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The Smithsonian Collection of

Edited by Bill Blackbcard and Martin

Williamn

Foreword by John Canaday

The American newspaper comic

strip (like jazz

and the movies) is a major innovative and creaUnited

tive cultural accomplishment of the
States, one that has spread around the world.
From the outset, the comics were widely read
and enjoyed by the American public, oblivious
But for sevand scholarly
the supposedly lowly

to cultural history or art criticism.

eral decades, historians of the arts

shunned

mostly

critics

comic

strips, largely l)ecaiise the finest of thi'se

features originally appeared

in

popular

this

press.

Fortunately,

changed, and those

American

arts

and

in

the sensational
situation

has

positions of authority in

now

literature are

taking the

comics seriously, recognizing the often subtly

and creatively

imaginative, splendidly inventive,

memorable
national

<|iialitics

of the best products of this

art.

Although essentially a narrative art, comic strips

have provided an extraordinary vehich' for inspired graphic and narrative experimentation
and accomplisliment for major comic-strip ar-

McCay

including VVinsor

tists,

(The

Feininger

Lionel

Nemo),

(Little

Kin-tler-Kuh).

E.

C.

George Ilerriman
(Krazij Kat), Cliff Stcrrett (Pollij and Her Pais),
Roy Crane (\Va.v/i Tuhhs), and many others.

Scgar

(Thimble

First-rate

lery" art

Included

some

of

Theatre),

comics can be enjoyed both as "galin continuity iis fiction or drama.

and
in

this

Collection

.Smithsonian

and
Kid r)f

the most accomplished

notable strips from the

Ve/Zoit,

are

critically

1896-tli<'

form to such admired

contemporary works as Peanuts, B. C, and
Doonestmrij. Along the way we come across old
favorites; Katzenjammer Kids. Mutt and ]ef).
The CUtnips, C.asoline Allei/, Moon Mullins.
first

to attain

/{rin^jiii^

Vj)

definitive

I'atUer,

Mirkei/

Orphan Annie, Dick Tracij, Li

Pof^o, and ever so many more.

Mouse,

Little

Aimer, liarnnhij.

Most of the work.s chosen for this vohnne have

and wer<' popular with tlic
readers of their time. The editors have looked
intrinsic excellence

comics that are important, interesting, arfunny, representational, curious some or

all of these take your pick. These newspaper
comic strips ar<; an important part of our culfor

tistic,

tural history.

meant

to

They

are also fun to

be enjoyed.

read and are

The

(g
Edit!

Fore

The
and
tivc

Stat

Froi

and
to

cral
crit

con
ft-al

poi
chi

An
c-or

im:

mf
nal
All
lia

spi

an
tis

Li

Sc
(/
K<
Fi
Ic

In

so
ni
fii

c(
r,
fi

H
(

F
t
i

I
I
I
I

have enormous respect

for the comic strip as a

potential story and art
form, although far too few

of its productions have

realized that potential.

If those few, however,

could be gathered into some

sort of complete collection,

the effect on those who

have scorned the comics as

a whole might well be

devastating.

Edmund Wilson
from a letter to Bill Blackbeard
1966

6 AM JMAT*

asft r*4i

The Smithsonian
Collection of

ll!lWilP^!F!l!B
(g(DIM!!(0
Edited by Bill

Blackbeard and Martin Williams

Foreword by John

Canaday

Copublished by Smithsoniaii Institution Press

and Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Note

to reader

The comic

strips in this

book are numbered

in the order in

which they are repro-

duced. References in the text and index to particular strips are indicated by those

numbers

in brackets.

Frontispiece:

Johnny Wise, 1902, by Tad Dorgan.

Library of Congress Cataloging

in

Publication Data

Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsonian
Bibliography:

Includes index.
1.

Comic books,

Blackbeard,

I.

III.

newspaper comics.

collection of

p.

strips, etc.

Bill.

United

Williams,

II.

States.

MarUn

T.

Title.

PN6726.SS

77-608090

741.5'973

1977

Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. 20560

ISBN 0-87474-172-6

ISBN 0-87474-167-X pbk

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York 10022

ISBN 8109-1612-6
ISBN 8109-2081-6 pbk

Designed by Elizabeth Sur

Printed and bound in Japan. All rights reserved.
Third printing

The cartoons
strip

referred to here by
numbers are reprinted with

Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate: 23,

96-107,

128-129,

151-156, 221-277,

138-139,

438-441, 644-715, 720-722, 740, 760

the permission of:

Robert C. Dille: 427-428

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.: 429
Field

Newspaper Syndicate:

3-4,

11-14, 20, 22,

126-127, 142, .505-539, 755-757, 759

Johnny Hart: 755, 757

I.

H.T. Corporation: 126-127, 142

Crockett Johnson: 505-539

Jack Kent: 744-749
Selby Kelly: 7.34-737

King Features: 5-10, 32-37, 40, 47-83, 92-95, 130135, 140-141, 144-1.50, 1.57-161, 170-174, 278-

319, 430-431, 444-484, 718, 723-733, 750-753,

758, 761-763
Mell Lazarus: 756, 759
McNaught Syndicate, Inc.: 28-29, 41-46, 108-125,

136-137, 16.3-169,540-541

Newspaper Enterprise

Association: 175-178, 320-

426, 432-437. 497-504

The Philadelphia Inquirer: 162

Scripps-Howard Newspapers:
30-31,38-39,716-717
The Seattle Times: 84-91
Skippy, Inc.: 174
Jessie

Kahles Straut:

Warren

1,

15,

19,

24-27,

14.3

Tufts: 741

United Features Syndicate: 738-739, 742-743

Universal Press Syndicate 754
Raebum Van Buren: 485-496
Walt Disney Productions: 542-643
:

Contents
Foreword by John Canaday

Acknowledgments
Introduction:

Pagliacci,

Struwwelpeter,

and Puss

in Boots:

Folklore Figures in the Early

Sunday Comic

Strip,

1896-1916

19

The Comic Treasures

Johnny Wise 23
Buster Brown 24
Katzenjammer Kids
Hans und Fritz 28

Little

30

Nemo in Slumberland

Nibsy the Newsboy

36

The Kin-der-Kids

II

Mr. Caudle, Sherlock

Holmes, and the Artless

Dodger: Popular Images

in

the Early Daily Comic Strip,

1907-1927

51

Mr. E.

Z.

Mark

37

54

54

Mr. Jack

Braggo the

Monk

55

The Hall-Room Boys

Sherlocko the

Monk

Desperate Desmond
Chantecler Peck

S'MatterPop?

56
56

Midsummer Day Dreams

A.

Mutt

58

American Newspaper Page

Naughty Pete 43
Mama's Angel Child 44
Bear Creek Folks 45
School Days 46
Mutt and JefiF 47

27

29

Happy Hooligan
Jimmy 31

of the

The Newlyweds 40
Mr. Twee Deedle 41
The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead

22

Hogan's Alley

Maud

32

Slim Jim

49

Hawkshaw the Detective

50

11

42

Sunny Toonenille and

the Darkling World:

IV

Anecdote and Narrative

\'

in

Comic

Strip,

1917-19.33

131

the Daily

Popeye, the Skipper,

and the Abysses of Space

and Time: Anecdote and
Narrative in the Sunday

Comic

Strip,

1930-1941

183

VI Shadow Shapes in
Moving Rows: Extended
Narrative in the Daily and

Sunday Comic

Strip,

1928-1943

231

Cats, Dogs, Possums,

VII

Counts, and Others:

Comics Miscellany,
1928-1950 287

Out Our Way ia3

Bobby Thatcher 134
Minute Movies 136
School Days 138

Oop

Abbie

Wise
Guys, and Witches: The
Return of the Funnies 313

Bamabv

233
233

Dave's Delicatessen

Cat

199

The Bungle Family 246

Mickey Mouse 248
Little Orphan Annie
265
and the Pirates
Dick Tracy 279
Terr\-

Abie the Agent

290
291

Krazy Kat

Pogo

297

298

310

Texas Slim and Dirty Dalton

315

316
317

Miss Peach

321

The Wizard

of Id

Hi and Lois

322

Momma

318

Hagar the Horrible

Doonesbury 319

318

311

312

Casey Ruggles

296

Beetle Bailey

274

306

Gordo

292

293

Tumbleweeds

237

239

Nize Baby 289

Count Screwloose

B. C.

198

Thimble Theatre ( Popeye

235

an' Slats

King Aroo

197

Toonerville Folks

Up Father

Peanuts

196

Little Joe

White Boy

Our Boarding House

Felix the

156

165

193

Secret Agent X-9

Bringing

Tubbs

190

Captain Easy

Hejji

Little People,

\A'ash

Buck Rogers 185

Tarzan 187
188
Flash Gordon
189
Prince VaUant
Alley

144

Barney Google and Spark Plug

141

Toonerville Folks

Li'lAbner

VIII

Moon Mullins

322

322

Broom Hilda
Sam's Strip

323
323

320

Selected, Introductory Bibliography of Books

Comics

324

An Annotated

Index of the Comics

325

and

Articles

on Newspaper

Foreword
be lucky enough to have been around for a rather long stretch of years
to remember a time when newspaper comics were just newspaper
rather
sociological
documents and works of art with their own set of innocomics
than
vative esthetic principles, which they have become. If you have been really lucky,
luckier than all but a handful of people I know, the comics are tied to the time when
you were a small boy in a small town about a hundred miles from Kansas City and
your weekly reward for good behavior in Sunday school was five cents for a copy of

You have

to

say seven decades

the Sunday Kansas City Star. Along with reports of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912,

Europe in 1914, and other events in the fictional area outside a ten-mile radius from the Bourbon County Court House in Fort Scott, the Star
kept you abreast of the adventures of the Katzenjammer Kids, Happy Hooligan, Busthe declaration of

war

in

Brown, and other familiar personalities of the real world.

The transmutation of the old newspaper comics from their

ter

initial

character as en-

tertainments to be read lying on your stomach on the Hoor before Sunday dinner, into
their current status as sociological testaments for intellectual evaluation, as

strated

by

ability

may

here

not at

gia,

is

which

it is

follow thoughtless youth. But

all intellectual.

The

it

was. This holds

to

response to the comics reproduced

me

how sweet

about the time

to a quivering jelly of nostal-

hfe used to be and forgetting

was

my

collector's period,

with thousands of strips clipped from daily papers and

Upon

eight,

when we moved from

to Texas.

years from eight to twelve were

The

my own

early ones reduce

up

demon-

always reassuring to see that solid respect-

the condition of remembering

is

how terrible
Kansas

book, pleases me, since

this

entering high school

with suit boxes

filed b\'

threw the collection out as kid

stuff,

filled

date and subject.

and

for the next four

years the comics, although assiduously followed, occupied a residual spot in my attention, badgered as I was, as everybody is at that time, by geysers of hormones. The
trouble with having been lucky

and up

to

1919

is

that you

enough

have

to

know newspaper comics

to settle for the 1920s for

shortly after 1907

your teen-age years, and

was a much more embarrassing time for an adult to look back on. Teenagers since then have passed through more dangerous, more violent, and more tragic
periods, but not more embarrassing ones. We were silly, let's let it go at that.
there never

The

point in mentioning that period here

is

that in spite of so

much

that

is

painful

were marked by one discovery that saves my self-respect.

Krazy
was not a general favorite with my contemporaries
Kat.
This was Krazij
adolescent or adult. They liked Barney Google and Moon Mullins. So did I. The more
sophisticated of my colleagues went for Toonerville Trolley. So did I. But they
couldn't see what was fimny about Krazy Kat. nor could they see that that was exactly
to recall,

the point

my

early teens

that

Krazy

tcasn't funny.

He/she was

(is,

and surely always

wall

be) a

combination of a lot of things, including hilarious, but not funny.

The Seven Lively Arts wrote the famous essay on Krazy,

celebrating Kokonino Kounty and its inhabitants on a philosophical premise identifying Krazy with Don Quixote, but this was several years after I used to go through the
In 1926 Gilbert Seldes in

Strouds's discarded copies of the

to

have a Hearst paper

in the

San Antonio Light

house and

to find Krazy.

My father refused

the Strouds, less fussy, lived next door.

\ATienever self-doubts as to

my

cal

acumen, or

on

my record as

me

later in life:

my

my intellectual capacit>', my poetic sensitivity, my criti-

humanistic discernment threaten to sink me,

a precocious

The only

member of what was

explanation

to

become a

can see as to

can always surface

Kult.

why my

Krazy

also

saved

mistakes as a parent

by then collected in a book with another appreciation by e e cummings, was always at hand instead of the literary' pap usually
fed to kiddies. Within the family we mastered Krazy s dialect for use on special occasions, and could recite back and forth the dialogues from favorite episodes. It sounds
precious and would have been precious if there had been anything self-conscious or
Kultish about it, but it wasn't like that. Krazy was a kind of pet, mascot, and Keeper of
the Peace around our house, a benign presence and good example even today from
his/her spot on the bookshelf.
Somehow I never managed to get really involved with any of the comics later than
Krazy a loss for me, I'm sure, which this book may correct. There was a brief period
at the University of Virginia when it was voguish among the young professors to pretend to be fascinated with Mary Worth. We would tell each other we could hardly
wait to find out how she would straighten out so-and-so's troubles. But it was all pretty
phony, a kind of reverse academicism. During those years I remember also stumbling
over stacks of comic books upstairs in the boys' room, probably Buck Rogers and
Superman operating on different wave lengths from Krazy 's in the library downstairs.
But I never looked into these.
So I lost track of the comics. The closest I ever came to post-Krazy involvement was
in the spring of 1944, serving in the Marine Corps with Alex Raymond, who relinquished the authorship of Flash Gordon in order to enlist with a group of officertrainees at Quantico, Virginia. Raymond was held in downright veneration by the
rest of the class; even the drill sergeant, who was otherwise the meanest man in the
world, regarded him as a rare and fragile object that might shatter if commanded to
shoulder arms in too rough a tone of voice, giving me some idea of the power that
comics still held in America and, I am sure, still do.
The comics are ubiquitous. You don't have to have followed a strip for its identity
to have somehow entered your consciousness: the comics affect your way of feeling
about the daily world whether or not you read them. So far as I can tell, the effect on
me has been salutary, and I am content with the idea of strengthening it with the aid
of this anthology. The function of art, we are told, is to clarify, intensify, or enlarge
our experience, and the comics are now art. Without much expectation of clarificadidn't scar

offspring

is

that Krazy,

tion, or of intensification, let

me now

meanwhile, although grateful for

that allowed

me

to

know

17,

1977

John Canaday

New York, May

this

set

about expanding

book,

the comics when.

am

my

boundaries. In the

also grateful for the

time-scheme

Acknowledgments
The names

of the

many

syndicates and individual artists

who have

tributed to this volume appear on the comics pages which follow.

especially to thank the following:

King Features Syndicate and Charlotte MacCleary

Field

Newspaper Syndicate

Mell Lazarus

The

late

Crockett Johnson

Selby Kelly

Robert

S.

Reed and the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate

Johnny Hart

David Stolberg and the Scripps-Howard Newspapers

Charles V.

McAdam

and the McNaught Syndicate

Robert C. Dille
Jessie Kahles Straut

Thomas

E. Peoples

and the Newspaper Enterprise Association

Joan Crosby Tibbets

Raeburn Van Buren

Edgar Rice Burroughs,

The

I.

Inc.,

and Robert M. Hodes

H. T. Corporation

Jack Kent and Stanleigh Arnold

William Ravenscroft and United Features Syndicate

Walt Disney Productions

Universal Press Syndicate
and,

finally,

Rick Marschall

generously con-

Here we would

like

Sports writers

are surpassed in ingenuity and success as

diligent coiners of neologisms only by the comic strip artists, of

whom Thomas A, (Tad) Dorgan, Elzie Crisler Segar and Billy De Beck
are examples.

...

Dorgan

drugstore cowboy

is said to have invented or introduced

nobody home

and to have launched such popular

'Yes, we have no bananas,' and 'You said

phrases as 'You tell him,'

Segar (creator of Popeye) is credited with goon

it.'

.jeep ,

and

various other teuiis that, in the hands of others, took on wide extensions
of meaning, and with starting the vogue for the words ending in burger.
To De Beck
ajid

are ascribed heebie .jeebies

horse feathers

hot mamma

The comic strip artist

very diligent maker of terse and dramatic words.

hotsy-totsy

has been a

In his grim comments

upon the horrible calamities which befall his characters he not only
employs many ancients of English speech, e.g., slam

mee-ow
zowie

smash and biMp

bam, socko

fooie and grrr .

bang

plop

wow,

wham

glug

oof

ulk

H. L. Mencken

10

quack

whap

bing

Their influence upon the general American vocabu-

lary must be very potent.

The American Language

but also invents novelties of his own, e.g.,

yurp

1919. and Supplement One

19^5

Introduction

The Comic Treasures

of the

American Newspaper Page

The elements

of the

American comic

strip

were already

there.

succession of draw-

they are

ings expressing a continuous action, an anecdotal event, a narrative

and had been

as cave paintings
reliefs,

like

and

vividly rendered in

in Giotto frescoes. "Talk balloons,"

European

speeches

wisps from the mouths of characters, were fairly

art, in

oflFered in encircled,

common

as old

Greek temple
smoke-

in eighteenth-centur>'

commonplace by the mid-nineteenth century. And so, in the British "comic papers," were captioned cartoon narratives offering, usually in broad burlesque, farcical incident and anecdote which largely derived
from the conventions of circus clowning and the music hall-vaudeville sketch.
It remained for the United States, then entering fully into its own era of mass communications, to put all these elements together and make something new of them,
something new and compelling, and so irresistible that it spread (along with our
movies and our music around the world.
Only in the past decade has the American newspaper comic strip begun to be
recognized in its own country as an innovative and creative cultural accomplishment.
It has long been hailed in France and elsewhere in Europe as one of the important
achievements in the arts of this century, and it has been studiously examined there in
a number of journals exclusively devoted to the subject.
That is perhaps not so exceptional or extreme a cultural default as it may at first
seem. Notoriously, Europeans and particularly the French have recognized, researched, praised and sometimes overpraised the American arts
our movies, our
jazz, our comics
before we have. And it would perhaps not be too chauvinistic to
point out that we have produced those things, after all, and loved them, and that
scholarship, art criticism, and cultural history are secondary pursuits.
At the same time, many of our own historians of the arts, having borrowed their
principles, procedures, and attitudes largely from European cultural historians, have
caricature,

and graphic caricature was

fairly

proceeded

rowed
the

to

we have

bor-

to literary history, to the theater, to concert music,

and

apply those principles only to such traditional categories as

directly

like,

from abroad

sometimes pausing to scorn or reject those

American,

like the

artistic

genres that are particularly

movies, jazz, and the comics. Europeans, meanwhile, have applied

their principles of cultural history

creations

and

criticism in modified

and transmutations which we

still

form

to those

American

think of as our "popular" or even our

"light" artistic pursuits.

Thus the comic

strip

has been critically neglected in the United States, and has

even been openly attacked. But a further, and perhaps crucial reason
of the comics lay in the aversion of

persuasion for the sensational press of the turn of the century and

11

for the neglect

most well-educated Americans of every

later.

political

The

profes-

and literati of the time usually did not see these newspapers
and amusing but saw them instead as vicious, crude, and frightening in
their instant and openly demagogic appeal to a mass readership. And the papers they
most grimly eschewed the Hearst titles connected in a chain from coast to coast,
the Chicago Tribune, the New York World (until 1920), the New York Daily News
were precisely the papers which carried the largest array of comic strips by the
most talented artists. The papers most respected and read by these educators and

sors, teachers, prelates,

as colorful

the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Boston Tranand the Times carried and
the Baltimore Sun carried fewer

tastemakers
script,

none

strips,

at

carries

all.

Comics seemed

lowbrow Pied Piper which lured the inno-

to the elite the obviously

cents to their journalistic

doom

at the

hands of the Hearsts, McCormicks, and

Pulit-

Nemo, Buster Brown, Happy Hooligan, and the Katzers.

zenjammer Kids being paid for and distributed by Hearst? They must therefore
be tainted by his political ambitions and social attitudes; any intrinsic merit they
might possess as works of art was perhaps accidental, certainly irrelevant, and surely
Weren't Krazy Kat,

Little

best ignored.

majority of those in authoritative positions in American literature and art dur-

The
ing the
tive,

half of this century simply

first

may

not have seen the

more subtly imagina-

gorgeously inventive, and creatively memorable strips at

were being published

exciting works

in the

wrong

And

papers.

all

because these

concomitantly, they

overlooked the colorfully bound strip reprint volumes issued by minor publishers at
the time, both as entertainment for themselves and as gifts for their children.

At the same time, even the most gifted and creatively involved comic-strip

tended

to

They made
their

artists

hold themselves and their work in a modest and unpretentious low regard.
small jokes about their strips in public, surrendered their original art to

employing syndicates without expecting or wanting

return, supplied

its

funny

anecdotes for superficial articles about their careers, sighed after "serious" art pursuits,

and

of their

perhaps worst

for the historian

maintained

virtually

no reference

files

own work.

Similarly, our libraries

Many would

have been negligent.

not even stock the

New

York Graphic or certain of the Hearst newspapers. Only one substantial book has ever

been devoted
in

American

to the Graphic, possibly the

history.

scant half dozen have been written about Hearst's highly im-

portant chain of journals.

the Chicago Tribune.

most iconoclastically innovative newspaper

And none

side result

maintain any comprehensive

file

failure of the

of Hearst's

journalism as well as to that of the comic

has apparently not survived at

left

all;

New York Daily News or

New York Public Library to

has yet appeared on the

was the

there

New York Journal,

And indeed

strip.

may be no

file

crucial to the study of

the

New

York Graphic

of that paper, public or private,

on earth.

Had

the comic-strip material which ran in the shunned popular press been pub-

lished instead

New

of the

by Vanity Fair or The

New

York Times, there can be

Yorker, or

little

form would have readily received the

wards

as H. L.

we have missed such

it is,

symbol and graphic leitmotif

in the

all,

there have been

some nine

strip;

Kenneth Burke's analysis of

strips; and Ed-

popular inythos of the

Wilson's consideration of the potential of

and

theoretical re-

narrative; Lionel Trilling's consideration of the renovation of the

sustained characters and narrative of the comic

Still

strip

accolades and appreciative discussion

Dickensian character in the literature of the comic

mund

reached the august pages

Mencken's comments on E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre as Americana

and sustained comic

linguistic

it

doubt that the best example" of the

critical

they should have had from the outset. As

had

Edward Corey's working with

the

strip.

studies of historical

and

critical

substance

dealing with the newspaper strips published in the United States since 1897. Perhaps
there

12

is

some record

of appreciation of a national art form after

all.

This collection presents, in a single volume, an extensive gallery of newspaper comics,

an anthology which the

editors

hope

ofiFers

some memorable and amusing

art

and

narrative.

The comic

as a strong story

camera and

well-conceived story, character, or

work functionally acceptable,

may redeem films with slipshod

or barely competent art

make clumsy

incident can

much

strip is essentially a narrative art.

and good character actors

directorial work. Indeed,

draftsmanship or graphics, no

some

strip artists

What

artists at all.

were, by

strict

standards of

they had was a point of view (a

sometimes rowdy point of view, to be sure ) on the human animal and

and

actions,

and a functional means

to

convey

his attitudes

it.

the art of the comic strip did provide an extraordinary' vehicle for inspired

Still,

graphic experimentation and accomplishment by some major comic-strip

artists, in-

cluding Winsor McCay, Lyonel Feininger, George Herriman, ClifiF Sterrett, Roy
Crane, Milton Caniff, and others whom the reader will readily note in the following
pages.

As we indicate, however,
comic strip stirred its most
light a

number of

talents

it

was

as a challenge to the storytelling imagination that the

striking response

who were

among

able to use

its

creative minds,

and

it

brought

to

highly individual techniques of con-

remarkable advantage. Compare, for example, the graphic competence of Roy Crane in his Wash Tubbs stor\' in this volume with that of E. C. Segar
in the Thimble Theatre narrative. Crane's sensitive mastery of pictorial composition

tinuity to often

Tubbs whaling sequences are as defdy

evocative of the cetacean majesty and movement as Rockwell Kent's illustrations for
Moby Dick), and they are in sharp contrast to Segar's obviously limited graphic concerns. However, both artist-narrators were readily able to spin stories of arresting incident, humor, strong characterizations, and sustained plot interest, and few readers
and technique

can

resist the

is

self-evident (his panels in the

compulsion

Thus the dual purpose

strip

medium

itself,

to

read their narratives raptly through to the end.

of this collection reflects the remarkable dichotom>- of the

shared only with cinema,

both as "gallery" art and

in that its best

in continuity as fiction or

Indeed, this division of esthetic possibihty

is

works can be enjoyed

drama.

reflected in the divergent

emphases of

the only two national institutions at present devoted in full or great part to comic-strip
art: the Museum of Cartoon Art in Greenwich, Connecticut, which is largely con-

cerned with rotating displays of original

emy

of

Comic

Art,

which

files all

strip

drawings; and the San Francisco Acad-

of the printed strips, so they can be studied in rela-

tion to other printed narrative arts, as story-carrying material.

The comic

strip

may

functionally be defined as a serially published, episodic,

open-ended dramatic narrative or

fied characters, told in successive
its

series of linked

equivalent and minimized narrative

Not

all

anecdotes about recurrent, identi-

drawings regularly enclosing ballooned dialogue or

the features contained herein

text.
fit

that functional definition, in detail, to be

Johnny Gruelle's Mr. Twee Deedle, for example, has no ballooned dialogue and
might actually be considered a kind of comic version of an illustrated children's book.
Similarly, the comics page Tarzan, in any of its several versions over the years, is a

sure.

condensed-narrative, fantasy-adventure tale in text-and-illustration form.

