	1929
Heathcliff	36	McNaught	1973
Tumbleweeds	36	United	1965
Tank McNamara	35	Universal	1974
Redeye	33	King	1967
Apartment 3-G	28	Field	1961
Small Society	28	Washington Star/King	1966
Broom Hilda	27	Tribune	1970
Donald Duck	27	King	1938
Grin and Bear It	26	Field	1932
Herman	26	Universal	1974
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad	25	Field	1936
Asterix & Obelix	24	Field	1977
Dunagin's People	24	Field	1969
Mark Trail	24	Field	1946
Heart of Juliet Jones	23	King	1953
Phantom	23	King	1936
Better Half	21	Register & Tribune	1956
Kerry Drake	21	Field	1943
Crock	20	Field	1975
Hazel	20	King	1969
Cathy	19	Universal	1976
Lockhorns	19	King	1968
Miss Peach	19	Field	1957
Graffiti	18	McNaught
Jackson Twins	18	McNaught	1950
Ripley's Believe It or Not	17	King	1918
Jeff Hawke	16	United	1977
Love Is	16	Los Angeles	1970
Zoonies	16	NEA	1977
Dondi	15	Tribune	1955
Fred Basset	15	Field	1965
Laff-A-Day	15	King	1936
Momma	15	Field	1970
Rip Kirby	15	King	1946
Ryatts	14	Field	1954
Sam and Silo	14	King	1977
Henry	14	King	1934
Mr. Tweedy	14	Los Angeles	1954
Ziggy	14	Universal	1971
Inside of Woody Allen	14	King	1976
Flintstones	13	McNaught	1961
Rick O'Shay	13	Tribune	1958
Agatha Crumm	12	King	1977
Brenda Starr	12	Tribune	1940
Charmers	12	Field	1975
Ferd'nand	12	United	1947
Gil Thorp	12	Tribune	1958
Girls	12	Field	1952
Joe Palooka	12	McNaught	1930
Modesty Blaise	12	Los Angeles	1976
Moose Miller	12	King	1965
Winnie Winkle	11	Tribune	1920
Mutt and Jeff	11	McNaught	1907
Sporting Life	11	Tribune	1977
Animal Crackers	10	Tribune	1968
Catfish	10	Tribune	1973
Motley's Crew	10	Tribune	1976
Nubbin	10	King	1958
Ponytail	10	King	1960
Trudy	10	King	1963
Casey	9	Tribune	1977
Little Orphan Annie	9	Tribune	1924
There Outta Be A Law	9	United	1944
Gordo	8	United	1941
Moon Mullins	8	Tribune	1923
Quincy	8	King	1970
Stanley	7	Universal	1977
Mickey Mouse	7	King	1930
Rooftop O' Toole	7	United	1976
Scamp	7	King	1955
Smith Family	7	Washington Star	1950
Wee Pals	7	King/United	1965
Wright Angles	7	NEA	1976
Wordsmith	6	Universal	1975
Captain's Gig	6	Field	1977
Don Q	6	New York Times	1975
Eb and Flo	6	United	1967
Emmy Lou	6	United	1944
Howard the Duck	6	Register & Tribune	1977
Lolly	6	Tribune	1955
Off the Record	6	Register & Tribune	1934
On Stage	6	Tribune	1957
Star Hawks	6	NEA	1977
According to Guinness	5	Universal	1975
A Little Leary	5	LA Times
Amy	5	Register & Tribune	1961
Bringing Up Father	5	King	1913
Citizen Smith	5	Register & Tribune	1967
Doodley's World	5	King	1972
Flash Gordon	5	King	1951
Flop Family	5	King	1943
Hubert	5	King	1945
Men and Woman	5	Field	1976
Mr. Abernathy	5	King	1957
Outcasts	5	Toronto Star
Rivets	5	Field	1953
Belvedere	4	Field	1962
Boner's Ark	4	King	1968
Brother Juniper	4	Field	1957
Carmichael	4	Los Angeles	1958
Dr. Kildare	4	King	1962
Dropouts	4	United	1968
Friends and Romans	4	United	1975
Frontiers of Science	4	Los Angeles	1962
Gumdrops	4	United	1977
Henny Youngman	4	Field	1977
Kelly	4	Universal	1972
Laugh Time	4	King	1968
Pixies	4	United	1966
Strictly Business	4	Field	1941
This Funny World	4	McNaught	1945
Time Out	4	Field	1936
Treadwells (aka The Neighbors)	4	Chicago Tribune	1939
Woody's World	4	United	1963
Ms. Augusta	3	Universal	1975
Basil	3	Universal	1974
Ben Wicks	3	LA Times
Big George	3	Field	1960
Boomer	4	United	1972
Channel Chuckles	3	Register and Tribune	1954
Dr. Smock	3	United	1974
Freedy	3	Field	1955
Health Capsules	3	United	1961
Kisses	3	Self-syndicated	1974
Lansky's Look	3	Universal	1974
Little Woman	3	King	1953
P.T. Bimbo	3	NEA	1975
Simpkins	3	Tribune	1971
Soft Focus	3	King	1976
Trim's Arena	3	Universal	1973
Wordplay	3	King	1973
Alex in Wonderland	3	Copley	1976
Big Ben Bolt	2	King	1950
Bi-Focals	2	McNaught	1977
Ching Chow	2	Tribune	1927
Clyde & Homer/Homer's Groaners (activity strip)	2	LA Times
Luther	2	Los Angeles	1969
Mandrake the Magician	2	King	1934
Norbert	2	United	1964
Pot Shots	2	Tribune	1975
Queenie	2	King	1966
Secret Agent Corrigan	2	King	1934
Smart Chart	2	Los Angeles	1970
Stan Smith's Tennis Class	2	King
As You Were	1	Pioneer	1971
Aw, Heck	1	Tampa Times	1976
Beautiful	1	Allied	1977
Benchwarmer's Sports Trivia	1	Copley
Brick Bradford	1	King	1933
Broadsides	1	LA Times	1975
Collector's Corner	1	United
Dewey's Den	1	Elwood Call-Leader	1977
Foster Fenwick	1	Chronicle	1968
Figments	1	Manson	1971
Hocus-Focus (activity panel)	1
Idea Chaser	1	Allied	1948
Lars and June	1	Self-syndicated	1977
Laughs From Europe	1	Register and Tribune	1958
Mark Trail's Outdoor Tips	1	Field
Missing Links	1	Canada-Wide
Now Society	1	Chronicle	1973
Pet Set	1	Self-syndicated	1973
Playing Better Golf With Jack Nicklaus	1	King
Pookas	1	LA Times	1977
Popeye	1	King	1919
Rocket Shots (sports instruction)	1	United
Rudy	1	Copley	1977
Selling Short	1	Universal
Strike Three	1	Chapel Hill Tarheel
Tarzan	1	United	1929
Teaching Pro (sports instruction)	1	LA Times
The Byrds	1	Toronto Star
Thoughts of Man	1	Tribune	1972
Today's World	1	King	1971
Toppix	1	Tribune`	1975
Travels With Farley	1	Chronicle	1975
Winnie Witch & The Giant Potato	1	Canada-Wide
You're Getting Closer	1	King	1976

Labels: Paper Trends

The late 1960s to mid-70s was a time when 'relevance' tried its darnedest to invade the comic strips. Whether advancing a social or political agenda, young cartoonists all seemed to have Something Important to say. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if all these relevant strips had been picked up by papers, it would have been like reading a page of a social studies textbook every day on the comics page. The key, of course, is to get your point across with humor. Doonesbury and Pogo were masterful at combining humor with relevant content, and Wee Pals, appealing to a less sophisticated demographic, got its point across with a smile.

Butter & Boop is an example of a comic strip that tended to forget that nagging problem of being funny. And no wonder -- the comic strip was begun under the aegis of Black Light Inc., an inner city arts project that was sponsored by a do-gooder starch magnate (yes, there really is such a thing). The studio began in 1968 with a full complement of budding artists, but most drifted away until there were but two -- Louis Slaughter and Edward J. Carr. For reasons that seem a little misty in the retelling, these two guys, who seemed to have basically no interest in comic strips, began producing Butter & Boop. With starch money buoying up the self-syndicated operation and a big-hearted magnate encouraging these guys to "tell it like it is", a few papers were found to take the daily strip, which first appeared on May 15 1969.

The samples above are from two years into the run, and you'll have to take my word for it that the quality of the strip had already improved by leaps and bounds. The early stuff is quite militant and pugnacious in its desire to 'expose' inner city life to suburban newspaper readers. Although that flavor is still there two years later, Slaughter and Carr were toning it down and trying to entertain a little instead of beating readers over the head.