The American comic strip first attained definitive form in a Sunday Yellow Kid
page, drawn by Richard Felton Outcault for William Randolph Hearst's American
Humorist weekly comic supplement

to his

New York Journal, on October 18,

1896.

was probably the illustrated novel of

the nineteenth century, which in England, France, and the United States usually featured caricature and cartoon art as intimate accompaniment to the texts of such popular authors as Dickens, Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo, and others. But the strip failed to

The immediate progenitor of the comic

13

strip

THE YELLOW KID TAKES A HAND AT GOLF.

develop as an immediate outgrowth of the reading pubUc's enormous rehsh for cartoon-supported narrative in the 1830s and 1840s.

bound

by the same pubHsher who

parts

Pickwick comic

strip,

issued in

originally hired Dickens to write text for the

popular cartoons of Robert Seymour, thus bringing Pickwick Papers into being,

With

by Phiz ( Hablot Knight

Browne) and script and balloon dialogue by Dickens, such a work might well have
had wide popularity. But it would have taken a prescient imagination to conceive of
a full-fledged fictional narrative being carried forward by means of dialogue within
successive drawings, much as drama was performed on a stage, and without need of
might seem

in retrospect to

have been a

likely event.

art

extensive prose explication. Such an imagination did not exist in Dickens's time, not

own

and graphically oriented mind.

was presented by means of short sets of successive drawings
was largely limited to pantomimic pratfall gags and occasional simplistic political
parables. In these forms, captions and dialogue, whether presented outside or within
the panels, essentially served as embellishment to the art. In the Outcault Yellow Kid
of October 18, 1896, however, the whole point of the vaudeville gag depended on the
dialogue between the Kid and the parrot, and that was the first time this had occurred
in a graphic work which also met the other prerequisites of the strip form.
Both Outcault's publisher, Hearst, and his fellow cartoonists on the staff of the
American Hunwri.sf were quick to perceive and to pursue the broad possibilities the
Yellow Kid's turn with a comic-dialogue payoff had for the comic-character features
the Humorist was then emphasizing. The crucial and relevant effect of rapidly exchanged dialogue in a Weber and Fields vaudeville skit could now be paralleled in
even

in his

Any

comic

fertile

narrative that

art.

Possibly Outcault's innovation struck the Humorist staff in something of the

same way that the direct addition of

movie industry, startling them into a

14

.sound to film struck most workers in the silentrealization of expressive possibilities

undreamed

of.

Cartoonists of the time had" long been

should

exist well apart

from

wedded

to the notion that art of

prose exposition, like a

any kind

kind of frozen tableau.

on the potential of the art form he had

created, enlarging on the dialogue and prose essentials of the comic strip with pioneering gusto and imagination, as did his companions in the new field. By the turn of
the century, dialogue and art had been commonly wedded in the newspaper comics.
Outcault himself promptly seized with

relish

was minimal or nonexistent, such as J.

Carver Pusey's Bennij and Carl Anderson's Hetny, were regarded as inventive and
original in their refreshing departure from convention.
Prolonged graphic narrative was an obvious step for cartoonists turning out weekly
newspaper strips to take, and two of Outcault's confreres on the Hearst Journal, Ru-

And by

the 1930s comics in which dialogue

dolph Dirks (whose Katzenjammer Kick had entertained readers since 1896) and Fred
Opper (the creator of the comic strip's own divine and Dostoevskian Idiot, Happy
Hooligan) were the

first

to carry

the next. Other early strip artists

actual

thematic concepts from one week's strip episode to

to enlarge on narrative possibilities and to develop

suspense were Lyonel Feininger

cliff -hanging

in his

Kin-der-Kids for the Chi-

McCay in Little Nemo in Slumberlaml

and Charles W. Kahles in Hairbreadth Harry for

New

cago Tribune in 1906, Winsor

for the

York Herald

the Philadel-

in 1905,

phia Press in 1906.

black and white were initiated in the Hearst morning and
afternoon papers across the country in the early 1900s. At first, these were miniaturized versions of the Sunday comic strips, self-contained gags about reappearing char-

Weekday comic

strips in

were Cus Mager's

Knocko the Monk, H. A. McCill's Padlock Bones, the Dead Sure Detective, and F.
M. Howarth's Mr. E. Z. Mark. ) Some might appear for as many as ten successive
weekdays, but that was accidental; the average frequency was three days a week, and

acters for

whom

the strips were named.

Some

early examples

the editorial purpose was to provide daily variety in strips, not daily duplication of the

same features.
In 1907, however,

Henry Conway "Bud"

Fisher, sports-page cartoonist for the

San

Francisco Chronicle, introduced a seven-day-a-week sports-page comic strip called A.

Mutt, which gave the reader daily, tongue-in-cheek horse-racing tips. Mr. Mutt suffered or prospered according to the next-day outcome of these tips.
Fisher had, in fact, gotten his idea for the Chronicle feature from an earlier but

ill-

by Clare Briggs and Moses Koenigsberg for the

and Examiner. Called A. Piker Clerk, the
American
Hearst Chicago papers, the
Briggs-drawn sports-page strip, primarily an y\merican feature, was intended for daily
pubhcation, but was late for many of the paper's several daily editions and was
fated try for a similar strip created

crowded out of others by

late sports

news. Finally given the coup de disgrace by

Hearstwho found Briggs's twitting of foreign dignitaries (i.e., the Czar of Russia)
in develin the strip vulgar A. Piker Clerk remains a vital if premature experiment
oping a daily comic

strip.

Mutt (later Mutt and Jeff) literally became an overnight sensation in

San Francisco and materially increased the daily circulation of the Chronicle. The
paper's bitter local rival, the Hearst Examiner, sensed a good thing in the strip and
promptly hired Fisher away from the Chronicle at a hefty boost in salary. The local
Fisher's A.

and the impressed Hearst wasted no

time in moving Fisher to New York and syndicating A. Mutt nationally. An aroused
nurtured
public's interest in daily character strips with strong thematic narrative was

delight with Fisher's daily episode continued,

which quickU' followed on the

sports pages of papers everywhere, including Sidney Smith's Buck Nix in the Chicago
American, Russ Westover's Luke McGluck in the San Francisco Post, C. M. Payne's

by a myriad

of other six-

Honeybunch's Hubby
in the

and seven-day-a-week

in the

New

York World, and George Herriman's Baron Mooch

Los Angeles Examiner.

On January 31, 1912, Hearst introduced the

his New York Evening Journal, adding it to his

15

strips

nation's

first full

daily comic

page

in

other afternoon papers from coast to

made up

coast a few days later. Initially

of four large daily strips, including Herri-

man's Family Upstairs and Harry Hershfield's Desperate

cliff-hanger )

the Hearst page expanded to

five,

then

sLx,

Desmond

and

finall>'

(a continuing

nine daily strips

through the teens and early twenties. Other papers emulated the Hearst example, and

by the 1920s the phenomenon was to be found in hundreds of newspapers around the
coimtry, fed by dozens of daily strips distributed by a multitude of small syndicates.
From these early small svudicates emerged the giants of the thirties, such as Hearst's
King Features, Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), the Chicago TribuneNew York News Syndicate, the Associated Press, and United Features from United
Press.

By
were

by the

the 1930s, comic strips

to

be found

in

daily pageful

and Sunday color section

most American and Canadian newspapers. Vital

collections

to the then

wide-

spread urban and rural competition between newspapers, the comic strip was given

and
was to be seen at its most varied, inventive,
the thirties and early forties
a peak of creativity and

increasing space and prominence, with editors vying for the newest, strongest,

most

original.

result, the

and exciting

colorful,

popularity

As a

it

plent>' in

strip

has not held since.

As an introductory

our volume has

collection,

and must have )

its

limitations. Eight

presented here in extensive continuity' with complete narrative sequence,

strips are

but perhaps as
ber of fine
to

comic

many

strips

as thirty deserve that kind of representation. Moreover, a

which a large body of the included

strips

have been limited. But

in

order to estab-

had

a functional basis for the selection of representative material, the editors

lish

set a

few general

num-

have been crowded out of even the group of single-episode examples

to

rules of procedure.

we drew up two

One of them contained the editors' choices of

memorable strips, considered both as graphic
and narrative works. The other set forth the most generally famed, popular, and typical
strips. Thus The Kin-der-Kids, Mr. Twee Deedle, and School Days would be on the
first list, but not the second; while Tillie the Toiler and Joe Palooka would be obviFirst,

lists

of comics.

the most accomplished and critically

A number of strips, of com-se, appeared on both lists

and Her Pals, Thimble Theatre, Katzenjammer Kids, Dick Tracy,
and Mickey Mouse), and clearly these were strong contenders for relatively extensive representation in the collection. The bulk of our volume is built around examples
of those works which combine intrinsic excellence and wide popularity with readers
of their time, while titles relegated to just one list or the other were included as space
and the need for reasonable representation of both bodies of material seemed to
ous choices for the second.
(tides such as Polly

dictate.

We

also took into account those strips

printed to meet the

in these

demands

which have recently been so widely

re-

of their still-active aficionados that inclusion at length

pages might be considered wasteful of valuable space

Gordon, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant. Dick Tracy

such
is

strips as

Flash

included in a fairly

long excerpt because of the nearly exclusive focus on the post- 1940 strip in current
reprints.

Our

selection

different in quality

and

is

Ultimately, of course,

own

choices out of their

whether every

from the mid-thirties, when Chester Gould's work was rather

tone.

strip or

what the

We

have done
their

every continuity herein

claim that the volume at hand

be).

editors

own knowledge and

is

in this collection

own

art or

is

is

have put together a selection of comics we

feel are interesting, important,

and the reader, of course,

take his choice from

among

Further comments on the selections wdll be found

16

The

be found

in

will

those descriptions.
in brief prefaces to

several period divisions of the book. Extensive discussion of

collection will

their

a "definitive" comics collection (whatever that would

representative, funny, curious, exceptional, artistic

Art:

make

We may disagree as to
even artistic. We do not

tastes.

all

each of the

the material in this

coeditor Bill Blackbeard's forthcoming book

Literature of the Cotnic Strip (Oxford University Press).

The Endless

On

the matter of authorship',

lems of

strip history.

we make no

some knotty prob-

effort to disentangle

illustrator-author might hire an assistant

successful strip

some

in

retain

an outright ghost or ghosts to take over for a while. Yet he

cases,

an

to

help draw, an assistant to help plot, or both, at one or more periods of his career

artistic control

still

or,

might

over his creation. (Or he might not. Indeed, the trade gossip

has long held that the "author" of one of the most successful strips of the 1930s

and 1940s never drew the feature at all, even in the beginning, and probably that gossip tells the truth. However, such matters are properly the province of other scholarship

and other books.)

The pages

that follow

some

stereotypes of

have

their share of stereotypes

Comedy and melodrama

types are racial.

kind, although in such contexts

some

such.

What

relate

them

to reality.

acters" or "traditional types" or

is

to bring his types to life

There

and

and some

of those stereo-

are always based on the manipulation of

we

them "stock char-

usually call

remains for the true

artist,

of course,

a distinction between a simply careless or insensitive or even racist exploi-

is

tation of national

and

racial types

on the one hand and a quite legitimate satire or

difficult to make, and

burlesque on the other. But such distinctions are sometimes

American

The

artists

have not always made them.

distinctions are important, to

be

sure.

And you

will find in these

pages exam-

ples of both unthinking racial exploitation and, occasionally, true satirical observation.

In the popular culture of this country,

fairly recently,
(

nothing and nobody was

Happy Hooligan )

we

are dealing with an art to which, until

sacred.

And

in

which a

guileless Irish

made

a confused black janitor, or a mysterious Oriental could be

humor

the subject or the butt of

bum

or of melodrama, fairly or unfairly, without any

hesitation.

At the same time, we are

we

in the 1970s

television

by

also

sometimes the victims of our passing

are apt to find the

conman
Tim Moore)
Kingfish

a skillful black comedian,

disquieting.

But

Foxx's Fred Sanford of "Sanford and Son" comfortably amusing.

Richard Pryor's

and

satiric

attitudes.

Thus

( although he was portrayed on

we

Redd

find

And we

acclaim

array of scatological black street characters as examples of bold

insightful theatrical art.

Collective attitudes change. Perhaps popular insight changes as well. But

and drama both remain, and

so, therefore,

comedy

do the basic types that are a part of

their

substance.

In any case, as presented here they are a part of our history, a part which

be pointless

The

it

would

for us to attempt to suppress.

question of content and meaning in these strips

sue further in this introduction. But

it is

is

one

we do

not intend to pur-

a question quite worth pursuing, and one

would encompass collective and archetypical ritual; theatrical, literary, and

graphic tradition; and contemporary social attitudes, conscious and unconscious.
It would involve the individual strip author's intentions as well. Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie clearly invites us to admire the sizable empire-and-fortune-building prowess of Daddy Warbucks on the one hand, and the thrifty and loyal virtues

that

by day-to-day poverty on the other. Similarly, Dick

Tracy was frankly conceived by Chester Gould as a policeman who would save us
from rampant 1930s gangsterism by shooting first and asking questions afterwards.

the author sees as encouraged

As indicated, much of the text of this volume represents the collaborative effort of both
editors. As a result, the stylistic habits of each writer have been set aside to produce a
harmoniously unobtrusive body of infonnation to accompany the much more important
graphic content of the book. Such opinions and historical interpretations as are set
forth indicate only that

The

17

one or the other of us held them; not necessarily both.

current material in Section Eight, included to

augment the general appeal

of

the collection and necessarUy limited in scope through space considerations, was
chosen mainly for its stylistic or thematic relation to the older and earlier material in
the book and does not represent, by any means,
of us

By

would

have included.
and juxtaposing our

all

of the current

titles

either or both

like to

collecting

strips as

we have

here,

we do them some

admit-

and the rest are, after all, intended to

and each such fragment of narrative has its own rise and fall
and an implicit suspense that is supposed to be relieved (and then continued)
twenty-four hours later with the arrival of the next day's paper. But we have placed
ted injustice.

The

narratives of Segar, Kelly,

be read in daily episodes,

the next day's episode further

Read them with

And enjoy.

Bill

Blackbeard

Martin Williams

18

down

that in mind.

the page.

Struwwelpeter,
Pagliacci,

and Puss

in Boots

Folklore Figures in the

Early Sunday Comic

Strip,

1896-1916
two decades the new comic-strip medium appeared chiefly on large,
in color-printed Sunday humor and magazine sections of the more
prosperous metropolitan newspapers. ( Tabloid-size color comic pages first appeared
when the Chicago Tribune, Portland Oregonian, and other papers introduced them

During

its first

pulp paper pages

as a paper-saving

measure

in 1918.)

nated virtually to the exclusion of

all

Three comic figures of popular

others: the

demon

fiction

domi-

child, the clownish innocent,

and the humanized animal.

And

the

demon

child led all the rest.

The character

also appeared, in varying de-

grees of rascality, throughout American fiction at the time the

first strips

were being

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, George W.

Chimmie Fadden. However, he was
Townsend's
W.
Peck's Bad Boy, and Edward
perhaps even more luridly and seminally rendered in such earlier German popular

conceived, notably with such hellions as

graphic figures as Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter

1845; but anticipated

by a

fig-

ure in Paul Gavami's illustrations for Les enfants terribles of 1843) and Wilhelm
Busch's

Max and

The premier

Moritz (1865).

figure of juvenile genius

and subversion

in the

comics was, of course,

He was almost immediately followed by Rudolph Dirks's

Katzenjammer Kids team of Hans and Fritz, which had originally been
copied directly from the two schrecklichkinder of Busch. Subsequent demon children
of the early Sunday comics were Outcault's Buster Brown, Winsor McCay's Little
Samwy Sneeze, Nemo's troublesome buddies in Little Nemo in Slwnherland, George
McManus's Nibsy (hero of a short-lived spoof on McCay's Nemo page, Nibsy the
Newsboy in Funny Fairyland), James Swinnerton's Jimmy, Penny Ross's Esther (in
R. F. Outcault's Yellow Kid.

longer-lasting

Mama's Angel Child), Tad Dorgan's Johnny Wise, George Herriman's Bud Smith.
C. W. Kahles's Bobby Bounce continuing in the strip briefly done in 1902 by W. W.
Denslow, illustrator of The Wizmd of Oz, as Billy Bounce), A. C. Fera's Elmer (in
(

19

Tom McNamara's

Just Boy), Walter Hoban's Jerry,

city

gang

Us

in

Kids, Clare

and many others.

common on the early Sunday comic page was the well-meaning, even
saindy, fool, who ranged in nineteenth-century literature from Dickens's Mr. Toots
in Dotnbey and Son to Dostoevski's Prince Mishkin of The Idiot, but who was perDwiggins's rural kids in School Days

Almost as

haps most popularly rendered

century opera,

in the

/ Pagliacci. Initially

sad clown hero of Leoncavallo's later nineteenth-

introduced to the comic strip in Fred Opper's 1900

Sunday page, Happy Hooligan, drawn for Hearst's New York Journal, clownish innocents promptly swarmed across the color strips in the guise of such characters as
Raymond Ewer's Slim Jim, Billy Marriner's Sambo, Norman R. Jennette's Marseleen
(a clown in full Pagliaccian regaha), George McManus's Lovey and Dovey (in The
Newlyweds), C. M. Payne's Pop (in S'Matter Pop?), Rube Goldberg's Boob McNutt,
Winsor McCay's Little Nemo, James Swinnerton's Sam (in Sam and His Laugh),
George Herriman's Major Ozone, Charles Schultz's Fo.xy Grandpa, and many
another.

Sunday comics as the two types cited, but a

and appeal, was the humanized animal, found in children's tales and cautionary parables as far back as Aesop, most memorably captured
as a prototypical image in Charles Perrault's cocky and adventurous Puss in Boots, and
abundantly present in nineteenth-century fiction, notably in Hans Christian AnderNot quite

as

widespread

in the early

close third in popular usage

monumental Scenes in the Private atui Public Lives of Animals

L
L
Gerard), and Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus series. In
(J.
the new narrative art of the comic strip, the humanized animal was first introduced by
James Swinnerton in the figure of his philandering Mr. Jack, an initially unnamed
sen's Fairy Tales, the

by Grandville

feline character
ton's popularly

who first began to emerge as

named Little Tigers feature.

a distinct individual in 1902 in Swinner(

and

his

On and Off

work feaand Tykes panel of 1893,

Earlier Swinnerton cartoon

turing anthropomorphized animals, such as his Little Bears

the Ark of circa 1900 and later, did not qualify as definitive comic

because of the lack of dialogue balloons and/or individualized and regularly

strips,

recurrent characters.

At about the time of Swinnerton's creation of the nattily dressed and highly hu-

manized Mr. Jack,

was putting salty and sarcastic ripostes in

the mouth of Buster Brown's bulldog, Tige, and casually granting speech to other
animals in the strip. By 1904 Fred Opper had introduced the demonic, high-kicking
Maud the Mule into his cast of comic-page characters but by then, humanized aniR. F. Outcault, in 1902,

Among

others prominent at the

time were Charles Twelvetrees's Johnny Quack and the

Van Cluck Twins, Gus

mals were becoming commonplace

in the comics.

Mager's Jungle Folks, the Animal Friends of Walt MacDougall's Hank,

Uncle Remus characters (Br'er Rabbit

et al. in

J.

M. Conde's

Uncle Remus Stories), the fantastic

The Explorigator and Bob Dean's Swots. Sherlock

Bones in Lyonel Feininger's The Kin-der-Kids, Sidney Smith's Old Doc Yak, George
Herriman's later Krazy Kat (made a Sunday-page figure by 1916), C. M. Payne's

animals in Harry Grant Dart's

Bear Creek Folks, and R. K. Culver's Roosevelt Bears.

Several of these

humanized animal

features

were not true comic

strips; rather, like

the currently published Prince Valiant, they were lavi.shly illustrated prose fiction,

without balloons or linking panels of action, but their frequency

in

comic sections of

the time and their emphasis on animals speaking intelligently call for their mention
here,

if

not their inclusion in the body of this anthology

Virtually ignored in the

male hero

itself.

Sunday comic pages of these early years was the serious

figure, fiercely active in the

popular

fiction of the time,

from Sherlock

Holmes to Tarzan. When present at all, he was treated as a butt of .satire, notably in F.
M. Howarth's Old Opie Dilldock, H. A. Mc-CJill's daily Hairbreadth Harold in Hearst's
New York Journal, and C. W. Kahles's syndicated Hairbreadth Harry.
Women, considered a.s sympathetic heroines, received little concern until Gene
Carr's

20

Lady Bountiful appeared

as a

Sunday page

in early 1920,

although a few ear-

Wallace Morgan's Fluffy Ruffles, ran in newspapers'

sections, rather than with the comics. Seriously suspenseful narra-

illustrated-story pages, like

lier,

Sunday magazine

tive continuity, too,

and 1916, when

Notes on

strips in this section

The strip numbers, in brackets,

accompany individual comments
as an aid to easy reference.

was simply nonexistent in these two initial decades between 1896

humor was the bell-capped, starry-kicked king.

slapstick

That's the anticipatory grinning face of George B. Luks looking

cault's

Hogan's Alley characters

World

feature over from Outcault for Hearst's Journal

drawing

in the

opening selection

down on

Luks was

[I]:

when

R. F.

Out-

to take the

the latter

left,

after

this final page.

Johnny Wise

was a very early page from Tad Dorgan, a cartoonist chiefly noted
appeared only in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Little Nemo in Slumberland episodes [11-14] were selected from McCay's
first version of the strip, which ran in the New York Herald between 1905 and 1911.
[2]

for his later, daily sports-page strips. It

(Two subsequent

versions ran in other papers.

The

papers between 1911 and 1914, and the second in the

first

appeared

in

the Hearst

New York Herald Tribune be-

tween 1924 and 1927. Examples of pages from these two

later versions will

be found

in the third section of this book.

The appearance

of Lyonel Feininger's remarkable Kin^der-Kids [16-18] page in

the Chicago Tribune in 1906 marked the

strip

first

being drawn and imported from abroad;

rial difficulties

arising

from

this

occasion of a regularly appearing comic

in this instance,

procedure led to the

strip's

from Germany. Edito-

demise

in less

than a year.

Johnny Gruelle, creator of the charming fairyland fantasy Mr. Twee Deedle
later, of course,

wrote the Raggedy

[20],

Ann book series.

C. M. Payne's Bear Creek Folks [24-25] was derived in part from Albert Bigelow

Hollow Tree book series with their striking J. M. Conde illustrations, and
more remotely from Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, but it often reads like
an anticipation of Walt Kelly's later Pogo.
Clare Victor Dwiggins's School Days [26-27] is notable (aside from its art and
wacky humor) as having been the first strip to feature the screwball devices or "inventions," with which Rube Goldberg later became identified.
The Mutt and Jeff Sunday pages reproduced here were among the first to be released in color, but they are typical of the earlier Sunday black and white pages published in the Hearst press circa 1911-1913, and reflect the inspired slapstick qualities
which made Bud Fisher's team one of the great strip hits of all time. [28-29]
Gus Mager's Hawkshaw the Detective [31] was the Sunday-page continuation of
his earlier daily strip, Sherlocko the Monk. Originally supposed to be called Sherlocko the Detective, the Sunday page was retitled Hawksliaw borrowing the name
of the detective once famed in Tom Taylor's melodramatic play of 1863, The TicketPaine's

of-Leave

Man)

with the name of Sherlocko's

because of threatened

onel

titular

21

suit

associate,

Watso, changed to the Col-

by A. Conan Doyle's American representatives

infringement of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson characters.

for

Hogan s

Alley

R. F. Outcault

1896

[1]

OPENING OF THE HOGAN'S ALLEY ATHLETIC CLUB.

22

Johnny Wise

.TOHIS-N"!'

*M6
HIM

IMrt

NME|M

AVISE

JtMr

-VMAUU&T

23

Thomas

GrP^Ts^

Aloysius "Tad" E>organ

1902

TflK "DOTJBT.K nROSS.

[21

Buster

[3]

24

Brown

R. F. Outcault

1904 / 1906 / 1913

New

25

ytxk Hrold Co., 1905

[5]

That

REJtolA/E D
wad itTo Do OVER asA<H-

irr

0 WEtt., NtVER. MlNP.tVEHYBOPYKUSHfp.

LAUCHTIR. l5Hffll.TrfY. HUIHOR ISSANlTV.
^^UCH
iANE. HMLTKy PEOPLE LAUCH AS
ASTMtyMN. ITKEERJ TmEMWEUL AND
ARE
You
MAIWl/AIUJJ
HAPPY. You CAMT BC
WCLL./INDYouCANTBE WELLIFYoUfAKRY

USTS
A GROUCH flROUNp ALL TheTime
OF JiCK PWrtt Think ThE>' HA A CROUCH

BECAWe THtY

TuEY A

5ICK.

ITS

TXC OTHtRWAY'

BtCMSt TNfV HAVf < SOuCM.

CQIiSvO'* Bo"'S LETS LAUSH- ThaTJoR^Y
^
5Tufr WoMTCcrVouANrrMiN.
Jlf<

IFA MAN tWESToO^n IKJURY

LAUCH euWSl. Y/WE NOT
_ .HE one WHO DID The INJUR/
LAUCH flHYHOV- DoNf WORRY

^/.
,

26

^m-fS^m,/

IJvipupcf foaK

Katzenjammer Kids

Rudolph Dirks

1911

-|

of

jsiisiiii^er's
IWFt TKIY t THt
umt 3n<b wim
iOME MORE W THEIR
,

f^

Revenue, or

(
"

iiomm' rwusiiNtii;

11"'

The Americon Exominr,

27

[6]

Hans und Fritz

Hans und Fritz-A Vadvester

Rudolph Dirks

1918

^ ^ ^

By

R. Dirks j^^L^^S;

28

Prea Publishing

L.>

llho

Now

York World)

1918

Maud

Fred Opper

1905

GOMIG 5UPPLEMENToFmE

BOSTON

MASTER'S

VOICE.

AMERICAN.

IUI.Y9&

1005

-+:4<-

AND HER NAME WAS MAUD!

Americon-Journol-Examincr, 1906

29

Happy Hooligan

KtSC-i^lSg*
MfK
^'^

Fred Opper

1905

.liiuriJgra

if
-^

Happy Hooligan Dropped

Among
t9J

the GWiering

.>^-'-'"-^

Into the

COMIC 5UPPUMENT o'' "

of7RlGMT1^5 p/Tut AMERICAN- JOURNAL-EXAMINEffAIL BRITAIN KtanTS RXitRVE^

House of Lords

Throng Were Ntontmofency and Clooniy Gus

30

Anilcon-Jouri>ol-tKaminr. 1905

Jimmy

James Swinnerton

1915

[10]

JIMMY
Pinkey Gives

What

Him

a Clear Explanation oi

Symphony Concert

Is

Slor Comporty, 1915

31

utile

Cll]

Nemo

in

Slumberiana

Winsor McCay

1908

Ig.

WHAT ARt

WE GOINC

fitT OCT

Of

MERE. A5 Wfl^

Now

32

Voik Iteiold Co.. 1908

[12]

New

33

York Herald Co.. 1908

[13]

Now Vwk

34

Hrold Co., 1908

[14]

N.;.-.

35

v^-k Herold Co., 1908

Nibsy the Newsboy

George McManus

1906

[15]

SAN FRANCISCO. CAL.

.^..^.i

tfttii.'iiwiig^iiWiiaarttfii^ijji^^

36

Publishing

Compony,

The

Kin-der-Kids

Lyonel FeininKrr

1906

tI6]

(2

37

Tribun* Componv. ChicOQO,

III.,

1906

[17]

i,

38

Ibun. Compony, Chicago.

'

>'<>*

39

Tribune Cooipony, Chicogo,

IN.,

1906

The Newlyweds

[19]

George McManus

1909

THE NEWLYWEDS THEIR BABY

40

By Geo. iVlcManus

Mr. Twee Deedle

P^
J^^vj7(S(S

After their escape from the tngry owTier of the lake, the friends
came upon s queer looking luft of gnat with e^ht flowsn
"It looks hke a porcupine." aid Mr. Twm
groift-ing from it
Deedle; "we'd better not disturb it"

>^*^^ia

Johnny Cruelle

1914

The Naps

of Polly Sleepyhead

Peter Newell

1906

[21]

'gV'

|._Peiiy wa* aiiiinQ out ey ih rabbtt^ c*g* watchlAi

nis niCbl* carrou. The day Ma warm and It ^wa* aJ
Id

do lo kcvp f rorn

go.r.9 to klp.

ind. lurnina, bowad vary low ici

I bow ihal Via aMvaplpa hai v>aa
ina ocfupanta of tha raar aaat and tha
of iha drauflht from Ihr crcwn atnt tham nyino out of
w.ra
not hurt Bui tha Jokar waa
rar
Pontjna<ly thay
baraiM)
Chil-chat tor hia carclviaBoundly
i4 t^t ha
lib

rantbling
No. 3. Polly raadliy*.
Stia ihan noticad a vary peculiar inlng
In baalda tha JoKar
TTia amok* ^waa pufTtng oui or hiatail aiova*
pipa hati Tha Jokap obaarvad tha iniarM
10 akcita in the liuia girl and aaldr
*'A vary able ehauFTaur, ha. Kara, Chlt-ehi
Miaa Polly, vho to Shapw Land >Mth ub

No. fi. AU at onc aha hcare the ehii chit, cMt Of an autO
mobila, and aoon vea aurpr.^Ml to a nar (rirtd tha Jokar,
aaatcd la a b>nd nav/ macnma. Ha tock ott bia &M, aod,
bowing profoundly, aald to nor;
da< r. toSnaitow Land, tha fair.
1 ma. my
unny pfant naiyrvAa bo rankly inar."

abcut tha driver.

IS

No

Onca again Ihay look

-In an

... .a thay arrived Bthe automobile. Thau

_.

of pt>^nm Odd looking plajita

the Joker moiionad in tha dlr
directly balora tham and aalc
' the Dunny Plania. my daar; go pull ona. aAt tha
root
lurky rabblt*a foot."
fault,
M>
at
You'll find. If I an

Utair placaa In ih

aton'j tha lana t

aoon ihry wara m*rriiy l>owlinp a*
""" ihai had
Shadow Land, cnuraly totvalttiT
lof III* mtahap

lately befallt

"i^^^wB

Naughty Pete

Charles Forbell

1913

New

43

Yofk Hofold, 1913

Mamas

[23]

44

Angel Child

Penny Ross

1916

Bear Creek Folks

Charles M. Payne

1911

BEAR CREEK FOLKS,

BEAR CREEK FOLKS

45

neg'lar election

off the track.

[24]

[25]

School Days

Clare Victor Dwiggins

1909

[26]

'Sf*

SCHOOLDAYS

Going Dpi Be Good and Maybe Pip

Will Let Yon Side io Hia Elevator.

and Ophelia.

[27]

-*

^OK

SCHOOL-DAYS

OVT

PiP.'

46

r^'i^r^iVK%'^\^:sX^tU^.'^^

and Ophelia

Mutt and

Jeff

II.

^
MRi. ttOiTi MOTHtH.

MUTT AND JEFF Eight

C. "Bud" Fisher

1918/1919

[28]

CICtRoJ
'I

_>^

Dollars

Is

Some

Money By BUD FISHER

i, H. C. f.sher. 1918

47

[29]

48

H. C. Fiihc-r, 1919

slim Jim

Raymond Crawford Ewer

1911

[30]

49

Hawkshaw

the Detective

Gus Mager

1914

[31]

Hawkshaw

the

50

Detective The

Colonel

Is

Little

Too

Hasty

m
Mr. Caudle,

Sherlock Holmes,

and the Artless Dodger

Popular Images in the
Early Daily

Comic

Strip,

1907-1927
Comic

strips in their definitive

turn of the century,

acters in black

when

form did not appear in weekday newspapers

until the

the Hearst daihes began to feature recurrent cartoon char-

and white, multipanel gag sequences. Some were

in

an illustrated

text

format, but most were in true comic strip style of four to six panels per sequence. At
first

they were drawn by Hearst

Monday through

day,

cartoonists in

staflF

some were created

papers; later,

Saturday, until

Bud

first

page of

this section,

York and mailed

to the other

Fisher began his A. Mutt strip in 1907.

These early and irregular Hearst weekday

on the

New

None, however, appeared regularly every

locally.

strips,

were aimed more

a group of which are reproduced

at adult readers than

were most

of

the early Sunday comics, and their characters and attitudes were therefore different

from those of the weekend color pages. This

retained for the daily strip as

its

use spread

three additional figures of popular lore

and the

tive,

relatively sophisticated orientation

among newspapers and

the henpecked

the strips

was

added

father, the omniscient detec-

luckless, therefore lovable, scalawag.

Married figures had already appeared

in the color strips, of course,

but virtually

all

{The Netchjweds, Their Only Child,

S'Matter Pop? and so forth), while the prototypical image of the henpecked husband
(with its countervailing image of the domineering wife), which was to be so widely
utilized in the early weekday strips, appeared only indirectly in the early Sunday
pages, in the form of the rolling-pin-belabored Captain in Dirks's Katzenjammer
of these fell into the innocent fool category

Kids,

The

who was

not married to the Kids' often irate mother, but was her star boarder.

classic figure of the wife-beset,

but cynically struggling, husband was portrayed

often and well by Dickens, particularly in his rendition of the paterfamilial

worm

in

Mr. Snagsby of Bleak House and the foredoomed Captain Cuttle of Domhetj and Son,
but he was perhaps most memorably set forth in popular nineteenth-century

51

fiction

Douglas

as

Jerrold's vocalK' berated hero of Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures in 1865.

He appeared
in the

notably for the

weekday

strip of the

first

time in strips as Gus Mager's Henpecko the Monk,

same name,

circa 1908.

Two years later, George Herriman

introduced E. Pluribus Dingbat in his Dingbat Family, followed in the strips by a

number

of similarly browbeaten breadwinners.

George McManus combined the hapless husband image with that of the socially
rising family (a theme long treated satirically in popular American literature and

drama)

in his daily

Up

Bringing

Manus's Jiggs was an

Father

strip of

1914 in the Hearst papers. Mc-

Maggie was an ambitious

became a stock subject in
the daily strips
broadening later into the Sunday pages ) Sidney Smith's The
Gumps, Billy De Beck's Barney Google, Gene Ahem's Our Boarding House, Harry
Tuthill's Home, Sweet Home (later The Bungle Family), A. D. Condo's The Outbursts of Everett True, Cliff Sterrett's Polly and Her Pals, Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff,
Irish bricklayer-become-millionaire,

virago of a wife, and after their appearance, henpecker\'

(

W.

R. Allman's

The

Doings of the Duffs, and many more.

detective, a mythic figure essentially developed

all -perceptive

century fiction and drama (the term

Home

Graham,

British

made up

of the most intelligent

Secretary',

itself

coined

London

it

in

in nineteenth-

when

only dates from 1843,

Sir

James

forming his "Detecti%'e Police," a body

police officers of the time),

was

first

effectively

introduced to popular hterature as a figure of detached, analytical intellect in Edgar

Allan Foe's C. Auguste Dupin of "The Murders in the

Rue Morgue

image of dogged strength and hard-boiled professionalism

sonality in a classic

1841

and

as

an

Charles Dickens's In-

House 1853 ) But it was A. Conan Doyle who, in his A

1887, combined brain with cold professionalism and strong perversion of the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes con-

spector Bucket of Bleak

Study In Scarlet of

in

"

cept spread like paper-fed

fire

through popular literature during the following de-

cades and reached the comic strip in a short-lived Hearst weekday spoof of 1904
called Padlock Bones,

by H. A. McGill.

Burlesques of Holmes followed in other

strips,

both daily and Sunday, but the de-

most famous early strip avatar was Gus Mager's weekday Sherlocko the
Monk, who first appeared in the strip of that name in Hearst's New York Journal for
December 9, 1910, later to become even better known as Hawkshaw the Detective.
The Holmes character was burlesqued further in Sidney Smith's early Sunday Sherlock Holmes, Jr. for the Chicago Tribune, and as a comic figure in such established
strips as Dirks's Katzenjamtner Kids, which featured an Eskimo detective named
Sherlock Gunk, and Segar's in Thimble Theatre, which involved a Gimlet the Detective and a Shamrock Jones in its daily continuity. More generalized detective figures
appeared elsewhere, as in Harry Hershfield's weekday Dauntless Durham of the
U. S. A. and Sidney Smith's daily Buck Nix.
The third and perhaps most widespread new figure in the daily comic strip was
tective's

the inept but charming rogue.

He had

long been a figure in popular literature, of

more
)
as Dickens's Seth Pecksniff in Martin
Chuzzlewit, or Mark Twain's King and the Duke in Huckleberry Finn, or in the more
heroically presented Tom and Jerry of Pierce Egan's Life in London and Sut Lovingood of George W. Harris's American fables. This image had appeared in the early
Sunday pages, but almost always as either a subsidiary character (i.e., Long John
Silver in Dirks's Katzenjammer Kids, or Rudolph Rassendale in Kahles's Hairbreadth
Harry), or as one or more titular figures whose roguery was implicit, in dress and
course, notably as Falstaff, or

manner, rather than expUct

in

recently

behavior

(i.e.,

Alphonse and Gaston,

in

Opper's

strip

Tom

and Jerry in Rube Goldberg's early The Look-a-Like Boys).

The one notable exception was Svvinnerton's married flirt in Mr. Jack ( whose weekly
strip behavior in pages read by children upset many readers and led to the strip's

of that name, or

being relegated to infrequent daily appearance

of the sports
tially

52

and

editorial

in the safe,

pages after 1904). But

smoking-room atmosphere

in the daily strips,

with their essen-

adult audience at the time, scurvy vagal)()ndage prospered. Artless Dodgers

were memorable

in

A. Piker Clerk,

Gus Mager's

such early daily strips as

Bud

Fisher's

various conniving

course), George Herriman's Baron Bean,

Dok

Mutt and Jeff. Clare

Monks (excepting

Briggs's

Sherlocko, of

Hager's Dippy Duck, Sidney Smith's

Buck Nix and Old Doc Yak, Billy De Beck's Barney Google, Frank Willard's Moon
MuUins, E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre, Harry Hershfield's Desperate Desmond and
Abie the Agent, and many, many more.
The order of the day in daily strips between 1907 and 1927 was satire, cheerful cynicism, and subdued slapstick, centered on helpless husbands, burlesque detectives,
and inept scoundrels. But new kinds of strips and heroes did enter the scene in the
1920s and shape the character of all strips in the following decade.
For instance, the image of the self-reliant working girl in an office background
enjoyed its most extensive use in the daily strips, and developed in the 1920s in such
strips as Tillie the Toiler and Somebody's Stenog; it was not a part of the group of
prototypical figures which shaped much of the content of the initial daily strip work.

Notes on

strips in this section

Gus Mager's Monk strips [34, 36] ran initially under a number of alternative tides,
name of the character featured in a given episode: Tightwaddo the
Monk. Knocko the Monk, Nervo the Monk, and so on. Their popularity inspired the
stage names given to four of the Marx Brothers during a poker game, and the team
used them during the rest of their career.
The Desperate Desmond [37] strip was named for its top-hatted villain protagonist; the opposing hero was named Claude Eclair, and the heroine Fair Rosamond.
The prose narrative under each panel was auxiliary rather than explanatory, making
the feature an odd combination of illustrated fiction and comic strip.
Midsummer Day Dreams [40], the Winsor McCay work, is typical of a large
number of daily graphic anecdotes he drew at this time. Few, if any, involved rereflecting the

peated characters, and no comic

The

developed out of them.

strip

Mutt episodes included here [41-46] ran only in the San Francisco Examiner of the time (Bud Fisher having been hired away from the Chronicle by that
paper in 1907 ) and involve the first appearance of Mutt's later partner, Jeff. The casA.

ual comic use of a lunatic asylum as the setting

ing content of the early daily

is

typical of the irreverent, freewheel-

strips.

The Family Upstairs [48-53], first named The Dingbat Family, and later given that
name again, carried the earliest exploits of Herriman's Krazy Kat krew, at first around
the feet of the human cast of the strip, and then in a separate row of panels below
them. The "family upstairs" of the title refers to a mysterious menage living in the
apartment above that of the Dingbats, none of whose members are ever seen in the
strip,

and whose weird doings drive the Dingbats

to a frenzy of curiosity

and

animosity.

Baron Bean [54-77] featured a pretentious, ragtag

Montague Tigg/Tigg Montague

bum

of Martin Chtizzlewit,

of similar

who was

mien

to

Dicken's

often at fanciful

war

with his strangely loyal manservant. Grimes.

Stumble Inn [78-83] was an extraordinarily lavish daily

dicated in the selections here. Short-lived as a daily,

day page and exhibited Herriman's fancy

in a

it

strip of the

dimensions

in-

ran for several years as a Sun-

somewhat more restrained context than

usual.

Dok's Dippy Duck [84-91] was the strip-in-residence of the Seattle Times, appearing only in that paper and running seven days a week, either on the front page or just
inside.

The resemblance

evident, reflecting a

of the cocky

common human

Dippy

to the later

Disney Donald Duck

is

self-

perception of the nature of ducks.

Buck Nix [92-95] first appeared as a strip outgrowth of the sidelines master of ceremonies to Sidney Smith's Chicago American sports-page cartoons, which displayed
Smith's comic genius as an absorbing storyteller. An audience quickly developed
which preferred Buck Nix

53

to

more formal

sports art. Hired

away by

the Chicago Tri-

bune. Smith continued Buck as Old

Doc Yak

[103-107],

briefly as a daily in order to introduce Smith's

new

first

as a

Sunday page, then

strip concept.

The Gumps

[96-

102].

The second group of Bud Fisher episodes selected are a random potpourri of Muti
and Jeff [108-125] from its best period in the late 1920s and earl\- 1930s.
The reader will note the descriptive phrases and subheads assigned to the early
strips in this section. As strips became more and more popular, and more and more
widely syndicated, the composition and addition of a daily descriptive subhead gradually became the prerogative of the comics editor of each subscribing local paper, not
that of the author or the syndicate's

own

editor. Accordingly,

subheads from most of the daily episodes which follow

in this

we have dropped

the

volume.

'

Mr. Jack
Mr. E.

Z.

Mark

F.

M. Howarth

1907

Mark Makes Protest

1. MH. E. Z.
Look hr. ilr: whit doca
Voy Kv boon fOllowlo mo owof mco

Ihia
I

mMnT

loft

th

train.

THC tHAOOWCn Mr.

tactiwa
jrow

hirod ky Mro.
wtiao
iKa

ffo*"

o*

Vm

Mark.

Mark

lo

prUaU

follow ai^

th,

do-

protact

bwnke-otatm

and

An Inaultl I'll
2. MR. E. Z^Thla la on owtraga!
to rtghl Into thia ato*^ and 'phono Mrs. Mark for
tho mooning of har inoo'ant and uncallod for Into rf< ran eo.
THE t^/AOOWER Yaa, olr; aalloty yowroatf that
what oaj la trvo. Lat mo hold your bog until yov
I

com

L MRS.

HARKS

VOICE OVER

PHONE Vaa.

iti

ma. What la tha mattar with row, onjrwajrT

No,
No, No. No! I hlrad n man to ahadow you. Car>
Ulnly not. Now. for goodnaao aaka. E. Z, dont tali
Thara'a
ma yow ara akoui to bo buntiead again,
oonMthing wrong. Watch youroalf. Oood-by.

1904

rVTR.

[32]

E. Z.

James Swinneiton

4.

mont

owl.

MR.
Is

fallow!

E. Z.

(ruohing Owt of

Vow
Vi godal

faloa.

otoro)

Ulnlng ont thousand dollars' worth

oocurltloo.

WtOWl

Vowr

oUto-

an an
Whjr, whara la
OONB' And with my bag

DONE

of

AOAINI

that
connogotlabla

DONE

AOAINl
^ASARAAftAA
)

54

Amoricon-Jowrnol-Exomlner, 1907

JACK.

Braggo ine

Monk

ous Mager

lyvi

rue Hall-Koom Boys

Braggo the Monk.

M. A. Mcuiii

tiall-Room Boys.
The
ON S9.SO PER.
THEY DO

Can't

Keep From Bragging. Even

The funny paper has

in

[351

IT

They

He

is*u/

His Sleep.

Steal a

March on

the Star Boarder.

Americon-Journal-Exominer, 1907

Americon-Journal-Exominer, 1907

become not only a faithful reflection of the tastes and ethical principles

of the country at large; it is also manifestly an extremely powerful organ of social satire.

The

daily block of cinema-squares is the medium through which the vices of man are held up for all to
see

....

The few cardinal virtues that we sometimes venture apologetically to call our own are dis-

regarded by the funnies as comparatively uninteresting to the non- church-goer, and as 'old stuff to
the veteran of the Sunday-school bench or the straight-backed pew.

All of them, it is true, draw

largely on contemporary mainners for their subject matter, but the genuine masterpieces of the art use
these merely as machinery for the display of the essential Satan, the unquenchable 'Peck's Bad Boy,'
in all of us.

Ernest Brennecke
"The Real Mission of the Funny Paper," Century Magazine

55

March 192^1

Sherlocko the MonJc

Gus Mager

1911

Desperate

[36]

Sherlocko the

By

Monk

Chantecler Peck

F. G.

Long

N'olionol

Gxts

Mtger

New*

Desmond

New

S'MatterPop?

Charles M. Payne

S'Matter. Pop?

[38]

(C

Pr Publlthing Co. (The

New

York World). 1911

IS

56

1910

A riAeiAnn<1
Despe;Vaf
I ale LieSniOna

Associolion, 191

191

Harry Hershfield

Picture

Drama

with a

nmU

of Love and Hate,

^
Every Picture
'0

[37]

in

York Evening Journal Publishing Compony, 1910

1911

|K

|g

By C. M. Payne

Preu Publiihing Co. (The

New

York World). 1911

[39)1

iici

i^uv i^rcuni>

>vin>iur JMCv^ay

laii

[40]

Midsummer Day Dreams

t'oiijr'''

'-

^-

'

v....,

\,,,|

Bv WINSOR M'CAY
I

THINK

RE-

I'LL

TIRt FKOr^

THE

smoe. UNLESS OF
C0UR5E THEY

PAT.

Ka

G OFFERED

ME

Five

HUM:u

57

Notional

Newi AhocopIoo,

1911

H. C. "Bud" Fisher

A. Mutt

1908

[41]

A.

MUTT

SUMMONED BEFORE THE INSANITY COMMISSION FOR EXAMINATION

IS

I^^rr DC*-**,*.*

a^aron WTT*5 -^htbi

ConD<T>on,SA^ ( I

TO

?^P'*Cr Wtio

*0 T*r rV

iijKW^n; rffcrti

P^tOnE^BhPOf

'I

p:

in

rtgari fo

.Un.'f J ment-Al Itait

^^*T

-^S St^te t*M) Alt

**U: OF fS
MBl I l^iN, Txe FATMnt
0U> AVtn A

bm^iScsmthB booby
"1*1^

lb

^riO TB*T Tl* eOC>B&

'^^

^-.

[42]

DIVERS OPINIONS

AMONG BOOB INSPECTORS! MUTT ASKS POSTPONEMENT TILL TO-MORROW

y

Boob

!,'if.-elor

d{datet that ilatl

u -, wlif'tufci

Bco^ir tnakei ta<rt at the Do.

.*caTricNOM^
^""^ ooena^eToe,
"" !* - "^TTT I*

^r^

HOT

r
I'/ CCICO

>%rrT

-J-TT ..

9ooe e<f%T - Sk*T c-

0&TftiCk

o ret TUC
n

ppc0"<'

[43]

THE LOON COMMISSIONERS. AT DEFENDANT'S REQUEST. SEND HIM TO THE BOOBY CAGE
r kaf trir4

nrrgtHnf Hit tf

m-amlt la fa tki rn(r.

TS1>0#IHT

tVftCTAOM*
tO^'M

ON

[44]

MUTT SPENDS

HIS FIRST

DAY

IN

THE BUGHOUSE AND

IS

WELCOMED BY ALL THE BUGS

[45]

THE RUDYARD KIPLING OF THE BUGHOUSE GIVES MUTT A LIVE TIP ON LEE ROSE
A

.Suf it* J taid^ivl k'tit:i Iht firfl litft tKi flma^fr ^ tif

tw

ikt f*tlry

fOmU

^S^KCMV on
A

nnD

V,

(MKK&on TH*
too*

tmx

Afc

con
Th^ flMMT

58

[46]

EFFORT BEING MADE TO HAVE CITY PAY FUTURE EXPENSES OF GREAT MUTT CASEi
U..

)*..( ]t,

rt<i ' *< !.

CLl wit rtxtnicovt V>^Mt.

1 Oftrt'T

I ^*

'^''*''"'

^^"'^O a"TkT

f^tr WHO Yr-

To*

A. Piker Clerk

A.

-f

Clare Briggs

1904

[47]

PIKER CLERK COMES TO THE RESCUE OF CHICAGO WITH A TIP ON THE RACES KITTY CLYDE TO WIN.

-+++

A. Ptlicr

"Take tbu," be

iTovcdlr k rcneroo* mm. Be he&n ot IU70T Hutuod'* won? ora tbi Uck ot flnce* to ran the city prvpcrly.
b iuidi tbc mnuapttl btf to A. Fikcr. OS to the bookmaker (oe our bro. Set to-dr'i nc raolti.

He plsafu

inio tbe brcAcL

"Xttty Clrd* to wis." be wbiapcn.

Tbc Haror

iet

ray of bvpc

wn u

The Family

Upstairs

George Herriman

1911

[481

'iii&i

'

st*. louBi *yi

V/^

?^
^

^1- -_:.-

< f

'-

Hottona\

59

Nws

Atiociolion, 1911

[49]

>

A^

#-

XVT *

ilTIt **tm

^.

e^

^*rf?^

Notional

News

Associotion, 191

hJotionol

Nws

Association, 1911

[50]

152]

Nalionot Nttws Associotion, 1911

60

[53]

Baron Bean

George Herriman

Naf'onal

News

Aisoc.alion, i9ii

1917

[S4J

HOLE

/*J ctft

SHifi.

<s^^CHly,

tnternafional

News

Service, 1917

[55]

cus

C*AJVA6t COM-M(Y>e" Dft-t'MS TWt.

CflJwflL. tvMifw i^Aves cue -swif
hi6n-aa;d Dey. 1^^ we Ptr4
CCitn- /a; the wtt >"=''ce wwrcw
,

~IJE.

CC'M'MrrTtfi OF ilQt'DS Tl/A-^

(7to

&(?*r cwjCE 'Wofte ftois

^>

Internotiortot

News

Service, I9I7

[56]

[57]

: International

News

Service, 1917

[58]

[59]

[60]

[61]

[62]

62

Internotionol

News

Service. 1917

[63]

[65]

[66]

[67]

63

Inlernationol

News

Service, 1917

[68]

[69]

(Fl

International

News

Service, 1917

Internotionot

Nwj

Service, I9I7

[70]
M-

tW*T Nt Ootsvr MA^t 70 *j&

TiiEy Si,PHy Alt. To You^ -i^jb y^

JuCT ciffE y-w;
Cam

'

5MATH6

^27 A

[71]

[72]

!|

inlrnatlonot

Newt

Service, )9I7

64

ie^JlNaTo
Om'Aff >tXJ ?

FlW/
tue

wac

ST/^y

uM>e*

ivA"^ft

&o*^

*WtetL. *E HlktD

A c

OtEf JE FlSM TD Tl>0< (OV

Fish /iitmco cf S7-v/\6
.