It was at this point that they were able to interest McNaught Syndicate in distributing the strip. McNaught took over syndication on May 17 1971. Despite the marketing push of a major syndicate, the strip found few new takers. The fact that the strip was still a little on the rough side, and that the similarly themed Wee Pals was in its heyday were the probable obstacles. Butter & Boop was with McNaught for a bit over two years; they seem to have parted ways in August 1973. The creators commented later in a February 1974 Ebony feature article that they didn't feel the syndicate did enough to market the strip and so they went back to self-syndication.

At that point the strip becomes really hard to find. Reading between the lines of the Ebony article the strip may have been down to two clients, the Kansas City Star and the Nashville Tennessean, neither of which I've had an opportunity to check. In the Ebony article, the creators seem to be saying that self-syndication was too much of a drain on their time and that if a syndicate couldn't be found then Butter & Boop was not going to continue much longer. The last indication I find that it was running is a citation that the co-creators got a Lord Calvert Whiskey Men of Distinction award in 1975.

EDIT: Looks like the last place it was seen running was August 1 1978 (mid-week) in the Virgin Islands Daily News.

Labels: Obscurities

In 1970 Hugh Laidman, an accomplished illustrator and commercial artist, came up with an interesting and original idea for a comic strip. Middle Class Animals offered readers a talking animal comic, but with the twist that the animals are drawn in a straight illustration style. While the description may make it sound kinda meh, in execution I think the idea had a lot of merit. Laidman's strip, which debuted on May 18 1970* via the McNaught Syndicate, really stood out superbly on the comics page. The eccentric combination of word balloons and realistic drawing just seems to catch your eye. You find yourself reading the strip just to find out what the heck is going on there with that odd juxtaposition.

Unfortunately, while readers were drawn to Middle Class Animals, the actual reading tended to leave them a bit underwhelmed. Laidman was a wonderful illustrator, but unfortunately as a gag writer he wasn't so terrific. Way too many of his gags fall flat, leaning heavily on the art to make up for it. It's too bad that McNaught did not exercise a more active editorial hand, because with the assistance of good gag-writers the strip could have, at least in my opinion, turned into a pretty major hit.

McNaught further hobbled the strip by giving it an identity crisis. I quite like the title Middle Class Animals, which is a terrific name for a 1970s strip that offers a lot of hip references. However, they for some bizarre reason had newspapers running it under other titles. I'm aware of one paper that ran it as Us Animals, one that used the title Ani-Malcontents, and as you can see above, one used the title Animal Crackers, which is not only a klunky name but also trademark infringement since Rog Bollen's strip used the same title. How do you create buzz about a strip that runs under any old name some comics editor dreams up?

With too many cards in the deck stacked against it, Middle Class Animals seems to have ended its run after two years, on May 13 1972**.


* Source: Editor & Publisher, May 9 1970.
** Source: Jeffrey Lindenblatt based on Long Island Press.

Labels: Obscurities

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

In the 1920s the game of bridge became popular in the burgeoning middle-class. In the new suburban tracts popular entertainments like movies and nightclubs were a long train ride away, so many residents took up bridge as a pretext for socializing. Inevitably the comics began commenting on the fad, with H.T. Webster's bridge cartoons leading the way in popularity.

In the depression bridge became even more popular -- an evening's entertainment at no cost became a very attractive substitute for going out when money was tight. It was then that The Finesses debuted, a daily strip designed to capitalize on the fad.

The strip was syndicated by McNaught and credited to "Kaydell". My guess is that the 'Kay' portion refers to art by Ken Kling -- Kling was producing the syndicated version of Joe and Asbestos for them at this time. I haven't even a guess who was hiding behind the "dell" portion, though.

The strip debuted on June 4 1934 and the creator(s) seemed to recognize trouble from the start. A strip that everyday shows a foursome seated around a card table isn't at all visually arresting (though Penny Ante traded on just that concept for years), so 'Kaydell' added some lighthearted adventure elements to the plot. Result, of course, was that bridge fans weren't happy (not enough card-playing) and others weren't happy either (enough with the bridge already!). The strip was doomed and less than four months later McNaught decided to fold; the strip ended on September 22.

The samples above include both the first and last strips; it was one of the few series that was given a chance to say a formal goodbye to its (few) loyal readers.

Labels: Obscurities