(UOEIL ht
IN
I

VMS SUCH A 6M0 PVNC 7XOT1

HE. HAB OUtFONtp l>t

"I

f73)

WOliuc

^lAVEO So

VjlM

""IE

UNS

UTOtt

PoOK FiSN'

ATft.

DMwMDtD

Internorionol

Newi

Service, 1917

(74)

[75]

[76]

[77]

Internolionol

65

New

Service, 1917

Stumble Inn

George

Hemman

lyzz

[78]

r King frotur Syndicate, Inc. 1922

(i

King Faturi Syndicate.

66

Inc..

1922

[83]

31]

King Features Syndicote,

Inc.,

1922

King Feolures Syndicote.

King Feolurcs Syndicote,

[82]

67

Inc.,

192

Inc..

1922

Dok's Dippy Duck

[88]

[891

68

John "Dok" Hager

1917

[901

[91]

0UCK

i^ix

oiuiiey oiniui

ivii

[93]

HELD AT
QfMMNTlNE

BOtK

WAD Btf M

[941
W*rrMir^

THE QOOf) Sujp'NevPR S'WX"

AROm T*iC little tV'NDOW
M T-iE NOtP|T*L '.V&RD
I

View <^'TN iTi

pnccioo& CAR wo

^ilH HAPPlHCiS AND

MiS NATIVE LAND-iFJ

W&MT,WiTM WNHt BTWi

&it AND LIPE&eiVtjLY A'tOWER
&TfttTCNiMfi OUT

BEFORE- Mt -

4 HANff MOrDflCVU.f-,

HPT * ViAiTOff,
CNABLFP 6ulK MiJL
T6 fUHE Hli[4CAPC
^*0M tHC4UA(tANrfMe
^UAftTFNS,

tm( irom T>*tt AM ABOur ronEcArf k*S tVlBEti -EAR 6 BY EA^ioF mortai. m
^rARS UPON ItARS *( PAiiEP OvrR My "OARl nEaO SJ|(t Fift 3T. /N ''hE SlOOmO
'WNCH-tNT CKilOHOOe THf StCRET WHuN A* AfiOor TO SflAff W*i W^ShCO yPON
PReMfORI WCAI}-,^
IT WAS CvOiD! *OUN(, MAN-GOUJI-'-TW TilBlf C(y#iF - THtliRftO for
-Ui OwABFeo m
-TkE VT'"& fOOPW "f^AI COWtiONi-t WTM ON fOl* < * J J ^^Si!" 'i
- A in4M ei.i*<U -.Rtt".
t H^Utt *WD NARPIC Wil (AtULTiei , LCri(j M A$ MU itf
WPTM CfMtmiNtj 60"(6S<nCi CREAKIAHiOttwri, A Wtf TOtKRrPASVVl, S'0-T-.f IjAMtftf O*^^
XHt RWMEfvTS. 'ME LIT (If C-iiMIKBuH FROMMCnTtRooR, t* ThE OumEI Bf AtiTh
T * fc t( f* tbf cyBif omyi.iPE:
(CuRRi Bfron mi Tomffnt, woiMtPl.

ME (tCKU&6iN<i BLlTHSlt 4t.04,

\WhFW a tAMli.iAR'PST.VCAiiSEs
HIM T6 Tun** nil meab
.

Mftf ERKWS THAN F*f R,

"THERt iPTS TXEOLDMAV Of MVSTfRt.

t.OOIN(T A^bAE

BUCK

PAiLSO

N(K 0<fRCOMe8* HISPHtFKf

T EGA'r HIS EOyiLiBRioM '

VTMJO
^

?'*

'-^^^ A

WT

Rotior coAir.

69

lOuEFTtO A^AjMST 'XP

LiT KT .IxC Acii<TAR>
I

*U(t OF

ftuK

LI

O'tR

MtRO 11 e(M
WrU AND OAlE.

QE^T u^OV TM

i>WRA*lLUIi>6i

[95]

The Cumps

[96]

Sidney Smith

1917

INTRODUCING "THE GUMPS."

Hope-

Gump

TWE-rAWVO CAT-

OVbT/V PLAIN ORDINARY _.

VIHO NVlENTECi THE

FLOWER POT. H6A.LS0
/

INTROOOCED

TXE-

POLKADQT

TIE- IN T>1l5COONTR-<. hE-HAS

AMD

Klkl^^

yCKs&UMp THE

^NOREVJ GUMP

SEEN WORKlNli ON PERPETUAL

/MOTION '=OR. 30 YEAeS

t?^

"T>te

QUK*^

r^i, VilNOHAS NEvEf?

MAO A KNOCK
OOT SCORE-P

HAKE

A<3Anl%T HI^A
HIS PET TRAINIftd

IMCOLLC^E

"^tuNT

AND I^^TftLKjH
XE

THEY'LL KA'Jt
^MS
SHOOT M|^AON

To

--^>^

ISLl(.KIN(j

PLATED EVEM
K^ORNrNU TO KEEP
IN

TR(N\

OUOCaMtNT

DAV.

NiNtm
GOMP
reaily
The BSHiNScf
TXf FAWllll
dtNTVE.LtXINll
^N^^o is

CHESTER GiUlAP
WHOSE P6T STONT

The Gumps new mqnveThEREARE (AANT STRANfat RUIWRS

ABOOT THl^ HOUSE- SOTAt
iAY TMEPtAtE 14 MAONTEO- OTHERS
RoisiA^" ^PT^ THt l*Ot.lCE T>INK "Tli
A

*^ENCE-

FOR STOLEN

AvVOW\OSH.F-S.

we SMALL

AHB tNOUR^Nti.
\NI1>I A oT^CWir

1% VoRNiNft IN FALSE
ALAtlA5>

BOl/LE-VARD

VA^AfIRE-

euTA TERRAIN

ON Z.ERO

NKjHTS to iEE THE

Fl?E ENtilNt^ ftOBV.

WS tATS PICKLES
\N1TH HI ^

ice CREAsAS .^

[97]

[98]

THf
rnKT

^A/WLT

UKtD

ftHE BEfOW

HtVl MI5IW\
^OTT*. BLOW
out LEMNiE
I

WERE\buNUI

Of OU<H HtCR.
HEWUSTKAilt
WtflT'T'lNTO
oCaHTMiS PlPt
f>N THAT.
OH VI ELU
IXL

MA

TXAT

Mil

is confusion mTUEStlf
M0y4t MOLb- THEIR PolhllTUI
AHR\>ltD LAST NI(M- AT IX

O tkOC>C-^"N0Tli^lM THE
PIAHO WERE B0(Clf4 AH^ ^
VK.TROIA RECORDS AW\ASH10
LITTUCMtVIft llfHn*E1^RE
HI^M IN A bUI)(AU DRAWED.

70

^ibNfT awiiTji^

[09]

[100]

'

tion

^H^NEH,HBOR^A
UTTifrCLA^^,
TtY HAVE- OUST

aOUbHTA,NEW
PAR 1.0ft UAfV\P
A.N& %HE tif\\

DKlOEB TOUVWBEB

OWM

NAT FROWy^iW.

^Cp VMiNOOv*.

The AiDO^ a
WACOvK PfAlMtR

vtiTM

TVAT a.8EEn8<

OF APttniRC-fRAMt,
AGiLriED^nntit

AXt>Al-ST(EAA4

^HAP( 4V4E-HA^
SET Out TTi <u>St

^^fcMUl6AWB AfD
"liA^/t ^^oNt-<
<AAA^A/^^^*.'i !

RV BUCK"
TVl BOOUtVAI^O
VAMPll^e- li

STILL AT LARtiE
TWef THINK.

THt

OOti tATCWtR\

71

[102]

Old Doc Yak

Sidney Smith

1917 (precedes The

Gumps

in

date)

[103)

[104]

[105]

^nt^ie^'Jf^S^ HAS
NOTltt FWOfA
HIS LANDLOftD TWAT IP
n* BtNT PORTHi^ SPACE
1^ hOT PAID By ^ATuRCAf
RCCClveO

HSAHD HIS UTTLeCOM YUTtM

WlLU HAVe ro leAWE TmiS
PA6E ANO tr WILL BC
RENTED TO ANOTmEU

PAATT

Doc MA^ But

T>4C

<*^

in

A^A OFFtWNtj A CAW \

\
TKAT i^ iuPtmoR ro ah/
\
ON TNC ^AARKtT TO OAX
AT ANY PRICE- A CAH. rWAT>
AflH CiO RtGHT OUT NOV* ON
TMt BOUlf VA(tt> AHt> TI^IN^

'

ANY TNIN&-

FOANCii Qtf FIN

PBRCy FORD O^ ANY BODY.

A CAR TNAT HAi ^TOOO TMt
TEST OP- YEAW^, THAT HAS
auMpeO tVCR^i bu*A(> PROfA
HKKC- TO aLt-NCOtAMD BA^K
IF XOU DONT BtLlt^C ir AS.
OOC SPAi- '* -

NOYfr TmC E^kTRftAt Lines

OF TmC aoDX AMD THAT
FA^HlONAALt CHiNpStCOWL

(T

AND

THJ-N

ao UNDtft

The hooo and take- it

APART NUT 6t NOT
60lT BTf BOi-T DCFT XOl; TO FiNOA
FLAW - TAKE iTAl-L

NOW GtNTlEMCN
OFFER THii vvON0eRFUl-\

plfcCt OF y<ORKAANiwiP
THii #AA&rERPlEC- OP
H<JMAN 'NQENU'TY-

FOR SAUt-

COOK3 PARK

PO(%

Dot- MC^-t* MAYC A

HARO T'ME PAYIN*
T>iAT ^ftO<-eRT

fliL*.

UtT ALONE
ON >*H1%

3rAYIN<3
PA<6-

APAf^T

BRlNb YOU** OWN

BlDP-OR\T?

COonT
ThE NUfABBROF bPOKpV

CAR -

TV<EN

BANK. AWO HA^ POOMlUO

TO PAY A <ft(KCR ati-L OF

TXtUt 1^ ONt MOPt

l^LlKt PyiLlNti TttTU.
HE ^YlLU HA\ Ml^ CA.K
Hr^ I.IFCL0N<1 FRCnO
- 't WILU
Ok&
PART vs/iTM THATIT

i^&

IT

15%OP^ -

>*t wrV.L AUCTfOH

vii50f.y NieA#i

[106]

[107]

Mutt and

Jeff

H. C. "Bud" Fisher

1927 / 1928 / 1932

[108

73

H. C. Fiilwf. 1927

[110]

[HI]

[112]

[113]

li.

74

M. C. F.ih.r. 1928

[1141

ICMA

IN

BUYIM& TOU

TUG
an

FTtOWV

tfbNty

[115]

[116]

[in:

75

H.

[118]
THG:

ICCMAW

GlwBATTte

STlU"-

CALL OU

wHCM MR.

MRU

GlttBATTL*

LASr MftMTM?** HA -HA- ha:

M\iTT
THtMMS

OOWAH.' "THAT'S

THt

CTOFF-'

1% &l*A&

11191

[120]

[1211

H. C. Fiiher. 1932

76
li

[122]

JWtt has
mt. -reuju
UIITM Hit

KCYHOia
C01.UMW-

[123)

[124]

[125]

I have

H. C. fisher. 1932

that fallacious feeling of absolute knowledge that a first edition of Theodore Dreiser will

have only the value of its covers for a quaint period chocolate box in 2000 A.D., whereas the
single copy known of three famous comic strips, say 'Mutt and Jeff,'

complete from their beginnings,

'Andy Gump,' and 'Krazy Kat,'

cut out and pasted in endless oilcloth- covered volumes by an invalid

spinster of the epoch on an isolated fann, will have something like the value of the original manuscript, say, of the Book of the Dead.

William Bolitho
"Comic Strip," Camera Obscura

77

1930

**No No, t-APV! NOT HIM ? THE LITTLE BITTY

FELLER WITH THE DERBY HAT? THAT'S MICKEY McdUIRE !"

TOONERVILLE
FOLKS B^
FONTAINE FOX
SUNDAY. DECEMBER 21,

TOONERVILLE FOLKS

Seaaonable Trials

"

THERE'S THAT KtP

NOW

IT'S

eONNA BE DARK IN A MINUTB

AND MAYE I CAN
NAB HIM ? "

"I WONPen

IP M PHONEP
THE WIFE TO eCT THE KID/

AWAY ?

HE'S STILL

^A

U% IM OU

1930

fontaine Fox

m
Old Cunning Stagers
Long-Lived Stars

Comic

Strip's

of the

Second Two Decades

1916-1936
This section of Sunday pages

is devoted to famous and long-surviving characters

hfe in the multitude of comic strips which packed the color comic sections
of the 1920s and early 1930s.

brought

to

That was the period in which weekend comic sections went from four to eight and
then to sixteen pages, with the Hearst papers initiating a fantastic thirty-two-page
tabloid section in 1935. And that encouraged the proliferation of new strips from the
dozen or more syndicates which were by then supplying an insatiable newspaper

market.

The

old and established strips seemed to retain their earlier places through

new titles, and a few of the new strips (Moon MuUins and others)
displayed the qualities necessary to match the audiences for the classic works, and to
continue through the subsequent decades with them.
have included a short-lived
but very typical new strip of the period, The Smythes.
the floodtide of

We

This was also the

last great

period of full Sunda\' pages for each and ever\' strip. In

and even one-third pages for major strips gradually became a
common and accepted thing. The galaxy of the comic strip never again was to glow
the 1940s half pages

so brightly as during these last marvelous years of

Notes on strips in

this section

its

springtide.

The Smythes [126-127] represents one of the few occasions (but not the only) in
which one of the circle of Neic Yorker magazine panel cartoonists ventured into the
comic strip. Rea Irvin, the strip's creator, did these Sunday pages for the New York
Herald Tribune, whose comic section was marked by a special sophistication and
restraint.

The Gumps pages included

of the 1920s,
fancy.

whose saucy

The "Old

348,"

[128-129] are typical of this immensely popular strip

familial banter

Andy Gump's

and obsession with

large-licensed auto,

Sidney Smith's previous Sunday-page hero. Old

Cliff Sterrett

cars suited the pubhc's

was inherited by him from

Doc Yak.

was, after George Herriman, the unbridled and unflagging graphic

master of the comic Sunday page. In

fact, Sterrett

so far from formal graphic reality that his syndicate

took his popular strip of family

life

became alarmed and ordered him

to restore some measure of comprehensive nonnality before his readership abandoned
him in the same perplexity with which they reacted to Herriman's Krazy Kat. The

79

pages of Polly and Her Pals reproduced here only suggest the extent of
hant graphic work in the

These

Moon

later

pearance in the
first

Mullins Sunday pages [138-139] are concerned with the

strip of

Gamp into Dickens's

Nemo pages [140-142]

This second group of McCay's

second Hearst period (the

period with the Herald Tribune

imagination did not

first

Moon's earthy Uncle Willie, an event roughly similar

tentative introduction of Mrs.

strip's

Sterrett's bril-

1920s [130-135].

late

first

two

ap-

to the

Martin Chuzzlewit.

combines examples from the

selections of 1912)

the last selection of 1925

and

its

third

and

final

As can be seen, McCay's

although his graphic verve was hampered by the Herald

flag,

Tribune's policy of a standard twelve-panel format for most of his later work.

The

unforgettable images of C.

W.

Kahles's delightful cast of melodramatic char-

acters are showoi to advantage in this

example of Hairbreadth Harry [143] from

Kahles's last decade as a cartoonist.

In the mastery of strip graphics, few cartoonists have equaled George

as these

two

humor he

selections of his Bringing

Up

McManus,

Father will demonstrate [144-145]. The

sustained over the years in developing the familial conflict between Jiggs

and Maggie

is

also well evidenced.

Included here are the Katzenjammer Kids pages of Harold H. Knerr [146-148],

drawn

for the Hearst papers

from the mid-1910s on, after Rudolph Dirks

to continue his strip elsewhere,

left

Hearst

and now called The Captain and the Kids. Both Dirks
but they were both ingenious in handling the Katzen-

and Knerr have their partisans,

jammer menage.
Barney Google [149-150], the rogue and vagabond strip ne plus ultra, along with
Frank Willard's equally perceptive Moon Mullins [138-139], caught the raffish, des-

perate, yet raucously colorful quality of lower-class, pool-hall-and-race-track life of

the twenties. Billy

of

De Beck

Hemingway and

De

even extended the scope of

Fitzgerald, as will

be noted

Beck's later turn to backwoods hillbilly

in the early thirties

which replaced the

place

life

in

and

one of the selections included here.

with the introduction of Snuffy Smith

probably resulted from his

roisterous twenties,

his strip to the expatriate Paris

his

own

distaste for the grim

attempt to find an

idyllic

decade

world

to re-

it.

Frank King had a highly fanciful way with

Sunday-page work which

his

is

often

overlooked in discussions of his cradle-to-maturity family saga, Casoline Alley, fea-

Walt and Skeezix. Here we have reproduced some of King's finest pages
[151-156], including one which mildly parodies German expressionism, one which
brings the look of woodcuts to the comic strip, and others which startlingly follow
turing Uncle

the twelve-panel progress of the characters across a full-page field of static back-

ground.

Rube Goldberg's Booh McNutt

suspense
a

strips

Sunday page

[157-158] was one of the few major narrative and

which never appeared

only.

in a daily format,

The two examples shown here

running from

start to finish as

are from the strip's earlier, anec-

dotal phase.

Merely Margy [161] was the comic strip of John Held, Jr., renowned artist for
College Humor and other youthfully oriented publications of the period. Like most of
Held's popular work,

Margy

reflected the

view of college and "flapper"

life

held by

most collegiate youths of the time, from coonskin coats to hip flasks.
Somebody's Stenog 162] was a Sunday page of fine graphic verve, a point which
[

has sadly been lost because of the feature's later reputation as a kind of second-string
Tillie the Toiler.

Harry Tuthill was the Louis-Ferdinand Celine of the comic page, and
jaundiced view of lower-middle-class family

humor and

a fancy

which

filled

magicians, and time-travel

is

life

his bleakly

happily offset by a wild sense of

the later strips with gnomes, enchanted mice,

fairies,

well reflected in the group of early 1930s Bungle Family

pages reprinted here [ 163-169].

George Herriman's Krazy Kat, the apogee of comic-strip

puzzled so

80

much

of the readership of

its

time that

art

and narrative

many Hearst

to date,

chain editors pub-

lished the

Sunday pages only under

direct orders from Hearst himself,

nized and appreciated Herriman's fey genius. However, Hearst had

it

who

recog-

printed in the

where it had to run in black and white,

rather than in the full panoply of color which Herriman could put to the stunning use
demonstrated in Section Seven of this collection. Virtually all of Herriman's Sundaypage work between 1916 and 1934 accordingly ran in black and white (except for a
brief group of pages published in the New Yor^ Journal in 1922) and the preponderweekly drama and

ance

is

arts section of his papers,

reflected in the selection

reproduced here [170-172].

The Blondie page is typical of the early strips [173].

Our Skippy selection demonstrates Percy Crosby's
and mobile

line [174].

81

early unfettered strip

humor

The Smythes

[126]

82

Kea Irvin

130

[127J

83

[128]

<& Ih

84

Chicago Tribune. 1924

[129)
HAND

^V\RtVJ

^5^

'M0 \\ POURlMCi OUT > VKKT f^OKVUIte

VvKW&N*

0>Ri\OlE

SKVXOON KVlD .CROVVM*-

s\\^

vrn\.t tviPT< ^ootA

CAMT WEVP

drama oP
idvenlure and

CSCes KMtEIRS

Uirilh

roef EvE>

TMCBE

MMUb

OE

HI

MiH
<,u

85

n> (w^.

ihp Chicago Ir.bune

1926

PoUy and Her

Pals

Cliff Sterrett

1926 / 1927 / 1930

[130]

Polly and

86

Her

Pals

[131]

FciiR^SwJOCTT

Polly and

Her

Pals

i:

87

Nr-w.cacor

r.-otv-f

k".

<o

St.. 1927

88

[133]

89

Newipapcf Feoturc

Service. Inc., 1927

[134]

i^

90

h4<w<popwr ftiOtuic Scf^iCu.

Inc.,

1927

Polly and

Her

Pals

fe)

91

Newspopcr Feature

Service. Inc., 1930

l:J.5)

Mutt and

Jeff

H. C. "Bud" Fisher

1925 / 1928

[136]

MUTT AND

JEFF

-:-

They Fire Off Seventy-Five Poands

92

of Giant

Powder

-:-

By

BUD FISHER

[137]

eouU>e/^T

MO FAT?

MUTT AND

JEFF

Mutt Needed a Blow-Out Patch

93

By

BUD FISHER

Moon

Mullins

[138]

Frank WiUard

1927

Moon
Mullins

94

ri39]

iicogo Tnbun*, 1927

95

Uttle

Nemo in

96

the

Land

of

Wonderful Dreams

WinsorMcCay

1912/1925

[141

Americon-Exoftiiner. 1912

97

[142]

<5

98

Nw

Yo<k Tribune. Inc. 192J

Hairbreadth Harry

C.

W,

Kahles

1924

=^3^

n^iXUQ-l

[143]

C.W. KAHLES

iSNT IT wonderful!
aw'T ITA WONDEK^UL A( WE'RE 1.IVIN6
iw?io to$Mie *NP evERrmiN<s,You know'
',
fP JUST LOVE TO MEET ONE OF THOSE
FWCHJI^rPEfesONS WHOSE SOUi VIBRATES
TO T)te AMOIUTE ANP YtW IS IN COMMUWIO*!;
VJITHTHE IWVISIBLE.J

'

WELl.OFAUreRSONfi
PEL16HTED, I'M SOKE.
LAW INNE2-VI22
HOW LOVELY AND
ETHEREAL YOU'RE i,
LOOKINg.MY PEAg

HOW

AMO SO T15 15 LITTLE KNOTT THEYCK' iNTn?EsriN<;.

HE6
WELI'WHAT ASTUEff LITTLE
RUDOtPH IS
OETTINfi TD BE' lAST TIME SAW HIM
ONEOFTWSE
Ht WAS UsrH A jPKfTE Of A i:XllD

OW

PilCHIC PERSONS

'J

FWRtlOH ME, BUT THOiE WEBE FRiENOS OC

f
MINE OF THE INVIS4BLE yvOELD.'OFCOUtSE
igxi iArfT SEE T>fEM IJUCESS TOU ARE TU MED

WEIL.IF THIS
iNorri-Nirril

H>THEASOUJTEJ
AH VIBRATE
M*n<IONI0USLY

4N'T

THECOONTFiS

never a<w you

LOOK 30 CHAPHAHOUS; THIS ji

A TREAT, IM SURE

INAWJWlEAueAJ

PARDON The INTEI^KUPTlON, MY PEAR OXJNTESS.' THAT LOW u

VUL<jARIAN has no manners.' ALLOW ME TO INTKOOUteMTj
FklENO. BELINDA BUNKS /""

99

Bringing

Up

Father

George McManus

1918 /1920

[144]

BringngUplather
It's

Too Bad Mo-'iahan Didn't Get There

and Have Some Fun

Earlier

p^^t-^^^*
Star Cuiripony.

100

[145]

or
SECTION THE

COMIC
SAN FRANQSCO EXAMINER
November

Bringing
m
1

WONT

>kUI_Ow VOO'bE
Ifl TOO V/C <.OTT*kCIT
TO e***"^^ *>N>r ci<.*^Q*) 12 em in tiOMenow
INTO ^o*-t'

mB^YOO
COi-ie'vjlTH
COT A
r^^J^_NE Dl^4TV.' ,^^B
-^

Up

FatLer

14,

1920

Katzenjammer Kids

Harold H. Knerr

1925 / 1926 / 1932

[146]

The

Katzenjamiiicr Kids

VCKJ u\^

8l*WK

f^"''< '^'i*'

RicvAT ^v^r

Tou \V> Soi^t UNO I'M

IS^ OF"? ffVPTL^

102

ojwe^l'iEN ot*? vjn

l>

Inlornolional Fotufd Servic*. Inc., 1925

[147]

"l^rtA, MWE TO \*/a.\T,AlD MR

OoRStT.

l^tWuTj^AS (O (MWT.fAlOMR DOV*.T.

"
YouXV H^Vt To VNft'T .5ft>a fV\ ,Don5tT_- j

^^SV VAll.CO>.M<ZMe
RUBBtR COR&ET
I

'.

Internoiionol feature Service, Inc.,

103

IW6

[148]

King Footurei Syndicate.

104

Inc.,

1937

Barney Google and Spark Plug

Bill\

Do Beck

1929

ACT youst Tb
Kei vt
pew
V

A'M-r

muTwm *eT. u*vt 1 ( y-

tl49J

^"^
*"'^SS't
X vnr
WOT

Teix'*otj&*

mmB

uAvK you ^jNe. wtA^oo^

s-ocax

C*^zeM

'-

AND

'^

"^y

Vi*t:vmi &OVT vow

Barney Google and Spark Plug

CAKTE POSTAlye_

/ FeLLER OET lo ste

Tme SGmT^ here

ANJO,

SO

FAR..

TmS

OCT ANvTmpSJG rVE

SAO

efc^eo^o'^

van ofAKEwcwi toubists

LtJ THE MclNTMftBni.

tiTn: AVftb BEKwe THe.V>OUC/
vHHIVeu.UUT THeWOMGN IN TVO,
cJAve
mRrf
A <5cc DeSCRVPTioM
C* HIM Tf^&C SftY H, Y#V TT/
1

V IHr C/wP^

m-

PlBRCti 1.0<K1! -AW-ri-Hr-OdUINT,

KUN AND IMSTBADQF "THBCllSTDCIfiW

sefiET HavtfsS yjwRiNG

J^

105

a shiny

King Features Syndicoto, inc. 1929

[150]

Barney Google and Spark Plug

106

CasoUne Alley

Frank King

1929-1931

[151]

'^

^\

[152]

Ih OilcoBO Trlbuiw. 1930

108

[153]

GB&iAme Alley

Ky ine v_nicago

109

154]

110

Tho

Chkogo

Tribune, 1931

(155)

Th Chicago Tribune. 1931

111

tl56]

i, Ihc Cli,.jao Iiibu.K-

112

1931

Boob McNutt

\^

Rube Goldberg

1919 / 1920

[158]

\0^

<cAM Ler you

Ap'\RTMexx

30,000,000

'

i.

For.

IS FtFTY

oe>JTS

MOKiey.
I'lL

VJP

Moye

THiiOfc

"V

TO MACS

COMIC SECTION THB

SAN RANQSCO EXAMINER
April

18,

1920

R((iii><xi

t:

e rt*M

ncM*

Boob McNutt

114

Slor

Compony. 1920

Happy Hooligan

Fred Opper

1925

[159]

115

S'Matter Pop?

Charles M. Payne

1929

~| l.i<it1TNiky', IT

TiETvweehj

Mt bo MUCrt,
too mJ
I'm

'

Tf+A

KiT^EW

..':~mrT _.__"-Tt-R^^OT To'Pt?OTeCT

AI

"''/ilMSiL-F

Sufficient

.--V*

116

Ball

SvndlwH,

Inc..

1959

Merely Margy

John Held,

Jr.

1930

[161]

King Feoturej Syndrcote,

117

Inc.,

1V30

Somebody's Stenog

A. H.

Hayward

1931

[162]

The Back'Seat Driver

118

The Bungle Family

Hany

Tuthill

1931 / 1932 / 1930

[163]

THE BUNGLE FAMILY

MtAVENiy a*rs, GeoRise
BUNOLE, I JU3T SAWV THOSE
NOSy \fl*'^NGLeS V*XXJNG
UP TWE WAJ_K AND
KNOW TWCVRf

By

ONE MORE FRIENDLY LESSON

WW4IU

Wef

AND

TUTHILL
SEE aOMCTMrNO
MOVIMS.,.. MOVIN9.
VDU KJCK ON TMC
OOOR, HAROOI..

HERE.

H. J.

WNO

TWI9

HOUSE LOOKS
wwrLE n-l

*!y,'5EClXANI'*3._)

H.

119

J.

Tuihill

and ^AcNaught Syndicate.

Inc..

1931

[164]

>^^^

THE BUNGLE FAMILY

TROUBLE ALWAYS MEETS CEORCE HALF

WAY

H.

120

By

AT LEAST

lulhill

H. J.

TUTHILL

ond McNought Syndicole.

Inc.,

IWI

[165]

THE BUNGLE FAMILY

121

TUTHIU.

[166]

McNoughl Syndicoo.
122

Inc.,

N.Y.. 1931

[167]

e
123

McNought

Syndicolt,

Inc.. N.Y..

1931

[168]

':^

124

r/cNoughr Syndicola,

Inc.,

[169]

CI H.

125

J.

TulhlM. 1930

Krazy Kat

George

Hemman

1922-1923

[170]

THIS MOST AMUSINa COMIC

"KRAZY KAT"
APPEARS EVERY DAY
IN

THE NEW YORK EVENING JOURNAL

Cfftnrt.

\uHicfc

*e To*i.i-n;s Hat,

To m>AtV 5

P3>A

IKS. tv lalw>klt^

Fwiw

Svrw.

^i^cHUcik 6>we;^.

^OU-S -V

IT

W6At

/V 'THt

fetLATwes ey 6t'Aj& His 'HAiett

CD Inrvrnotional Faotur* Sffrvics, Inc., 1922

126

p
[171]

Krazy Kat

127

By

H erriman

[172]

128

Blondie

Murat "Chic" Young

1933

[173]

129

King Feofures Syndicote,

Inc.,

1933

Skippy

[174]

Percy Crosby

1930

S1CIII

MYMAP. But to cowfiNuf:

WHICJ r AM WOT AT 5UJ0RDS
POiNTi uiTM TMS Cosmic
MCSiACC OF A SHftLtV *S

MANIFEJT60 iN'PBOMfTHfUS
OWeOON0,"wf MOST TAKE
C06K>lZANCe Of rut
pANTMflSTIC P0CTINS of
UOOOSu'oerH

YfH,

BfMfMSfR

rwe SIXTH T/ME

I

KAp'TRfAJoee

IJ.AND"I LtHtD

THAT pABTWttflif
Got his arm
X.MOST SHOT
OFF VP on TH6

I^erey Qrogiby^

U)tt, UIHAT I0K.L YOW; THf ON0AT0P0IC VACUfS

OF'COtePlOCt, OR, iHAtC Ult SAY THOJC OF A
CONTEMPORARY SOCH AS CMfSTfRTON IN HIS
if PANTO,. OR IINOSAV IN HIS CON 60 ?

THfY'S A

PART IN
TRtASoRE IJtANP
<<jHeB JIM t
Hioes IN A

MAST

BARREL

M
iiir

MY FBiCnD, that VOO HAVf

A PeoCLlViTY TO CO IN fOff Th6 SANGUINARY
Sort of thiws. this roietc. /wouch for a
IT

Slim

-flMf

TO Mt,

IVf P OOnjN,

MAY PR0V4 RttRoOtSCfNT

THAT YOU C(XT)V/ITT

MY ONS0tlCIT0 ADV1C6
PUSSOEO WITH IMPUNITY,
TASTES THAT CAN
SOMCTHINC MORE COMPATiece U/fTH THf
ADOLESCENT Mind, cood pay. my friend.
IS

130

Percy

L.

Croiby ond King Features Syndicole.

Inc.,

1930

m
Sunny

Toonerville

and the Darkling World

Anecdote and Narrative

Comic

in the Daily

Strip,

1917-1933
The

reality of death,

fiction are based,

and the recurrent threat

came

to the

comic

of

strip in the

on which adventure and detective

it,

winter of 1925, quietly, unexpectedly,

and somewhat obscurely. There had been hints earlier: a few men had been brought
low as part of the plot mechanics in the movie satires of Ed Wheelan's Minute Movies
and Chester Gould's Fillum Fables, but only as jests poked at the mayhem of some
silent film melodramas. And a cold-blooded murder plot, which had been hatched
against Oliver Warbucks in Harold Gray's Orphan Annie in mid-1925, built some
brief suspense but ended farcically, with the plotters booted offstage. Roy Crane's
Wash Tubhs, which had begun in early 1924 and was to become the greatest adventure strip of the 1920s, had not yet moved beyond comic melodrama and village romance, with an early seafaring treasure hunt handled largely as knockabout farce.
In Phil Hardy, however, a new, short-lived daily strip of late 1925, and in Out Our

Way, an established daily panel anecdote strip with recurring characters and settings
by J. R. Williams, a good deal of realistic blood was often shed in full view of the
reader. Out Our Way was distributed largely to rural papers and second-string urban
afternoon dailies, so that the impact of realistic death in the comics was somewhat
muted. But the opening note for serious action and adventure had been struck, and
the monopoly of humor on newsprint space began slowly but with an accelerating

pace to yield

to

suspense and melodrama.

few established

strips

moved

Wash
new em-

to suspenseful adventure, notably Crane's

Tuhhs, Gray's Orphan Annie, and Smith's Sunday Gumps. But most of the
came with new, largely daily, strips such as George Storm's Bohhy Thatcher
(1927), Gus Mager's Oliver's Adventures (1927), Hal Forrest's Taihpin Tommy

phasis

Tim Tylers Flying Luck 1928), Monte Barrett's Jane Arden

1929), Rex Maxon's and Harold Foster's Tarzan 1929), and Phil Nowlan's and Dick
Calkins's Buck Rogers (1929). After 1930 came the deluge, permanently altering the
content of the comics pages with crime and adventure strips Skyroads, Jack Sicift.
Dick Tracy, Scorchy Smith, Dickie Dare, Patsy Ming Foo, Little Joe, Dan Dunn,
(

1928), Lyinan Young's

Donnie,

131

On The Wing,

Broncho

Bill,

Brick Bradford, and others, endless.

The major humorous strips held their own, retaining the static shape of yesterday
and the da>^ before, much as ^^ C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy brought their
earlier comic trappings securely and successfully into the sound films of the thirties.
The daily panels of Toonerville Folks and School Days illuminated the pages of the
.

Moon MuUins and Minute Movies continued to spin irreverent narrative

were as many laughs as ever to be had. The comic strip had

daily papers.

of a high order. There

grown and performed an amoebic split into two spheres

ing was lost in the act, and a great deal was gained.

Notes on

strips in this section

Out Our

Way was

anecdotal
or

series,

a curious strip in that

alternated

it

of appeal, but almost noth-

among as many

as four separate

involving four separate sets of characters and settings, devoting one

two days per week

to each continuity [175-178].

Moon MuUins and Barney Google were two

of the great daily narrative strips of

the 1920s and 1930s, as the selections included here will attest [221-319], (Dover

Books has repubUshed two

narratives from 1929

Another

erratically

and 1931

stor\- strip

condensed but

still

delightfully roguish Mullins

respectively.

of the period,

which held readers

was

for several decades,

it was in some ways as a

and unassuming as it was in its stance and tone, does
not excerpt well: it depends heavily on the reader's intimate knowledge of what has
happened before in the strip, and to whom. The same is true of the daily episodes of
Sidney Smith's The Gumps, which were remarkable in that they gripped millions of
readers with continuity on two disparate levels: that of a straightforward, bathetic,
and deadly serious melodrama and that of a hilarious and deeph' engaging takeoff on
their own outward content. There is httle doubt but that Smith, a Rabelaisian and irreverent man of comic wit and imagination, knew what he was doing to his readers

Frank King's Gasoline Alley, but this work, extraordinary as

chronicle of an American family,

on both

levels,

and

as a greatly gifted storyteller

was able simultaneously

expectations of the two groups. But the story line

veloped that any excerpt of

less

is

so

to satisfy the

complex and extensively de-

than eight or nine months would

fail to

be

self-

explanatory as a unit. Regrettably, therefore, the daily Gumps, as well as the daily

Gasoline Alley, have been passed over in this collection. Both surely deserve extended, carefully edited, anthologies.

Roy Crane's Wash Tubbs (published

Easy)
the

is

work of

man who had

Caniff and his Terry

garded by

132

in a

reputedly the finest adventiire strip of

its

and

companion Sunday page

its

as Captain

time, surpassed only after 1934 by

self-admittedly been Crane's devoted student: Milton

the Pirates.

The Wash Tubbs sequence

reprinted here

is

devotees as the graphic and narrative apogee of the strip [320-426].

re-

Out Our

Way

J.

R.

WilUams

1925 / 1927 / 1932 / 1935

[176]

[178]

NEA

133

Services, Inc., 1932

NEA

S<rvices, Inc., 193S

Bobby Thatcher

[179]

George Storai

1932

Wev6R HACT NOeOOV UKS TE PROFESSCR

WB KMOW SOiwEBOCV
CHARGE BEFORE
HBLPED HIM DOWN WI-TH TMATT SIGN, BUT
HE JUST SET3 M
HE WOh'T SAV who
THE CALABOOSS AND WOHT
WOhV eat HI!
AMO
TALX

Bell Syndicale. Inc.,

Bell

1932

[180]

[181]

TUE PROCESSOR WAS esGM IM TME

CALASQOSe reHES OAVS, Al0 STia_ ME
WOMT TBLL. how he OOT THAT SICM DOW>J
NOR WHAT HE DID WITH THE COLD
FILLIMCS HE HOOKED FRO* THE OEMTISTS
HE WOnV TAKE THE MOHE/
OFFKie
like TO DO
HE PlAlO US EITHER.
OOnY
-/ SO-STHIM' TO MeiJ.HlM^ BUT

KHOW WHAT"

vV.__r_r

SyndicoK

?AuT DARK FORCES ARE

jy MOVIMC TO FURTHER
CCXPLIOTE THE SCrETlSTS
TROUBLED AFFAl*2S--- THE
DREADED COVE GAMO IS TO
EHTERINC THE VULLAOE
EFFECT HIS RESCUE IM TWE
,

eCUEF THAT THEY ARE

AIOIMC A PARTMEFi IN
Crime

THE SILEMT VILLAGE

IS

WRAPPED IH SLUAHSER AHD

THE Clock im the steeple
STRIKES

otte'.'.

ell

[182]

lO'FF TOLl.y
-'

Svndico

JUST THE SAME weos CONNA. "Tai

FOR rOUH. OWK
you OUTA TUBOS
GOOD--- '"V OLD RAP ALWAVS SAO

AMD

THE MOST

'A BIRD OH A LIMB S'NCS

A

RESOLUTE MEMBERS

SWEETER THAW OME

OF TME DREADED
COVE C^XC

IN

ABE GROUPED

AROUND THE
CALAaOOSE,,.,

THE OnlV
SOUNDS TO BE
HEARD IM THE
SLUMBERIHC
village 'S
the distaht
BavihC

of a

watch ooc--

If'

[183]

Bell Syndicate,

Inc..

19321

stout
bars of the
calaboose
WINDOW

["XIhe

DIO NOT LONG

RESIST THE
MIGHT/ Blows
Of a sixteeM
pound spike
aaaul wrapped
in burlap.
WIELDED By
biff

toll/

Himself...

l-^^

134

Bell Syndicale, Inc.,

19: t

[184]

[185]

[186]

[187]

1932

idicaie. Int.,

ALBeRX
BEWARE

PETTIBOHE'.
'.'.

THE OUTIAW
CHiEP IS A

AMO
desperate

vlC<EO

mo

mam'
cooo cam

COME OF

T14e

FRlGWOSHIP
VJHlCX ME

TMRUSTS
UPOM vou'

135

Bll Syndicate, Inc..

1732

[188]

[189]

SMUT JP

BORROW
A CC^ 86CAUSE "THE"
PROFESSOR WAMTS A CLASS
FlRS-r THIUC
OF MILK
WAVE VOO
rt3u KWOW Bin=Ll.
yS

1M
>

WAVIH' "no

A KITCHEN

amo oowt

LCX THIS

SWIWC

tJ

SCOW
THE

CuBtaeMT...

^^ "

r-',_,^
I

^MEBBE THE PROFESSOR.

DOT V/AKTA PUT IM WitM
US BECAUSG HE TMIMKS
WEtJE POUCH-WSCXSWS'ul- ALl_ SLICK
UP Fo MtM AWHILE

...

WHEN HE GETS A LOAO

OP THIS OUTFIT
HEVl KUOW/ TH6RES
OMS CEMTLEMAH 1"
the: PACK

>

APe?0>4

CAKES

BAKIW ANCeU
FOB

[1901

II

Minute Movies

[191]

IlONG ACO

ED WHEEL AH
m? COMEDIANS

IN

fcURLESQUF OF DTW

OOlltOTE:

DOW

K,

A CERTAIN SBON
IN LA UOOCWA
IMERE LWED AN OLr> <JEmT UMO
HAD REiiD 3 MANy " -n?UE
STOeS " IN TWE MAGAZWES
njfcr WE WAS AiuiAVs see
INCr "WIN&? IN SPiTe OP THE

^iSg

prcscorff

Edgar Wheelan

IN

\;iLLAfiE

FACT

TVIca

A PROP

WE

AJEVCl?

[192]

136

TonCUFD

1929

5nd)coi8.

Inc..

1932

[193]

[194]

(aJftcr being, -meoujN fob

A LOSS By TUE WlNDMliL
WUICH HE MISTOOK FDR A
'GIN MIU." , DON K. UiAlGV^y.
THE AJUTT/ KMISUT, /AS

fm^"^^
ED UWEELbH'S

muE

HEARTENEO

OTTMSfoiriT

COUIAfsP,

SAPC

FiSR'-

TUftN

H OF

50N(1,"C!CIN

UAuewTy
LOVE VOO*
IS softlv
INTRODUCED
ON THE OBOE

k.
1

Si>ND TiMCS
I SHOUiDn

.-

-SAV NOT-"

d)

[195]

OUFS THEME.

NO-NO-ATWOU-

PRETT/ UIEIL BUNCrED

UP.BUT/loT D)S-

SlAPSTiCK

BURLESQUEPART

AM I A CRAVEN,
tWAT I SHOULD CEASE
MV EFRORTJ To MAkTEJJE MOJLOJ
SlieNOE.POOl,'.' UIUAT

faithful

PANCHO STAN2A
l=INAl.Ly

SUCCEEDED

pippy DOH
ON HS STKED

AewN AND
,

so.

OFF THEy KODE

For
TeouBiE -

Lookinc,
rooree

now A
GREAT CROWD

coNie ON. Fellers. UTS

K>40CK TVllS SOOFy eOV
FOfe A Row OF ASH

/iND

ED

UJUEEIAN'S

'&JRiESQUE'

OF RUNMEtSS.

DON K.
HAUfiHiy

CI?0SS-COUNTtey

EN&A&ED
I

IN

'

CANS

MAKATHOM,
APPROACWCP
DON k.

_ui.

o.

[aJfTer it uas
All OWER.TWE

Hut

IHFUBIATED
ATHLETES D(2A<WEC
APPOINTSELFTV4e

/'COME TD think: OF

VLiTTiE

(T. Good Rxncuo, MAyse aj

and then /^EVEG HueT/ ^

AMVBOD^^

FAITHFUL

ED

FKlNCHO STANZA

High Moi?se
/SND Gave MiM

GATHERED OP
THE REMAIN?
And off the/

P(?OHlE>niON
fiJXHj OFF HIS

THE

di?ink noui

WORKS '-

SIABTED for'

MOMC -

137

/ svsrW 4.AA iSj

-i*

"ysA

AGAIN

;:

'~^Al

[196]

^cuuui i^ay5

[197]

Vtemoxl

-^

[1991

--iare

v icror L/\\iggms

lyiii /

lyzo

lyzo

/ lii'^b /

lyzY

tVoW C0I AIL

T -

[U

"^--"

.^

138

McClure Syndicate, 1953

McClure Syndicoia. 1723

139

McClure Syndicole, 1926

McClur. Syndicole.

IM7

205]

vm

207]

IMi

McClure Syndicate, 1927

140

ToonerviUe Folks

Fontaine Fox,

209]

HE DOESN'T GET
running stakt
Good
A
SKIPPER
HAS TO USE
THE
vjHe.H

SPCCIAU EMERGENCY POWER*

To GET THe CAR UP HOMAn'S

141

}\IUU.

Jr.

1917 / 1924 / 1928

[213]

fl\f. A^ATlVfeS
Att-iohle.

ASKS

ALWAYS iAY^ASKTMe SMPff k" WHfH

WMY THC TRAdKS WSRE UAIP oUT

Zld ZAd oN MAIhl

S-r(^E6T

Mov^ Lof/a MP IT
2!iii To FiaoKP
OUT THIS MYSTiei^Y ?
-TAKf

couucee BoV wjho

rne. SH6.t PlPt torW/sce

frit )<i)JJV i-rfTlt

6-fooO

RiCrt-t'

v<1*.aRiiJ6

Ov/fe

A PAIR

of-

rnose.

fAAWa-

wiofc

(Cfr"i'"- 1*** *y ^'^ ^*" Srnd-tt. iiK)

YSTaRS ArJp YPARS Aao, WMChi TMC SKlfffR WAS

iTlUL A YoUPJai MAf^, MIS AMSlTloM WAS T" *<iOMt
A l.oCOMOTl>/^ 0ti^lf4eeK
.

^fU^'t

^^^^:^^

Ai^o

Hc

thikIk;*

SArAP

no

fVeKi oricf

ifJ

oNC wilu sre

OF "t-ET'S

WHILE
hc

HirA

\fji\t.r4

ri-AYS

rReTfr>/P.*'

142

[218]

[220]

LICK ANIY MAhi

llJ

3Cfj 1684 v/Hehi -THF sKirreK col/ld

-THC CoUaJTY, ME HAP TrtE TffACKS 1-AIP

OUT TMAT Way eecAose ne was ai^o villasf

143

LAMfi.icHTe'/^.

Moon Mullins

Frank Willard

1928

[221]

[222]

[223]

[224]

144

Th Chlraso Tribunt.

I93(.t

[225]

[226]

[227]

[228]

fcl

145

The Chicopo Tribune. 1928

[229]

[230]

[231]

The Chicago \r.bune. 1928

[232

/ MOOm^WlwE'.
/

/
I

\
\

/
/

CAM

NtXJ

HAMDUE BECAUIt
MAJCX9 SLOEPOINT CjlVE
HER THAT EV-EtiAtJT
ORAV40 P\AM0 when
SHE WA'S EXPECT(KJ'
A AuTVMoeiii Foa
HEB BIRTHOAV

\PACK OP AHO CO AWXW

[233]

IMA.CilNt tUCM A NiWNV?

EivPT MA^ FLEW OFF TH^

[234]

NEXT

l/7_ ^ __H
AUMT EMMV-.
BETTEO 6eT
I CA.M GET NOU *.
ME A
Nice OUTSIDE BOOM
ROOM
FOB EICiHT OOUUJIS IMSlOe
ECiVPXA OAV AT hV
rr
LOOKS
HOTEL.
KINOA LIKS
TtStlN.

The Chicago Tribune, 1928

^\

AMD IN THE 0LOAMIN6

HtAVENUY OAVs!

WHEN HE CALLED WITH

A PEACE OFFEPINO.
LITTLE DID THE OALANT
MAJOR SDSPECT -THAT
THE OIRLOF HIS DREAMS
WAS FAR, FAR AW< ^
ANJO AT THAT VERV -^^
MOMENT FiaUBlN<, OHjJ

VHtH MlJt
MMV

[235]

>

Puttimcj him BAS>*^'5>

INTO ClRCUljiKgO^ "

SCHMALTZ
AKJD HGa
LOVtUV
Miece

LBFT

5WN

DIO

NOT
KISS

euvPTs
FlANCe'
THE V/CALTWV
I

MAOOR BLUEPOINT, COOO-evE".

CyPT HAVING LEFT VN A HUFF, A*40
MISS SCHMALT2. NOT SEINCi ABLETO
LOCATE Hlh^
.

The CHicogo Tribune, 1928

HOW COULO THAT

STUPID WOMAN THINK
THAT MEANT THOSE
FLOWERS FOQ HER?
WHV DID I UUN LIKE A
COWARD WHEN SHE
fiAO'

UNCLE WILLIES BACH

TOWM WHAT-LL
HE SAV IF HE FINDS

IN

STARTED RE^OINO THOT

BIT OF SENTIMEMTAL
.
\ SLUSH I WROTE TO ^IHW
\VES.l MUST EyPLAIM THIS!

"-V~OASPta,MT

A
\

OUT -you're GET-nN' ,

FLOWERS FROM ANOTHEW I
1^ ,
ODV, MAMIE?

[236]

OHt I M16HTA KNOWEO

HFD COME BOTTIMO IW JUST
THE MINOTE THE FIRST MAW
VJITH MONEV EVER TOOK A
FANCY -to ME
Orr VOOR U6Uf FACE AWW

FROM

MEVJEl

ciTAW*<-

Hcr

_^ V^HO STICK!

The Chicago Tribune. 1928

[237]

The Chicogo Tribune, )928

[238]

Hcoe .oocToa- vou

TAKE CHWICE OF THE hAAJOQS
VALUAB\.ES--rHtV'n 5APE
ENOUCiH KEQE SO FAO AS IM

LCOh4CEC!NED OF COURSE, eoT

\ THEOEi OUST Me AhJD KtocMSKOlE
HEOE AND L DOMT WANT KiO
S*_>SPiOOKtS CAST MN- WAV W
CASE AKiVTWlMOS M>SS\M' VJHEN
OET3 BACK HIS rAEMORY.
I

^j^
)

Ni B a N>

.'rc-r*

The Chicogo Tnbone, 1928

[239]

OH -THEtre VOU ABE

EGVPT-IVE BEEN
UOOKIMO HIGH AND IJDW
FOR VOU "TO R6AO >OU
HIS LETTER I 005T
FROM AOONSHINC

FOB PIXV SAKES!

/*7

'

r ave too to unoerstano

"VOUT^O MAN. THKT X WOULDMT
PAt" TWEhTTX FIVE CE^TS "tO
SET OKI THE THROME

WITH THE KINO OF

EMOLAMO, HISSELF'

TWEKTTV-Flve CEKT5POO-noOH
UCM CRUST.

VJELL TO CONTINUE WITH

THIS EPISU-E MOONSHINE SAVJj

XUf Atr~^- L NOW ISNT THAT

J05T k*Y UJCK.EOVPT-THE WEAtTHy
IN MY VEPY.
OWN HOUSE ANO ME AWAV^
fAAJOR BLUePOIHT HEU>LESS

TSK-tSV<

''fev..'

V.vi3-

fca V^*^. CM; l^*r<^

:

[240]
MOW, Mr OEaA nephewVOOSE SHOUUONT TDIN /
WE dOWN UKETHAT
WHEN I AST FERA
3UOHT LOANTCHE

HELLO. VUkMlE-

OUST SEEN

VOOR DEVOTED
HOSaANO DOWN
I THE STREET.

'

ONE RELATIVE SHOULD

AUWAVS BE HAPPV TO
HELP

The Chicogo Tnbune. 19J8

OTHER

T
[241]

rr

WHKT? YOU BACK

HERE ae^/att^ACAJM,

/weu.>eoeAB
LITTLE

The Chicago Tribune, 1928

'

WOMA^

COME ON WTTM ME. BUM

PCTST I BOU6HT
ME SELF ANEW
SMD HE <yve NOU A
DINNER SUITQUARTER VtSTEOOaf. ITHEN
,^,, ^r^
AOINNCP
NOJ OO WTTM Tt? ANO TO THE

tM OONMA HUN MOO IN

WlLLIAMt MOONSHIHE

W""*.
OFFICER

A aOKA THAra WHIT,

--OAWN N-OU AINT &Crr._/ HOWCAN
VISIBLE MEANS OF
/ \OUSe SAY
SUPPORT

FOR
-

BWMATO
^THEATER AHO A
-rlr
r^ ^| /IT-,/ jOLC^< NJOHT CLUB AFTER
^jJ^T
/ WHICH I REMTEO MtiELF
J^i>5o VARooMA^THeom.

'

WHAT FOR?

BEIN

AMY

HCV.MAMIC!
POKE VER HEAD

OOTTH'WWBtR
AND LET TH'
OFFICER TAKV
A LOOK AT

'^^\

"rr
l^iZ^
The Chicago Ir.bore. 1928

[242]

WHAT nJTHB

WOILD

ON

EATING ,
-yOUSE. WN OEAH?

WILLIE,

15

HOW

you COT A LOOK

ON NOUR

A CAT

WOLn.O

/^WHy,tAV
DEAH fAAMIETHAT WOULD
SUIT ME _
JUSTQ^NOY.,

VOU LIKE TO
OO FOR A Nice
LON6 WALK IM
THE MOONLIOHT?

FACE LIKE
CAUtjHT IN
"

CHICKEN HOUSE

--_

XI
^-y

M.
(243)

i
I

kj

WK tr n.

O* ^

A 8UMP ON Hit
eEAKl. EH?
WLL..HRhAMOTWeR
TO KEEP IT COMFAmy
3NAKC t4TX CRASSI

:^^^^

B^^>MlftlHiLimn
;

The ChicoQO Tribune.

[2141

[245]

[246]

6V CEOQOE.MR MULLINSIT NA/A-S WIMO OF VOL)

TO COKAE, SIR*
VOU UMOEB STAND
THAT t AM A

fcAAJOa

Blue POINT
I'VE BEeKJ

HEBE BEFORE,
LOTS*.

TIMES

BUODV VOU'BE
FADED!

^TRANCjEC \m\our.
CITV AMO THEV
REFUSE TO ACCEPT
MY CHECK IMPA/MENT

S1UV.V

-c^

J^/jl\\

TnTm

TTrTT

JlOfiE-FiME-

VJOMDER iF COULD
TftOOBLE VOO TO OET
l

I.

IT

SO

CACHED FOR. ME
t CAM 6ET OLJT
OF THIS
/
BEA-STLN-

The CKicogo Tnbune, 1928

weiXOME HOMe
r CALLS -rwiS-NOTASOLn-^
AT TXE STATION TO MEET
JM
A

rv<l

Mt

VVMBRI IS
/
uit.MULi.iNS,MAMieT A

[247]
JAvlL.

-THANK
heaven!

[248]

[249]

[250]

[252]

[253]

The ChicoQO Tribune, 1928


ma! vjeh. MA><^e

MV CjOOO WOMAl-i

VOU CAN EH-P^JkIN

t A^A VMIU\_1M<* "TO
TH\S NOTE HE
TESTIFY N COURT
VJROTE BEFORE
THAT
NECe.55AflV
HE COT THAT
IF
CEQTA1NI.V.
THE MAJOQ WAS
BUN^P ON H\-S
I ALWAVS
EMTIOEtN' OUT OP W(5 BEAN, OOC
VJOlTE THAT
'HEAO OUUVMC THE.
"TO THE
SWEE"'EST TOMVSSECVPT.
-TBM DAVS I TREAXED
I WAS NOTAWAQE
UlfA MERE-ME DlOMTl
THAT 5HE AND
THE
EVEN KNOW VJHER&
MISS SCHfAAin^X
He WAS.DUETO A
HAD LEFT THE
SU<:4HT CONCUSSION
CITY OR I MOST
OF THE BOAiM
CERTAIN
"^

VJOU\.0

WEU-VJEHAve
AUU OF THE
MAJOR'S
TROUBLES
WITH TOUR
VAMPlNO
COOK SETTLtq

MISS SCHMACrZ.

The Chicago Tribune. 1928

[2;

AND

KNOV^ YOU
VsflUL BE

OH SOU POOR OOVl^

-THAT

OONT NEED TO TCU.

THE DOCTOR
TO Put a oooo
BAMDAtiE OMVOUR /

HAPPY TO KNOW
THE
DOCTOR HAS
VINDICATED

ME.

A.BNA

ANO UEAVE

VT TIUC TVtE
S\WEU\_lN4i <*oe5

("^
'

DOWN.

NOT

HAVE CAULCD.

(?)

The Ch.cOQO Tribune. 1928

IZOMJ
,
I

NOW-

SIR

'

-nwcr I HAVE TMOoouomv

EXPUAtfJEO HOW UTTEOli^

BASELESS ABE VOUO

ClAIMS F0OS0,00O'
FOfJ VOUCl V>'lFrt

AFFtCnONSHAVE HAD KAV LAMvTVED

WHICH VOO WILL StCN OH

THl DOTTED Llh4e BEFORt
THREE MINUTES ELAPSE
am A PCH-ICEMAM WlTM
WAOBAINTT FO BLACKMAIL WHOM
1 HAVE ITATtONEO OOTSlOt WH4.
COME W V^iHE^a I WHISTLE
TVJiCE OUT TMAT VN/IMOOW.

CQAW UP TX\S STATEMENT

1

COMPUETEi:*'

exONOOATIMO

K*E-

WILLIAM, V.MEPE

1260]

The Chicogo Tribune.

Th Chicogo Tribune. 1928

18

IS

YOUR Buimcss

SAOICITV
LA.T
DOWN THEWt A*JD
CDCAN umE ATWAT1
PIPE COClA^J-

HOOT 3MOKE!
LOCH AT
UNCLE WILLIE

MAJOff BlUEPOihtS
CAR Af>*0 WE OUGrtTA

WXkLKVsf 0\CKr

FCONT OF
IM Ft
tW
TMATCAW!
\tvw

liET BIG

DAMAGE* FOB

THIS -I WOULOtJT Be
5LIRPRI6EO IF HEDIO^rr
-TVAT

OH ^

T~

"

PV^^POSE 71 OW!

[261]
I

HATE TO BOTHEO

'*OUSE AT THIS

HOoa

OOKTT

KMOVSf WHEnE
SHE'S WEKT^
VWILL16

OF THE MIGHT,
MISS SCHMVAUTl

BUT ME AMO MAMIt TME LAST I

MAO AMOTHEO ONE ISEEN OF HER SHB
OF Oun BOAJS AMO
V/AS HEAOEO
WHEM t LEFT SHE
FOR TME HIVEO
WA'S THOEAT-BNIN' TO
OO JUMP IM TME PIVER
AND I JUST \A/ANT TO
tOMOW >F SHE'S O.H

[262]

KVOU MEAN

-TO SAN/
I MOPE
TMKT MAJOR BLOePOiNT
TO TELL
MAO -TME CALL TO OFFEO \A I OtO,
CGVPT
>0J ^ffOO-' TO LEAVe
l>^ molOim"
TOvgN A>jO HEvEO *,6t
OUT Fta
ME. AOJ^lN? SUCH CROST/
A etTTER
I

WELL I WOPE N-oo

TUONEO MiM OOWM
COOD AMD HAOO

OPPE

5AV
All NOU %WAf4T

MARRiEO

TO GET

vjOmV STAtJO

VOUa WAVIT-L PIX THATUO FOR VOO

IM

>

i<^l^
[263]

WELL, WLL WAU.-SO E^vP-r AnQ

bUOOi) LUCPOint MAO A lAAT AND

The Chicago Tribvne, 1938

LISSEKI, MAu>OR-)F

}
)

The Chicaoo Tribuna. 1920

(Ti

The Chicago TribufW, 1928

V,

THE MAJOU ts GOING TO CO lACW

ILL JU5"T GO BV
Do 0>4C'^J*Ti

TV4C oAPAoC AMD BiO HiM

OMt CAfi NtVCR TEI.C
WHAT WILL KA*P>4
bWY AAV 3
TMAT M
JinT OVIM*.
TO 0T
MAPRlBD

00<X>-VE

mO

[26-

ABOUT
MOSHMOOTM-TMAn" MA.KES
tvEQveoov sMiue and
POlMT AT ME WHEN W/E -

ViHArr IS "THtRE

'

>

THBOUOM A -TOWM<

Ihe Chicogr,

1928

T,,Djr,.,,

[265

The Chicago Tribune,

[266

WEMT AmO

VJA-STEO PlFTCCH

OOUOENi hAlNUTES

Vs/AXih4'

FOR THAT OUO BVJM TO WAvefi

UO ASV< mr^ THE DlOeCTIONS
AND THEM HE OOK T EVEM

The Chicago Tribune, 1928

[267

MV
USSEM
MOONSMlME- NOOSE
UNCLE VJlLLlE'
WILU C*E.T VOUR TWO
HOVvJ ABOUT
OUST AS SOON
THEM TWO BOCKS DOUUARS
AS MAiOK BLOePOlKT"
><0\J BOUnVED
KVCKS IN VJ>T>t ALL
FROM ME
THEM Blj PROMISES
HE MAOE ME FOR.
WEEV<.
FlSMlK W\M OUT
OF TH- RIVER
OEAR.

5HS,

c.

PCPHAPS TWS

13

MAJOR BLUEPOINT
PHOhilNC-

canV

UNOBSTAnO wmv
Ht wasn't showed
UP- W PQOM<SBD
TO CALL TO-Nl(jHT
AKID BRING Me A
PATQ or KAR Rlf40S

THAT

AOMiRED,

The Chicogo Tribune. 1928

[268]

USSEM. EGYPT
^U- THAT OLO
TIGHT VJAS>
OFF ECHO MV
UNCLE \AJILLie

IP

FOR SAVING HIM

TTIOM DROWN \MO,

WAS A JOa OF WOR.
VOU GOT A PAT CHANCT
OP GCT-TIN- ANVTM\NG
GOT OP -THAT eABY FQH
TEY^LING HIM HE OUGHT
TO BE IN THE fAOVlES
WTH H* LOOKS - ^PX
HE WOULDN'T ilV VOU
-TH"

TIMt

tij

The Chicogo Tribune. 1928

IS XA.T
(S

SO?

1*.T SO?

[270]

[2711

[272]

[2731

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Tho Chicooo !nbun, 1928

155

The Chicogo Tribune, 1928

Bamey Google and Spark Plug

[278]

Billy

De Beck

1930

pr

King Feotures SyndiCote,

Inc.,

1930

ng Feolurat Syndkat*.

Inc..

1930

[279]
SeJtflbR, S4Mtf>PS

**^f<tt^

A SUCKER

OUflANou-WUerC WCULO H&

~E)D IP

IT

^U& WE.
DO

tS

WPSUr POR
"rce

T5 PAV Voo

^*)Ot

LEAST WE
BfiC'K

ThE.

O^

^*>y SPENT OnIhEM

cisri'3r scrs we. coulO lcame^

MCNEf

9JSHT M*C.

ur To
Mrs MOTtL AMD

[280]

[281]

[282]

156

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t^

Google t

iwOeClSiO^*-A.LL Woo WAvJE

is Tb Livy iisi C<-i(r>jA For.
RCST of "<tJoft urE. ANO
fM\9 CweOK FoR.iSS,000 -S '^OUI^l

Do

<moulO make,

ft

/,

T;.

A^ VOUR LECiAL AO^'SeR

1 "<

~>

111

wy

[288]

[289]

[290]

[291]

.ndcoir

[292]

MAOAME
AffoRMCV

1 AM

(N

AM Q0'N6
LOVt

(nc

1930

lA Mousse^

15

v*1(TH

mi*-'

QEAK

3.

CA4**ftT

7i LOOK.

AT T

158

King Ftofurej Syndicot*.

Inc..

1930

d:

Kmg

Inc..

1930

Xing Feoturei Syndicate

Inn

1930

King Feorures Syndicate.

Inc.,

Feolurcs Syndicate.

mmsj

159

1930

[298]

[299]

[300]

[301]

[302]

160

Kmg

Falurei Syndicolo,

Inc.,

1930

[303

[30

<m9

Feal^rei Syndicote,

Inc..

1930

[305:

\"1he" MAOAME lA MOUSSE

SEMSIOR -MV PRWATE
SECBElAOV. MISS SWCMJERS. > 1_"II^C FOBE^K
IS CWJ

Will

HER V*W OP- She

ASREE To VAMP

[30(

[30

161

King Feolures Syndicole,

Inc..

1930

C308]
To

GOoeLt ANO MADE AW APSC"*4^S*jT

ie
CP-a.i_

FOR

-h rv^EET M^M
"C41E

AT

BiST OCUOCn:
tVENIfjES

TwE.

eer TbocTHEa

i.

SMAIJ. 'PWOWE.

LA

MOUSSE AWO

TwEM

1W

A TA1<

[309]

[310]

[311]

[312]

(^ King Foturas Syndicotv,

162

Inc..

[313

SMC^ A Mice OLD

GAL, Bur SOOTA

DUMG -

"TVC EVEAJIKJG9

I "^ASTt Ckm wer.

ARE. <3KTTI<M' KI^JDA
BlAH - 1-H ASOUr

R&aov

To

cur OUT

LA MOUCSIN'

II

King Feoiures Syndico'e.

Inc..

1930

[314:

/
'

WOPt 5ME OOWT

OET

mello.TomTomno! DomT OisTuRa

NO',

MADAME LAMOU55et

^-M^SC Tf*tfr

TCc cooee is
A PMC^^ BdCUSe

kMQW VJMERE

OH. "
tALA*

Foft.

DARw eooo

I'X),

Fhnra

KIni

Synfciw, Uc.

ituirf litlat

>}'!&<

n*tr^

Of Pice. EARCV, MISS

X woNcea

wwtfT
SHS LOOkS LlKC^

"S/ J FEEL
SHCW6RS - VOVj MdiWE.
/ So^JRVOUS
AM C-iaoeEMewT voir?*
MR.QOOGLe "TUlS EvjeWiNQ/ ABCoT MeSTTAJd
IwGois;G
ANO
/a CTiWUoCE MAW
^_^

r&^

"'*>

SEClCwCT

Jt^-N-^.^

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^f

King Feorures Syndicote,

Inc.,

1930

[315

\^
WELL. WELL .MR, 21 rzV

Sdod

tbo'RE ffOlTt

IM

A MCW

\AjiTft

evEft-YlWlMS?

eusi^jEss

Lootc Me. cwee. TePOIN( CUT

MR GOOGLE
HOW \%

SWE AiwT3oTA
&EEZER Oj HCR. Like.
l-K>PE

STRAMQCft

evEwiuQ,

OfWL SHOWERS.'
J

MR.ZIT2.

g yooe^

(.^

u^)^fi^

AU Oe DA OA DC DOO.

CAN MM:K.y

NtiU

Those soeahs

MAI^'lA

TEiNHOwT

At>*0

PiMS

0*J'

JM

WeeDLE5

cot-It! WALK, UP
TUB. STIiS&'r
Ar40 VMS LL UM-IE.

LiTTLC 04ATHCMtS HORStf^ee

SCWJOPPS ,

*r

g3 <^i-^^
ng Features Syndicote,

Inc.,

1930

[3X6

A LtfTlE.
\

PEACH

Swe,

OOiJT lOOW: Hk.E TCie.

^ofTwHOD vgont,

(w*A3U

WCfeS To A

sTbAMoe Gut
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BoeBLE eves
QCTHef*.
/^
,

<^

ZIT2 - VA 'mem BER. TUAX

PfiDPoSlTToW SEMATJJe sewMows
JOft.

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ia TAKE IT LAST MIGHT O

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!

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Go HOME AND
TALK

King Features Syndicate,

Inc.,

1930

[317;

T^IKlGS

HS

To Tte.

SGWrtTOfi.'.

WOfAiRE.

lAMOUSSlM'RS

RESrMioRMeBNts!
jll OUONE.
VOU AffeR 1

ARE WCiRKIMQ OuT

BEAUTTFULLV " - J TWIMK SENATOR SCHMO^PS AMD
lACW LC^/e,,^lAClAME- LAf-10uSSe.,VA;itL SOOM
BE SVoEeTWEAftTS AJSAlf4

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SOCIAL

EVeWT OP

"fftC.

SeaSOKJ-

Nt,7lT

163

King Features Syndicote,

Inc.,

1930

[318]

[319]

King Features Svndicatfl,

Ihe comic strip, especially after you leave the domestic-

relations type which is itself realistic

ajid

unsentimental, is

specifically more violent, more dishonest, more triclcy and roguish,

than America usually permits its serious arts to be.

Mutt

and Jiggs and Abie the Agent, and Barney Google, and Eddie's

Friends have so little respect for law, order, the ri^ts of

property, the sanctity of money, the romance of marriage, and

all the other foundations of Americaji life, that if they were put
into (popular) fiction the Society for the Suppression of Every-

thing would hale them incontinently to court and our morals would
be saved cigain,

Gilbert Seldes
"The 'Vulgar' Comic Strip," The Seven Lively Arts

164

1924

Inc.,

1930

Wash Tubbs

Roy Crane

1933

^iPflNO PMiVEMOMIA. fdREWEU., WUSH ANP

\i/EAS-( SPENP StMERAl tMY, PELIftHTFUL
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NEA

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Service, Inc., 1933

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PASSING SHIPS eeCOME NUMEROUS

LAST,

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Service. Inc.. 1933

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CONTEST?

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mis? AN

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1933

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Inc

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1933

[368]

*Lki% hT TWi WHEEL/ MASH

a,s

HEARD -X

OUT Of HIS WITS. AND MO

WONOERI HE WAS TVE SOLE WITNESS TO
CAPTAIN FOLLV'S TRAGIC BSTTLE WITH THE HATE.

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rt-NoTA

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[369]

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PAR^S
OPEN
U/MOUTH.
THE CRAFTY,
OUTTERlna EVES OF TWE MATS
NEMER. lAME HIM.
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[370]

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THtSOlt iT>4t TO CAPIIUN tOlW'S DEATM.

"^

NEA

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[379]

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[385]

D04T

^^ APPEAgS.

BE AFKAIO.MA'aO

"M LOOfcTING

FORAONE-

AKMEO SCAMP AND A

WHfcT

LITTLE FELLA WfTM

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SuRB, HE WAS MECE - BUT
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IS

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Vij MA.76 1TS BACK AMO >MWTS FOt TME
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[386]

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HEB. MOTOR BOAT.

Ij'TVMt FOB HAtF

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AM

HOUR.

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[387]

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[392]

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[397]

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[403]

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VEAM' I COME BACK TO GIT EVEM Wl' THEfA

Bloom'in' mutineers, 'w' ve'RE goin'tohelp me.

[405]

]
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[406]

[407]

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Service. Inc., 1933

[408]

NEA

Service, Inc., 1933

[409]

[410]

[411]

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Ic'.ec. inc

193

[415]

[416]

ce.

Inc.,

1933

[417]

[418]

[419]

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Ser^-cc. Inc., 1933

[421]

[422]

[-123]

[424]

[425]

[426]

OOESU'T HW6
TO COME ArrsB.

fVIt

you. TLL

CMtBSy

w
Popeye, the Skipper,

and the Abysses

of

Space and Time

Anecdote and Narrative

Sunday Comic

Strip,

in the

1930-1941

Adventure, crime, and comedy were as mixed in the Sunday comic pages after 1930
as they were in the daily strips, but a new narrative genre, science fiction, entered the

had already been touched on humorously in such strips as Segar's Thimble Theatre and Kahles's Hairbreadth Harry. With
the daily and Sunday Buck Rogers, the concept of time and space as a realistic, fullcomic

serious

strip at the turn of the

decade.

It

was transferred from contemporary pulp magazines into the comics,

and almost immediately accepted by the public and by other comic-strip artists and

scale playground

writers.

An

eariy close follower of

Buck Rogers was the

daily Jack Swift of Cliff Farrell

and

by William Ritt and Clarence

Flash Gordon of Alex Raycelebrated
Gray (1933), followed a litde later. And the
mond appeared in the Hearst Sunday pages in the first week of 1934. Science fiction
themes also appeared on other and sometimes unlikely narrative strips such as Frank

Hal Colson (1930). Another

daily, Brick Bradford,

The Bungle Family, Chester Gould's Dick Tracy,

Norman Marsh's Dan Dunn, Lyman Young's Tim Tyler's Luck, Lee Falk's Mandrake
the Magician and The Phantom, and others. A most successful and well sustained
comic treatment of science was in E. C. Segar's Sunday Sappo, where the brilliantly

Godwin's Connie, Harry

Tuthill's

cracked Professor O. G. Wottasnozzle came up with continually ingenious and highly

risible inventions.

by the furor
of action, adventure, and horror on the pages about them. McManus's Maggie and
Jiggs went their bickering and battling way through the thirties as they had the
twenties and teens before. The bucolic populace of Toonerville meandered as ever be-

The

great old-timers in the strips continued as before, often untouched

tween the architectural bulk of Aunt Eppie Hogg and the mobile

clatter of the Skip-

per's trolley.

New humor

strips

were introduced, such

as

Rube Goldberg's Lala Talooza and Ed

Wheelan's Big Top, but there were few real successes in the thirties against the bi-

and exciting competition of the fantastic, criminal, and adventurous strips, although Lank Leonard's Mickey Finn and Al Capp's Li'l Abner survived the era
zarre

handily, as did V. T. Hamlin's Alley Oop.

183

Notes on

strips in this section

Dick Calkins drew only the daily Buck Rogers. Despite his signature on the Sunday
thirties, Russell Keaton was responsible for the striking artistry of

pages of the early

the two pages which open this section [427-428].

The

realistic or illustrative

beaux

arts style of

drawings entered the comic

strip

was foreshadowed in the work of

\\'insor McCay. Probably its most effective use was in the work of Alex Ra\inond in
his early (1934-36) Flash Gordon [430]; and in that of Harold Foster in his Tarzan
with the advent of

realistic

adventure, although

it

period (1931-36) [429]. Foster's figures are often particularly notable for their move-

ment and

force.

Almost universally published

at the time in full-page size, with ade-

quate space for the presentation of varying spatial concepts from panel to panel, the
skillfully free-flowing

and open

visually compulsive, multipanel

style of

both

artists

permitted the

movement and necessary

full

integration of

narrative development so

vital to the creation of effective comic-strip color pages.

Subsequent realistic work in the comic-strip vein, additionally hampered by the reduced reproductive space available in later years, has tended to be increasingly detailed, with an almost obsessive need to fill every part of every panel with black
shadow and complex linework. Such visual weight can slow down a reader's eye
movement across the narrative panels, and even draw his attention to irrelevant
detail.

Like Buck Rogers, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Prince Valiant [431] are frequently
reprinted here and abroad, and are (or soon will be) accessible to collectors in

siz-

able editions.

One man who offered a highly fanciful Sunday page was V. T. Hamlin with his
Oop [432-434]. He was also the first major comic-strip artist to take the reader

Alley

back into prehistoric time

for his narrative setting, thereby reversing the direction of

Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

With Cliff Sterrett, George Herriman, and Winsor McCay, Roy Crane was one of
the great technical masters of the Sunday-page layout. In addition to his graphic dexterity with page space, Crane told a rattling, tongue-in-cheek adventure tale, which
made his Sunday Captain Easy [435-437] the equal of his daily Wash Tubbs strip.
Little Joe [438-439],

ground

nominally bylined for

Orphan Annie, was

Ed

Leffingwell, Harold Gray's back-

by Gray through the thirties and

him
for
drawn by
a number of years. This littleknown Sunday half page was an entertaining and gripping strip. Replete with a sardonic and often bloody humor. Little Joe was a thoroughly adult strip. At the time it
was relished by a few cognoscenti, but was apparently of little interest to the genartist for

and

early forties,

its

in fact scripted

characters were

eral public of the thirties,

which

still

thought of western

fiction in

terms of Zane Grey,

Tom Mix, and preferred western strip work of a similar nature.

White Boy [440-441] was another imaginative, nonderivative western strip of the
time, drawn by New Yorker artist Garrett Price in an often stunning graphic style,
and told by him with many skillful touches of the fantastic and unexpected. It was
Richard Dix, and

caviar to the average reader,

had

little

circulation,

and expired

in the late thirties.

The extended Thimble Theatre Sunday sequence with which we

is

not only the comic and narrative apogee of E. C. Segar's work,

it

close this section

may be

the finest

example of pure comic-strip narration [443-474]. Segar is almost unknown to any

reader under fifty who has not encountered the only extensive reprint of his work
since 1940 (the Nostalgia Press

humor on

of Dickens.

ures

is

Popeye the

Sailor collection of 1971).

He

based

his

the interaction of one of the most inspired casts of comic characters this side
{

The inherent conceptual

strength of

many

of his

perhaps demonstrated by their continued popularity

Thimble Theatre

in the

fig-

hands of several

successor writers and illustrators since Segar's early death in 1938.) But introductory

words are unnecessary with Segar: the great sequence awaits only the turn of
reader's eye to the

the propitiative

184

first

episode to speak for

itself in

murmur of J. Wellington Wimpy,

the

the salty, epic speech of Popeye,

or the cursing cackle of the Sea Hag,

Buck Rogers

Phil

Nowlan and|Dick Calkins

1932 / 1933

John D;lle Co., 1932

185

[427]

[428]

couc> cojTWX 6(awnv

fcWOO&M tD UUOV A 1.0TC*

><oj

voo SuftCiv

C001.0 ^ASC
-^ TMe*^ T06CTUEP

Tarzan

Edgar Rice Burroughs and Harold R. Foster

1933

[429]

187

Flash Gordon

[430]

Alex

Raymond

1935

PH! I SEE FLASH-OFiOER TVt

FIRST COMPAMV OF L/WCERS
TO CHARGE. COLOJEl-/ J
\r-^

ALEX
RAYMOND

The

:*
Da ?ARKCV AMD A RECWEWT
l^*-*
:" OF HAVWKMEW MARCH TO RESCUE
r-^ FLASH, NK3T KKJOWIKJG THAT HE,
UNDER THE WITCH QUEEN'S DRUG, IS
LEADING THEIR EMEMIE5

FIRST LANCERS.THE GREATEST

FLIERS IW Tl-e HAWMMEN ARMY,

CIRCLE TO A DIZ^y HEIGHT AND, AT
A SIGNAL FROM THEIR LEADER,
FOLD THEIR WINGS AND DIVE ON

AZURA'S ARMV/

Flash is quick to see themHE raises mis sworo

THE GUNS OF THE
-

>

COMeuSTlOM-RAV
MACHINE SWING
INTO ACTION /

WEXT week:
'

cohiat/"

K>ng Feoiurti Syndicot, Inc. 1935

Prince Valiant

mm
SYNOPSIS-VAL APPEALS TO MERLIN.
THE GREAT MAGICIAN. FOR AID IN RESCUING SIR GAWAIN FROM THE POWER
OF MORGAN L FEY, THE SORCERESS
.

MERLIN

ASK.5

POSSESSION

TO WORK

FOR SOME PERSONAL

LE FEY'S WITH WHICH
MAGIC AND VAL STEALS

OF

HIS

HER PET FALCON, BUT SO SWIFT IS THE

PURSUIT THAT HE IS CORNERED AT MERLIN^

Harold R. Foster

1938

L,

IN

THE DAYS OF

^ KING ARTHUR

[431]

Alley

[432]

Oop

V. T.

Hamlin

1935 /1940

[433]

191

NEA

Service, Inc..

1935

[434]

NEA

192

S-

Captain Easy

Roy Crane

1935 / 1941

[435]

CAPfAlM
501DU R Of ^ORTUME
k

ni^JO

THtrKE M.I

Ta.NKETS OP
UII H IM6,*M0

SRA-^iS AfcJb

JADE. OTmeb^ Tviceow 80K NECKLACES ACOU*C MIS MECK.

Li>l60 THAT SOUM05 UK> A BUUCM OF
tOUEALiMS.

MIWOIMG *

i^TTNT
i NEA

193

Service, Inc.,

IWS

[436]

CAPfAlM
setou^^jwuwE
wo HCURS LATER, THE COMSPlRATORS CLUB A SEWTBi!
A cuse imto a powder MAaAziwe, and u5nr

THsajsr

U(SlE CALUS.'COJPUSIOJ.' SOLD:eRS

^LEAP FROM TMEIR BEDS AkJD FIRE
J

ACROSS THE BORDER. TWSEE

/ORE SLAlM.

BLAMES
MOCMIWQ WILD E)43TEMEMT/ EACH COUMTCV
kT^eCTTMER FOR THE OJTRAQE. BAWDS PlAV "HOOPLA
FOR DER czar: TViERE are Parades, speecmes,
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:

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ULTIMATUMS ABE MUHLED BACK MiD FOBJU!

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'OOPSVCASIA BECOMES ALARMED

ILIZES,

Hia6K

TROOP TRAINS.
9

194

NEA

S<rvlc, Inc.. 1935

(^

^PTAIN
dWCE A6A\U, FATE DRAWS EASVS MOBTAL
BNEMy MEAR. ON AWOTHER OF HIS (OEFABWUS
M1S610WS, DAWSOM DISEMBARKS FROM THE:
CHOONE 'OUEEW OF THE MAY "

Little Joe

Ed

Leffingwell

[438]

^^^^^^

TftKE IT

EASY

1938 /1941

White Boy

Garrett Price

1933

[440]

New

York Ne

[441]

(-

197

New

York

Newi

Synd'cote Company,

Inc.,

1933

Toonerville Folks

oh!

v^as

that

-rwe TRoi-Ley

WAgON

Jr.

1930

car

TMOOCMT THAT WAS A

t-UNCH

Fontaine Fox,

TOONERVILLE
FOLKS ^r

FONTAINE FOX
SUNDAY, OCTOBER

A Bad Risk

TOONERVILLE FOLKS

5,

1930

Fontaine Fox

198

Fontaine Fox, 1930

Thimble Theatre

Ebae

Crisler Segar

1933-1934

[443]

199

King Features Syndicote,

Inc.,

1933

^WM
/"

[444]

MMOH&

IKXro EITHER VTOP

GOOF-/ WV^NTIOtft 0 WK D_ftl>THeB.

;

n NOT

^rrs

(V

GooFv:

MMJvcuuV

A RW THW UJIU.

CftUSE f\ PERSON
TO CiROW eftCKUJftRO
IS NOT Sial-HDOR.

weiu. ^Re o aoMb

TO TrtAT POKER GtSHE?
COME ON. ITS LATE '

^eEwiM6

SOMETIMES

^TWr4&

iLUSisriaii:^:
CUT OUT STftCE ANO FILMMW<E SLITS WJ>*6 OOTTEO

UNES Ot* SCRE6t*jCtV^N66

HAG

HEADS

ffy

MCWlNCl

THROO<iH SLITS

FILJ-V

.^Sids^ti^
SM VOOTBE NOT CiCHHrt. TO
N POKER GAME ftNOj
IS ,^

<

THKTS AU. THWt

TO

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TO RN f^l IW EKTION
_ >MEM> M. 0 HERt,

IF

u*wr 00 care;

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1

\UJW TO PUAi POKER ILU

00 n, Shvv ?
1

Thimble Theatre
BLOU ME DOWN, OC
BILL BARNACLE!

VIRM

/ COUNTED
/^TWENTI-SEVEN
I

LATIK 0 THE
SuSt GIAO R IN Towrv.
I FLOOR.POPt*OlONT ViE HOME FUN
S LIKE -OL TIMES.
LAS NKittr
EH
HOW
.

MANV
TOOCiH

C> King Faoturet Syndicol*. Inc., 19^

200

[445]

/'rvE

GOT TO "^

AVJ, DON'T 8E 40
TIMPERAMtHTM..

JHtRE 14NT f\N

EGG UjnmH
MlV-tS OF
HERt

r8t61N>*lN&
I

ou

mmmf^^
COT COT STWat MAD FlUM MAKtsuTs M.ON& ocrreo
l.lNEi>

HO.TIUO

ON SCRtEN

CVtfvNGE. HEM)S 9V MOVINCj

HV.M THROOCjH SV-ITS

ANOTHER SHOW
NEXT UDEtK.,

TMIMBLETriEATRE.

^iS:

^ MOVIES ^

:i

_CL
enO
King Feaiucei Syndicate,

201

Inc..

1933

[446]

<S)

202

King fvalvtvi $ynd>COl, Inc,

19;

[447]

203

[448]

King

204

Ftolum

Syndlcolt.

Inc.,

1934

[449]

SWIM TO SHIP

^V)W BWN&
MEN BACK
^^fc.

VW^Vv

HOUJ

(BE6lNN^
I

THt
MAGIC
BOTUE

MfflMHSfer^
CUT OUT STfVit MAO FIV-MMAKE SUTS WJte DOTTED
UNES ON SCREEN- BRING
DIFFERENT HENIS OOT OF
TWE BOTTLE eV MOUINt.

Film through slits

^NOTrtER SW!W next week

TmimbleTheatrl

a MOVIES

jg^

^"3

P
if

PftST6

TO

205

King Feofurei Synd-cate,

Inc.,

1934

[450]

WOTA<,N02ZLE tf*JENT60
A ptUL THAT SHR*KS

MATTER- THE

[^(iVNNlV46^

P11.1..

AFTER OlSSOWlNt..
SPREADS THROUCH THE
SfSTEM Af*0 ACTOAlif
CAUSES THE ATOrft TO
SHRINK A RMJIKnoN
THROOGrt Te PORES
Of THE SWr* CAUSES

THE CUOTrtlNCa

NOSE^

MiKfian:;; r^^
Cut Out stage ako F\lm
mf\k.e slits alon& dotted
on screen-chpin&e
NDSES BV f-o\)lNCi FILM
lines

THROOOH SUTS
ANOTHER. SHOVU
NtXT UJEEK -.

TO

ThimsleTheatrl

_^5^

MOVIES ja
ILL GET A SHEET OF >
PAPER AND TR-( TO

Kbut hes so
'SMAVL to MASH

AH! THERE
HE 15

IF

PlCki

T151E0 TO J

SKOOT

it

ONDER

HIM OP

O'
A HOOSEf L-f 5EE%
SAPPO ANOCKCES
TO MAKE A MEAV
OF HIM-

^^

GONE' MA-( NEVER. FiNO^

HIM (\&(MN BECAubE HE b
GETTlNfa SMALLER EVERV >
MIHJTf.
1

,^.
H'^

PASTE TO
I

Co^iTl^^oEO ^*EXT

a;EEK

pPPOSlltftLn

Thimble Theatre

(S)

206

Kinfl Feolurai Syndicoi*. Inc.,

19)4

[451]

Thimble Theatre
mtHl

THe DOPETTHt SEA HfviS GOON

I _ SUll-6 TOPOPeiESiuP.CM'loRtiUJlMPyoMO
T-nJ RSTuRnS to the P\RM6 S vSSEL -TWE ooon
1^

^UJIMS BftCK-TlE^POPe-<E kJHiLt ME l^$LtePlNC

OEL>UEB^ HIM TO THE Sef.H^C3- OJIMPV

LEARNS TKftT THE OUO HA& H^S MftNV POONOS
OP FROZEN Hftr-\6URCiER AdOARD
m PLATTeR^ KtR ArVO
(KK.0

S" FAl.l.% IN L0\* HJITH

Him- POPEVe GETS lOOSE.
AMD STARTS TO CLEAN
UP TrtE CReiU. BOT
lower*

HE SEES

UMMPV

KISSINC)

The SEAHA& ME

BECOnESiuEAHENeO

U;iTM LAUGHTER ^0
CANNOT FIOHT TMt

Pirates ujho scuart-

UPON

HiH

King Features Syndicate,

207

Inc.,

1934

SCPPO ESCOPtO

[452]

CROM JVX. SP'OERS

WE8-B0T HES
FftH

BEGINNING \

FROM

MfvKt
Lif^ES

tiLM

SOMEiUMAT

UtartTER TKf^N
BOOV. SOT
HEftUV ei^OCjH
tti4

TO DO O'^MACiE
P*0 UJ^tE

OO voo SUPPOSE,

SAPPO IMAOS -rt^'. RiortT On

TOP OF "iSUJifE'S NOSE.

A ^UOOEN DRtvFT PROM uf^iOtR THE

OOOR CARftlCa rtlM H^tiH INTO THf '^i^^

iM^CiNE mtRTlE GRiEViNC:

HERE
_i
ftND
UJt SEE A
Him Sitting on heR noi>E- PftftT OF MRS.
of course. she doesnt
SAPPO'5 NOSE
'^NO SftPPO
hnovj it noo does he.
FOR HE IS NO 8l6(iERTHW< Mft&NIF.ED

AN

<r

6000

HtfMJENSl ^

ONE THOOSWO

AOlJLT

GERM

TIMES

AND

IT

PROVES TH^T
HE REfti.UV
IS

SITTING

THERE
OPr^^nt f H.M

Thimble Theatre
TOUiMR WtMPV,
BUT BEFORE ACCEPT 1
AS A CLOSE FRlENO.J
1

LIKE

VOO MUST
PRoye you
HAv/e nervej

OH'. 60&0 HEWtiS

/ ' I'M NO
/
UJMRT An A96yT .il-'r^ 1 \ KWROERES.
^
TO OC'. MERC-/.' );V(^?*i. :>j-
niUOOVONT BE All A^'''^
RltKT TO
^J
_ ""
-M
:

BtnehO

A^tlSv

'iV\-'>

ftfAD

PsLCMio

^\LM-

DOTTED

O^* SCREEN-MOVE
THROUGH SUTS ftNO
5tE Popeve SHOOT THe
OOCKS - ^^NOTHtR. SHOUJ
NEXT UJ&tK

KM

C0NT1NUM.V.V"iHf ftae

FOft HER. MUSBf>sNO

'

CUT OOT STfvGt

DOST PRBTicLE^

S50J PAST

iiij:i:iiaii:ferPftSTt \

5i

Mrt(n\.t Hftb LITTUt

\7ou
HOW PROTESSOR.

iNTtRtST

THKT SMtLL NE^/eR SEE

IN

WtR.

*.HD RlCaHT

Tmi ^VOMENT X)WN

JOHN AO^^^^

WHW
CfvO'SED

^NO

tS

[453]

itijgRiianiife

VjOf*OEa

00

S^PPO

IF

SHEt)

CUT OOT STft&E

SWE

MAKt

CLOTMCS
TO SHRlMW.

tJJELU.rtt IS
STILL SHRlNKINti.
HE IS IsiOuJ

ANOTHEft

THE.

OOTTeD

SHOW

NEXT VJEEK

MACROSCOPIC
LAST UJECK (^
POCF OV OJiNO
l^NOED Hin ON
His ujifes Nose

-*s>.r^Tj^^si^

M FILM-

SLITS ftLON<>

LINES ON SCRtttA-C(><6t
^tTlo^^ Bv kovincj film
THROUCsrt SLITS

HIS

HECK OF IT l^, HE'S ^

SMAatft E\ftRV

ATEf\ftlSR0LUNC3

GETTirHCs

SECOND-

HOW

FIND HIM'HOUJ
)
IBftlKCD HIM BACK?/
I

TO SAPPO

Y^
CAN

CftN

M-(RTltS NOSE
SetMS TO BE
.

.^ N

ft

HUCsE.

Sft?PO

COf^S UPON ^ SKIN

PORE- A

N..

SEEN

MH&NlFltD'3.000' TIMES

><^.l

TINV HMR, Cf\N 6E

IN Tcit

Mft.GNIg-iE.D

BACKCaROOND-

/QOOQ' TIMES

-THE TEftR

ABSORBS
SAPPO AND

INSIDE OF TEhR.

SftPPO

SUMMM*N6^<^W&l.lF6

TO St CONTtlNOEO

Thimble Theatre

King Feoiures Syndicole,

209

Inc.,

1934

[454]

King Features Syndkol*,

210

Inc..

1934

/ ALU Hfi^OS

GET W.ON0 SO u-ieaj

HftGGv

IS

eecAose

KtLL

THE

HOW VOO 00

OF MftSCULlNlTV ANOy
VOO ARt THE ACME /^

ON

f^f^T'.

[455]

OeCK'.
CP^Re

OOKT

n. aOT

ofcTHlH:

^^^

OC fCMtNlNlTV.
LIT i

Kft\;e

iiij:i:riaii:R:

etbiNNiCHCa

popve
I

COT OOT STAGE AuO tn.H_

SUTb ALQNtjOOTTfO

Mf\KL

hE^Os qv movin<j Film

THftOUGH

SV-l"T^

ANOTHER Shoo;
NEXT Lueei^-

r^

ThimbleTmeatrl

H MOVIES

jSl

Bill eAR'^tv-L'.

PASTE TO
OPPO-iiTC

211

King features Syndicote,

Inc.,

1934

[456]

UJiMP-y

aLIJ!l2llllli:^!
CUT OOT 6TA6t '\kO PlL(-\S
SL1T5 iM-ONib OOTTtO
LINES ON SCReeS- MAKE
OLD UJiMPN EAT SPAGHETTI
Sf PULLING FILM OP THROUGH
SLITS TRIM BLACK LiMES
FROM PiLMS '^NO PAST
-

CUT

Mf J

Pit

RM

U.MEl^Of*

RftV-

RftV

Irt

THE

"

lb

UtftU't

TOO UjOUtOWT

INVISl&UT* TO fKl.L KIHD^OF AHlHPiLS

P^HO "TO AtL ASIMAL PROOOCTS SOCrt Pi's - WOOL Cl-OTHlNti - SlLK'

-1

LEMHtR. tTC - J
,7J-N.-^ SEE-M^M>MS^
1

OOUT IRtTOTeUMt ''Ou CAN fAAKE

A PeRSOlNVftlBL.t.
liJONiT USIEN TO
SOCM TAUK-VOU
LC^T VOOR ARM^-

- I'HEf. LUHAT S
(lOlTrt

>
(

Twe

t>RAPes

HANGING

KNOUJ

OtTAltS

AND TOUT ^

(NSiOE
JFlNO

iNviSlQluTV IS Ari
lMPOi>SieiUTY

'it*^-

hh:

mEm; MtH!
hw. heh:

tAtH'

f>^iii/

Thimble Theatre
AW

LET EM SCRAP SALTV

LE'S GO ON OCCK AN'
Clean op the rest of

THEM

SUi^ABS

Me

-rKer-A

TOGE.Tt^eR

[457]

213

K.ng feolurei Syndicore,

Inc.,

1934

SO "^OO CDHT BEUtve CCOLD

INvEKT RA>-^3 THM UJOClD
CM>4 iNViSl8ll.tT- REMEMBER
UJHEN fOU STUCK yOUR HEf^O

(IF rvE 5T1LV.

TMl^4G UlUTh pRhPE'S

Q"-fo3-R-7J-

THM

INTO
ftftOUNO

SORE-

GOT

iTS JCST

H^

^
ft

INVISIBLE. THKTS W.
f-lf SPeClftL UP'"^.
t-lAKE IT

ITS~
OKM

lieP-ICAN |'Bc6W*lK0 >

S VEELIT

LUiLL,

GOOFV
FACES

VISIBLE

^(t^e^

t\mu\K^.
CUT OOT STfv&E fwiO P\U^MftRE SLlTi ftLONdOOTTeO
LINES ON SCREeN-CH^N6E
PA.CeS 8V MIXING f ILM

THROOGM SUTS
ANOTHER. SHOUJ
ME>.T UjEeK

CAT*

plm

ThimbleTheatre.
;

me

L]

poker

MR^SAPPC- IHtRt'S

5APP0 COOLOHTr^'SAV,
%T0P -OU- ^

?^*VSOA
SEiNCj in

R5ft.

IS

MO

MOVIES

'

VOOR.

SED

DOMT TEH.)^

HER eo</7^~.

OPPCSiTe PlLM

Thimble Theatre
HA- WMCr^ v-Z-PV iS

Hf CAN corr^w

f*

SCAPED
rashit

<

214

King Feotyre* Syndicate,

Inc.,

1934

[459]

^ iij;i;waii:feY^

BlOlNNl^4G

COT OUT STft&L WAO f ILMMRKE 5LITS AV.OM6 00TTEO

U5E ^)OfT
ftLC^K.

LINES ON SCB.EE.N
CHANGE HEPOS 6^ MOV/lNCj
Film through SLns-

(VMO FINIirt

ftMOTHER SHOW
-NEXT IDEEK-

_1_L.

ThimbleTheatre.

MOVIES

?'

_LL

WE'LL

PM

0-,

lOuJ

ft

v^-

fp

rn^

V.
_LL

pASTe TO
'tlridiUir rv.

Cm-

Aoii-

Thimble Theatre

Kmg

215

Feotures Syndicate,

Inc.,

1934

[460]
[StGlNr^NO
I

Ui>e

SOFT

Bl-ftCK.

Pencil ano
fihvsm faces;

1^

i^

iLij:i:ria;K r^
COT OUT STftCE

WO FIVJI.

fAM<.t SLITS fvLONG

LINES

ON SCRtEN

DOTTED

Change heads By mov/inCi

FILM THfiOD&rt SLITS
ANOTMER SKOU^
fSEXT LOEEK

ThimbleTheatre.

1^

MOVIES

^<
-LT

.v<>

PASTE TO

Thimble Theatre

King Fealurai Syndicol*.

216

Inc.,

1934

[461]

1"
r
!
UX>OL0NT JMSgSS^^S^^
\\WyA,V
ON THIS I^^^^^^^^S

-\

'1

rii

'

[462]

Wlt^PW.

VA KSOW

UJHfVT

THE euftSTEO SEA H^CsS

GONER DO f-HftH'. SEED

SPlNftCH TO THE GOON
SOS IT KIN LICK MtjW
ftN' If THE GOON f-:XZ
LICKS ME THE rV^

'

yO^T^

Of HAG UJILU
GET ALL Of r*~A^'?A5

[4631

cP\c^e^G

King Features Syndicote,

219

Inc.,

1934

t464]

220

King Ffroturei Syndicote,

Inc.,

1934

[465]

THIS WttH. DRWgi) CWE PlCTORtS OF PtTG /COM OK,K>D'j

IN DlFf ERENT PO-bES
CiET vf^ f\ XJFT

PENCll.

ft.N'

DRhvo PvTCKtRS

tt

!>1

[466]

1^

**

"^

St3H

*r^~

222

King Feature) Syndicoi*.

Inc.,

1934

poPevE'5"

VOOR

UJiFE TO

r^ V^LC.THfb AND

[467]

'^-"^'^it- .-

303333:^^013]

A\.L

rv ftttN UJAIT1N&

FOR NiNETV YCARS

50 TneOE SURELV
OUGWTA Be ONE.
AvoNG PeRTtxrrC-

Thimble Theatre

223

King Feoiures Syndicote,

Inc..

1934

[468]

King Featuri Syndico'r. Inc

224

1934

riTO]

Thimble Theatre
THE GOON

IS

6S i^9ntb s) / LISTEN, itai.

NOT

'POPe,v&'5'

[470]

aaacdiPDszE

A CaOT TO

PcT FACE.5

**

EM- ^

1-t.P.R.M
5i.

226

TO

Dftf>MJ

^ t/ ttt^ei-^aeO-.iF vA

King Fotur*i Syndtcoi*,

COT A <

Inc..

1934

'ft*<rf.KiDS.C>tTl

227

King Features Syndicote,

Inc.,

1934

[471]

[472]

POPL^LS CARTOON

&I.VJ&

(0 King Footurcs Syndicot*. Inc.,

228

1934

ArtQW,BKL*).TO

DM

UJC got ftKOTMtR.

*\

IP

>A GtT*i ATAV

ShOUJ TOUU.S

HOUj TO OO

en UP

iF

EVJERBODV

Do Right me''
ujOolONT be
MUCM TROUftLt

ON THi*.

ol:

tAPT'

<S>

229

King Feorures Syndicate,

Inc.,

1934

[473]

[474]

King Feoiursi Synd'COte, Inc.

230

m
Shadow Shapes
in Moving Rows
Extended Narrative

in the

Sunday Comic

Daily and

Strip,

1928-1943
doubt that a day-to-day narrative continuity was attractive to the
thirties and forties. It was hard to find a simple anecdotal strip among the daily comics. Such strips as adhered to a daily gag pattern
Carl Anderson's Henry, or the Disney-produced Donald Duck, by Al Talia-

There

is

little

reading public in the comic strips of the

ferro, or

J.

Millar Watt's English import,

of story strips.

ing

Up

Even

the

humorous

strips

Pop

stood out oddly among the multitude

from the twenties and before, such

as Bring-

Father and The Captain and the Kids, turned in the course of these two de-

cades to story lines with carry-over subsidiary characters.

New

daily narrative strips, with the

most graphic pretension

to realism,

included

The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician; Briggs's daily

Tim Tyler's Luck; Forrest's Tailspin Tommy; Godwin's Roy Powers, Eagle Scout; Fanny Cory's Babe Bunting; Zane Grey's King of the
Royal Mounted and Tex Thorne, with their various artists; and a number of others.
Ritt's

Brick Bradford; Falk's

version of Flash Gordon; Young's

Characterizations, plots, and dialogue tended to be stereot>'ped; the aim of the

narrative strips
girls

was

who paraded

at the

audience for boys' adventure stories

new

although the leggy

through Mandrake, Flash Gordon, and The Phantom probably

drew some interested glances from adult readers too )

There was a good deal of genuinely inventive, sharply original, and often captivating narrative, serious and comic, among other daily strips of the period, and a number of examples have been selected for inclusion in this story-oriented section.

Notes on strips in

this section

Alex Raymond's Secret Agent X-9 of 1934-.35, based in part on scripts by Dashiell
Hammett, reads as freshly and forcefully today as it did at the time it was published.

For a long period

adapted

in the

middle of 1934, when Hammett's script seems to have been

form by Raymond, X-.9 was so superbly executed and nar-

in unadulterated

rated that

it

seems one of the

finest

achievements of the story

strip.

The

selection here

[475-478] hints at the quality of the whole. Nostalgia Press has published
X-.9 for

of

1934 and 1935 in one volume.

The Abbie an

231

much

Slats

pages selected here inc-orporate the opening weeks of

this

'

drawn strip, for which Raebum Van Buren maintained a high level of narrative and humor [485-496].
In Barnaby, illustrator Crockett Johnson brought a memorable whimsical fantasy
(or itas the fairy godfather fantasy?) to the comics pages, one which appealed to
both adults and children. Our episode reflects its World \\'ar Il-period origins [505539]. (Dover Books has reprinted the Barnaby and Barnaby and Mr. O'Malley colbeautifully

lections in current paperback.

The Mickey Mouse narrative chosen here [542-643] is dehghtfully topical of those
drawn by Floyd Gottfredson between 1930 and 1950. It is full of colorful incident and
character and demonstrates the kind of absorbing, ingenious, risible comic-strip story
often overlooked at the time by strip readers, who thought of the Mouse feature as intended solely to entertain cliildren. The qualit>' of these early Mickey Mouse narratives has recently been recognized by the Disney interests, and one, in a papercovered
volume by Gold Key Mickey Mouse and the Bat Bandit has already been released.
With the last strip selections in this section. Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the
Pirates, and Dick Tracy, we encounter the sequential linking of daily and Sunday

strip episodes

through continuous narrative, standard practice of the Chicago Tri-

bune-New York Daily News Syndicate through which

uted.

These

fine

Tribune-News Syndicate

years in various formats.

And

Little

strips

these three strips were distrib-

have been widely reprinted

Orphan Annie was

in recent

reissued in the 1970s (with

some minor but pervasive changes in episodes that originated in the thirties. Terry
and the Pirates is being reprinted from the beginning by Nostalgia Press and the first
three volumes are available. Vintage Dick Tracy has recently appeared in a number
of forms, including a paperback series from Fawcett Gold Medal Books.
)

The Orphan Annie selection included here may surprise many individuals who had
assumed that the Harold Gray strip was an exercise in sentimentalit>' and political
It was a work of a much higher order of narrative imagination than
Gray devoted the majority of his waking hours to researching, writing,
and drawing Annie, and he told an often gripping story with a variety of strong characters. This one, the end of a much longer narrative, is one of his best [644-672].
( Dover Books has republished two Annie narratives from 1926 and from 1933, as orig)
inally collected
and somewhat condensed by the Cupples and Leon Company.
Most of the reprinting in recent years of Chester Gould's detective strip, Dick
Tracy, has emphasized Gould's relatively fanciful work of the forties, with its amusing galaxy of grotesque villains ( Flattop, Pruneface, and the rest ) Here we draw on
his often savagely realistic material of the middle thirties, the pursuit and dispatching
of Boris Arson. Gould's delineation of the character and the environment of a type of
midwestern desperado of the period (for example, Cutie Diamond) is exceptional, as
is his handling of the Indian officer working with Tracy, unusual and interesting in

conservatism.

most

Hardcover anthologies which

draw on Little Orphan Annie
(daily episodes only),

Dick Tracy

(again dailies only), ToonerviUc

The Gumps, Bringing Up

Buck Rogers have appeared recently enough still to be

Folks.

Father, and

found in "remainder" bookshops

and on bargain tables.

strips.

the context of the time [688-715].

232

Secret Agent X-9

Dashiell Hanunett and Alex

Raymond

1934

[475]

[476]

[477]

[478]

King Feoiures Syndicate,

Bringing

Up

Father

George McManus

Inc.,

1934

1936

[479]

WRCTTE THE OEAN OC THE COU-ESE

THAT OUR SOKI WAKPTED
TO QUTT
ANO THAT WE WERE C0N>S10EQIJES.T. HE IS COfAlNS
S2!iS' iil?
tgae TO SEE LTS- KKJCW HEU. TKV
TO COMV1I.JCE US (OCT TO OO ITI

SO-OCH.

WkMT VOU TO SEE HIW t^

CA.M'T

(^

233

George McMonui ond King feoiufei Syndicate,

Inc.,

1936

[480]

WE MUST

FIX 1*5

SO*MS

HE ers
&ACK FPOM COLX-BSG>^'S SUCH A voME ecrrRooA e(=ORE
l

VrfAMT HIM

TO PESU

e
[481]

King Features Syndicate,

Inc..

1936

HURRV TO TVE STACTIOM

ANO *AEET OUR SOKL AS KKOW v-e
WH-U BE LXADSO COMM WITH HIS
eootce AKo stuoes. i-cui- meeo
SOME 1-El.P
yCXl kWJST

[482]

[483]

[484]

<)

234

King Feoturct Syndicot*,

Inc.,

1936

Abbie

an' Slats

Raebum Van Buren

1937

[485]

[486]

[487]

[488]

[489]

i.

235

United Feature Syndicate,

Inc.,

1937

{-HE AINT FOOLIN'ME.' HE HATES

IT HEPIE, ALREADY BUT HE WONT
LETO/V. SO-/ GUESS
l-l BETTER
NOT LET ON -HOW TEmiBLE

[490]

MUCH- WANT
I

TO trAY.'-)

TH- BOY

[491]

[492]

[493]

[494]

Ci United

236

Fwtyrt Syndicat*,

Inc.,

1937

[495]

[496]

Gene Ahem

Our Boarding House

7]

Some taV ue>eX loeex

cuRikis

VoUR LUklCH HOUR, BBoP

iii -tW RummleV art eAa6y
To see Aki EXHiaiTioKj ot=

600FV MoDERti Asr.' Ttl' MAJOR

HAS ekiTeRED A sfArue hs
MABe OF -PLmV, tMat looks
LIKS Me BID if

U)HI1.E

He

FAaiJa

STAIRS
ABE PtAVlJa A 6AS 16 WORK
A lOAT> OP lAUtSrtS OFF oJ

TJOWkJ

(Jlir

Atl^

EXHlBlfiok),

S'POSSP Ta CotAB "RJOM

Arf

in

His

Ke'^

Jusf

aJ' see o-/

ru

TH''

Bcflfl

<*^

okJe

Vol)

MaV

WIVlD

LA1I614

peSK SERSEAjf
>lro

LETrill'

ibJ-Piir

iJT>

SotAg HAf/

Tor -BAIL /.

so

<X^

0\)ER TH'

~vixeu

I'll

MV

COMPOSURE

"FiJlAjJI.

MAklASER ,
ms
Work: is usrei>

HAVE

Vol)

AkId

'.

IT

IDEST,
SHoUlT>

TiJE

IT

Face -* South-

east

'STATUE UliflL
THeV TtN To
SELL iT Tb MS,

MASTERPieCE,
tVlE STATuc //_
"

TAClJS

TRAJCES, All'
START -RAOlOS

BESAltl

HEAJEtJS; MAlJ,

14IS

iJTo

TMoie

ARTisTic

1937

Inc.,

1929

GREAT

DoiJ' (f

foR A LAUSH,
H ?
WELt,

UP -TbVkJ' To

United Fealore Syndicate.

(7UICK,
/
TURkJ'iT ARoU>lr>,
3EfoRE vou caJFiise
IT'S

ART vJlBRAtiokls/

aJd The sTaTue

MJST

-REST o4

AiJTiqJue "RoJe

vJEUVET/
oHiTHiy
IS

Au)T=UL

NEA

237

Service. Inc

1929

NEA

Service. Inc.. 1929

[498]

[499]
Art-ri-

MlSTAlR VIlSTADJ,

-I AW OV^ERCOME

'

MeVL

JoV/
AUARD

VOIZ

WlJ SRAkJ'
OT -FlfTV DoLiAlRE, AllP 26

SoO

l^AvJE

TiRST PRiie

OkI

VqdR VAR

STATlIE

MASkll'FlQLie.

ART MODERJE

OP

KISSES?

ZE JURV 'PROCLAIM VOUR

STATUE AS BEST WAkI OV
ALL E^HiBiT weeTH MilChl
MERlT '-I SALUTE

NEA
[501]

yes siR,->>-rriE ouRvar

M01>eRJ ART CRlT-iCS
VoTEO The Tirst pbize
oJ mV S-TaTuE, AdD
AvOA-RBeP M6 # 50. Iki

/ iJouJ, ur

CASM
HEAR

>)faJ

.'

THAT uliu. TiT

AiJVBolW '-~~-MEAklTo' SaV
,*xl CAU ulOiTE
VouR tJAnE
uJder mike

aTYemPT To

E6AP /
TuRYhiePMORE
,

YheV said MV STaTuE

"fte

VoU
owl

_~

COULD

Bom

"FT

M -M - UM - A_ 6o
EGAD, OM"- Z-zz- <
I MADE *85. out'

yuJn

<SF

Twe -DEAL WITH

Sfylite

mV

HErf-HEH-MEH

AM-.60lZ-7-z^_
enT Tme
AJof

madam ^^5^

LEARU fHAf r HA\/e

Ho/_^v4_

M-H-.

"''- oo

Akl'

3li)6

NEA

WoO'RE
A "BEllD OU
A SEklioS '

liou)

TAKiklS

T,

(smj

TRSeY Vod MADE

TMAT UieHTMARE
sTaTlie Just fbn

:rtEC(f '.

THey HAIL ME AS
A (JEtJlUff /,

Service. Inc

NEA

Stoil BiS
CtRTAlljLV 1

SloD SCREEcMiiJg,

'"Sig;;

l l^y
Took 35.'oijT OF *oo TtocKer/.^ '
BflPkJ

\
://

'

OlOL

TMAT'5

a Wirt's P0101LE6E
/
SlklCE TilE DAVS OF THE CAWEMeJ,
\ ulHEki Wn/ES Ficsr sEuJED pocxers
/ OJ CtJlJMP HUSBaOd'S TiGER-SKiJs ',

BeAuTV/
TIiE otJLV
TIME i PaV A<JV
ATTEkJTioiJ ro
VojR
CoJUERSATioJ, IS
iDHEkl -fed Talk
iJ soiJR
Sleep

XWRlkiG VotJI? jJaP

I
1

<

Ev/etJifciG,

Talked

"ibd

SATURDAY
ikl

v^joR

Sleep about <seTTiKjG $85. Top

A STaTuE,
y(J|, v/oj hem-mw-p
wiTh sJopes, twat I SMouirij'T
TiiJd out about iT'r

(^^

_~

*u'eE luckV
I DiDkj'T TAk-E
AUTWE MoJeV,
AlJD SET A

NEA

Service. Inc

1929

;
s

W^ //- TilTeRiJg I
A MALI'S
WHILE HE
'

1929

Pocket
SLUMBERS,

llJPEEP THE
IS
SlU <* SiklS', lb
MW WAW OF ThiiJkiJg.'
AvJd were
I
A JJDGE, With a
Wife ARRAieoED
BEfoRE ME Okl TMAT
MOkJSTeoUS TELOklV,
E6AD, I WOULD

IMPOSE A SEllTEklCE

OF

"SilEllTV

WEARS

//

MOUSE -IfeAP ;,/ (

Ikl
youH ,
'

S NEA
-;

Service. Inc

1929

u)haY a Rime
HMf
AUlAKEklljG Vod lOiLL
HAVE, MV SlEEPIiJG
,

1929

A UUGH., Akl'To
RiB TrilS
MODERiJ ART
CRATE ;
VoO
DID rr To PRoxJE
That Aiiseopy
CodLP po iT /

?_

AlJSEtb'S

utiMlsrAK-ABuE

lOoOlf OV GEkJiUS '

AWiRk- THAT, -^

^nc

SAS/_J>oiJ'T

DoESiJV m6* J
AklVTMlUS
it's
A T?uBBeR TiTlE

To-DflV,

SCO'P? TtJA-r,

WAS

lOORD fiEvJiJS

TU'

Se.-..ce.

what

V'gOkJJA
pa^ him off.
\k1, cash,'

AT?e

Service. Inc

1929

Barnaby

1943

Crockett Johnson

[505]
N//o,

Bomoby. Hwett

again tonight! Thai

saw ft 01 / fitw

Intriguing

Dork night

light*

wf hfm!

in th9
Jtj$t

Gloomy
.

old mantton

window

Wind howling

. .

tht sort o' thing your fairy

Godlalhtr findi itfuttibh

^Ooh,Mr.O'Mall9y

itl lightt fiathing

...til

hav to tolvt lhi$ mysttry, m'boy.

Nobody
I

ffvti in fhot
aki ruined hovt.

II

-^

v^

Mom ...U

it

all right for

me fo kind oi look

around in that hauntod house vp the road?

ss:
The Joeksoft p^oce? If$
nof hounfed, Bornoby.
Peop/e soy fhor obout of/

!5 Field

II

Svf yov stoy owtry from

it

ffs too

Thof right
ff you're curious obout
if yov con invettigato H when some
.

one thing, ond H you prowl

around in a ramthackh building by
far, for

yourtoH. you'll

tall

and got

hurl

\\
. .

o/der, responsible person

it

with you.

o/d deserted bvtfding*.

H^lloJai-.
I or* <Mi ovr

My f oiir eedfarlwi>rand
lovte'
way to a hauntud fiovM'

M
^^

Of course / don't wort of fraunting

houses, littlo girl
f don't work of
onything. Fm, or. rotirod. Not thof
ail my humanitarian ond scienffAc
.

infereefs don't

And at present am engoged in o

I

heep me occupied

danger an
a curious psychic
a haunted house.

mission fraught with

irrvestigotion of

phenomenon

in

Mr. CMalley is aduatly

going right up to the
front door and gain...

Publicationv 1943

is:
Olmy.Mr.O'MaHcy. Mom
tayt I con 90 wrfh yov.

[506]

[510]

[511]

[512]

[513]

[514]

..

[520]
f

m torrf

<oul<in'l

Do yo ntod onyf hing?

Mom to

ptnvode

Did
up th 9ult room tor you
yov ^p wcfJ hre in rh ce/lor?
.

fix

And
V#iy wtH, /onii yo
( hod f h iov(i*sf dfoami.

Pop'i foofhbfusli. Of

O'Moffey Air f xpress Compony.' Here's

'Morning, Sornoby.
your bog, Gus
.

No. And I won't have you

going toalolot froub/e.
Your Foiry Godfothtr is
geffing my bag from tho
hauntod hous*. Ihavt
ovo/ything in H fU nod

chains, c/*an sheers

Field Publi
C,.f" l3>.M^itli n ii.M

[521]

Af /osf o break in fhi$ baling

COM of rhe havntod house.' A cfew.'

Ah.'

This b*g

IX

bog o< coWee?

Certainty, Bornoby.

This
But I ahalt vanquiih rhe Ihnd
communiry will fee/ secure once more.
Chifdren will go peace*u//y fo fheir
.

/ittiebeds

Obviously, m'boy.

A coffee fiend!

AndGus wi/f beobfefogo

bock fo his haunted house, vnairaid

Now we know

ihe fype o* evi( creofure your old

fairy Godfather hoi pitied his w'rtt
A diabolicai opponenf.'
agamsf
.

^c)

[522]

(/ Itn copi oboirt rfiof Co*m

rt. <Jd (lountW txwim, Mi. CXMoMty?

ShouMn'f wt

Hn6 in

CoW In tfit poDo? TfioM burtfhnlt

When /ovr f oiry Codtoff Uonlhm tom7
Honn, toinabyl My ^alhlkt, baM<< on
MTtiof?

my 9xhovsthf ttudy ol trlm /fforofuro, show

rfiof

b* glod to inok> Q
formo/ cortiploinf onrf

rll

rh

mystoWM Mivd b)r coppora can b*

cminrod pra<ficaffy on fovr

fjfno flngor

. .

Field Publicotions. 194

(ve ore fo flr*d out what tha fiend h

cfumsy pof Jcemon
vnwHtingty Informing him of our intent.
.
No, m'boy. A problem like this caffs

If

vptawe can't have any

.

for the brilliant anafyticat brain of

on

Augusfe Dx/pin, an Hercule Poirot, o

Doctor Ihorndyke, a Nero Wolle, or o

f hifo VorKO

iucUcy I'm here, aren't

we?

Field Publicafion?,

[523]

H
J_

Gvt is very onidoui for you to anafy>*

what the fiend il doing in hit hauntod
house, Mr. aMof/ey ... Did yov find out?
OhgosK'ooA ...Hele/ios^eepogoin.

ff

rve thought of a hidJrtg p/oce for that

important eviderKe f unearthed
fn
cose the Fiend in desperotion, attempts
.

to rogain H... brittg the

bag

upstotrt

he searches the house

H, naturally he'll rip

the

woodwork

Then

he'll

s/osh rhe upholstered chairs

artd pry -jp rhe Aoor boards
So I shall put il where he'll

never expect

ir

ro

Who would expect ro find

a twenty-pound bag of
Coffee on a pantry theW?

down all
looking

firti,

far secret panels

for

be hidden.

^
[5241
White we're fn the Aifthen, omofcy,
/ t/iink o bit of bodi/y nourishweni
mighf aid my ar>alyti<ai thinUng
on that hounfed hovae myifeof

Whot Ivckl TufM nthi

AiSfcorfocANofmeeof
fmtt Fairy Godfather, 'Allmentory, ory
Get H. m'boy? A devef
dear WotMn'
.

pun

Ho/met

said,

"AUmentary,

my

w9e tttavght

tt

wrot

itty

Aome,

o* course

frfertd Professor Moriority,

oitfy the light of

my

Arte

who ofwoys

Havaf*a

Field Publlcaiions. 194

He dedwcod ft ... If was dork in the (order

at hh Baker Stroet flot. Tou see mv good
there, forgot his fontern tfiat night arid

Iralii feorff

19<

ota

Mr. (y/MoOeyf I know how yov

con fir>d out whor the fiend
Is doing in the haunted houtet

wond

^^

^^^Ir

hold Publicolioni.

242

19'

Yt. d eouf, my faiiy Godfath*/*

Handy Pocfcaf GuM* tWf* how to

Th*n you tan 90 righf Info ffw

haunted hou$m and find out

VQnqulth fiundt ...rll look In thm

"^anqviMhing of: Demons;
ind9X

what rh* fitnd it doing th^fl

Jvtt wova yout magk won</ of
him and mofc* him CONFf SS.'

tvil Spirit*" tfs

an

IhHng

o/p/abf Jcof

Hn!''fi*ndt, pag* 2$."

And Cor9'i

company and
vry probob/* fhot

insurants

rh po/ic think if*

thoM gongiferi who hav bn ho/ding

vp fh coffe* tiueks hove headquorfsn
And that fhM
tight in this vicinity
ton* of stolen coffe may b stored in a
.

house right

in this

very neighborhood

Cif,.llil

IMl rmU

^bicfkwM

Yot/ro, mr. conHdent, aron't you, O'Malley, that nothing can

powbfy go awry? Doar mo

bvf

keop

focallirtg

What a

thing to think of now,

yovr sura fhJng of BWnfonf whan

Stop worrying, Gus

.1 have my fine Hovono
Oh, THAT
warni in roadiness and my thumb at the page of my Good
fairy Godfather's HarKiy Pocket Guidebook on which ora
rha magic words for vanquishing alt type* of fiends
.

--JP

[530]

Ws a vBPf good thtng Mr. 0'A1o//ey, my

Foiiy Godfaf her, couM grvt such a ffn
Green, wrf
dneriptlon of o Fiend
o fong foi/ with o hooic on it and red
Otherwise / wouldn't
fining eye*
Juiow whot fo focJi for in this house.
. . .

[531]

fm looking for o Wend

He's got o long tail and
my Foiry Codfother it

going

to

vanquish him

wifh his mogic wand.

do with
What will
Ihit Krewy brot. Boss?
He $*0n all them bag*.

MM
Field Pi.'blicQiions, 1943

[532]

See,

fcJd.

'til

all the coffee

old joint

down here
tomorrow when we move
we got hid in this spooky

IVe got to fceep you

in the cellar

...

So you won't

tell

the cops.

[535]

[536]

[537]

[538]

[539]

245

Field Publicolions.

1943

The Bungle Family

[540]

Harry Tuthill

1936

[541]

247

McNouohl

Syndicote,

Inc.,

NY., 1934

Mickey Mouse

Floyd Gottfredson for Walt Disney

1935

[542]

[543]

[544)

^ VtS, INDEED, Miss COW, ^^

^sO^ERE AlNTA aAL MERE \
Wy ^ pi CAN TDUCM VEl ONLV
,^
WlSHT WAS M3LJNG
J
^ //^'JVy\ ENOUtSM TO STEP /
/

Wolt Disney Enterprlsei, !935

10U SHOULD

[548]

H*iVft

KNOWN BETTER

{0UINCH5
lONSTD

CLARABEU-E
HAVB SOT

TM WMOLB
-TOWN

THAN TO TELU

CLARABELI.E THAT
SOUINCH IS CROOKECl^

ONLY \t)U KNEW

ANVTMINa ABOUT
women!

IP

TALKING!
HIR FRIENDS
THINK TMCREiS

A CATCH
IN

IT

BUT THEV
CAH'r CONVINCE

clakaselle!

[549]

[550]

[551]

[552]

CAN'T

vfe

(ty

249

\^BLn:

ELI

rr^ .such a >

Wolt Disney Enterprises. 1935

[553]

[554]

[555]

[556]

ICKBV
TWcT S(jiNC

BUTT>.I!?e\

COULO BE
soMe<>V< IN
THT -nnjNK /

-THAT ttouV

o^ vAiAjm
AMOHa XKE
RBUCS OP
c.An^aeu.b
eANOm<TMER.

WHEN e^lNCH
WOnV OPKN
IN

He

MlCKmV%
I*

OP

auvs
IT

>VOUlONY

KNOW HAD
ANY VALUE,

[560]

dARABCLLE
RESENTS
MlCKffS
SUSPICION

OF SOU INCH
AND INSISTS
THAT ME
UOOK
TXROUGM HER
SRAHOfATHERS
TMINSS,
HIMSELI"!

[566 J

tMOOSKT

WE BentR

OM, MERCIFUL SOODNeSS!

.

MERC MS

SOMfc

VBS, ITS MSUF?

MOirtBAaE

OOUfiHT IT F??UM
TM bank! now
WILL Va TALK

TALK OVW?

WAY

"IbSET HOLD

.TURKEY?/

OF VDUR
SRAN'DAOS
solo"

[567]

Wolt Disney

HAVBItJU

rhally

@gIQUINCH
HAS

sen-

PL AN?

""^^

aoucvfr uc>
CLAKABELLlk

Enterprises, 1935

I'm ooiN'visn'

TO oia ui iwin
aRAN'ChAIJ's OOLOl

WHEN I SET
BACK V CAN

USB

rr-ro Pixt'

MorraAsi

OFPTHAT

ANO

wsaobl!

THRCATEN*

HBK wiTM
UNUBSft

SHE

MARRIES
HIMl

>t'

''what 1

[568]
TrtJlCKBY

TWUL.S

HORACa.
ABOLTT
60UtNCH
ouvit^ta

CLARAOELLES
MORTisAae

OROERTO
K>RCH HBR

IN

-TO atvk

MlM TME

treasure
map!

Wolf Disney

Enterprises. 1935

[572]

[573]

[574]

[575]

[576]

[577]

Uisnev Enterpriiei, 1935

253

[578]

[5793

IT LU

TAKE A

COUP-wE O'

DATs

"TO

Put THAT CAN

<?UNNiM'OROEl?.'

[581]

[582]

HAD AN

lyA>CVDENT?i

^HAVE V
SEEN An

AND
^ORACK

ON V^HAT

8BEM6 A
HOPELESS
PURSUIT

OP THB

VILLAIN

PLANE

S'
1

2P\ OVER
fY\^ERE?|;
'

REPAIR

CAR AND
BET OUT

Y^

AIRPLANE /

Several

HOURS
LATER

[590]
)ICKBV

AMO HORACm

ARKPORCED

TO USE
"me STOLEN
POU&E.
MOTORCVCLE,

AJSTEH
PHTt AND
QPUINCM

oft: in

HORACe'S

car!

[591]

[592]

[593]

[5941

[595)

(D

256

Wall Diinty Entsrprt

WA'AL.AtioRBiM'-ib the
WlR fRUM THE PO" LEECH
T

YDU ainT TME

FBLLER5 WHAT
TME
i.

MOTOR,

CYCLE

^^^^r

()

Wall Ditny

Entrpriii. 1935

258

/^ P^BTB AND SQUlNCH "X

ARC aOlNTO &e AWFUL
(
A DISAPPOINTED "TMAT
*i^,we DIDN^ FALL FOR/

[614]

''

MICKEt' AND
HORACe TRV

TO

HURR^ Uf'
WHERE DO WE
Dl?^

t=lNO

THEIR.

v*\-l'

OT= A
MAZE OF

OUT

TORTUOUS
CAMVbNS^
PETE ANO
SQUINCH
ARRIVE
AT THE.
PUACE THE

BURIED GOLD
IS suPPoseo
Tt>

BE

uocated;

[615]

[616]

rTME MAP S/Vr-STHERElS \

A SMALLEI* TREE
'

'

[617]

[618]

[619]

260

Wolt

Diifiey Enlorpriii, 1935

[620]

Bnra&ed and
HUMORCq
S&CAuSE.

ILL-

Of" -TMSIR

FAILURE

TO FINP

THE BURIED
SOLD.

PETE AND
SPUINCH
START A
OUN BATTLE
WITM MICKEY

AND HORACE!

Woll Diincy

Enli'.prno-.,

1935

*\1
\JjoAce
MOLDS PETB
AT bat;
MICKEV
-TRIES

-TD as-r
WHINP HIH

UNOBSERVED.

Walt DisneY Enterprises, 1935

[621]

[626]

[632]

[633]

[634]

[635]

[636]

[637]

Wolt Dime/

263

Enterprises. 1935

'NOWTHEN, MISS HIGH ^/ OH

AND Mier&Y, I w^NT J INDEED')
My MONEY -mAT THIS YVl""""^
MERE. MOfTTSASE

jy

//"vT^

Little

Orphan Annie

Harold Cray

1938

[644]

HM-M--GUC>CES
PLACE SURE LOOKS
DESERTED - BL\NDS
ALL DRAWN- CRASS
IN THE YARD A FOOT
HIGH--

FUNNY WHERE

HE COOLD HAVE GONE

OR WHY-

^Jhree

weeks have supped bv

since tvwt fateful hight oh

which uriah cudge, the town's
leading citizen. put on his hat.
pocketed a loaded pistol. and
went out "for a little walk'- "out
of sight. out of mind: thevsaf
how true- already pubuc interest
j

in his

whereabouts

is

almost nil

Chicago Tribune-New York Newi Syndicor,

265

Int.,

1938

--

[645]

AND. 'CEPT FOR HIM.

GUOGE MOULOK BURNED
DOWN TK HOUSE WTTH
US IN rr TH/rr -hmeHE1S SURE A REAL FRIENDANO ALWIWS DOW SOMETWIK
THAT NEEDS DOIN-

LIKE RLLIN'

WELL. FORE SOME KID

Fax INTO rr - too hard
WORK FOR ANYBOOV ELSE
BUT NOT FOR SHANGHAI
WORKED AS IF HIS LIFE
DEPENDED ON fT-

/fsrtri -"

J Chicago Tnbune-New York News Syndicole,

[646]

WELL. DRAG

SCUPPER^MY KEEL FER A

SON OF A SEA-WTTCH!
SUJPP1N'

SHANGHA\

-SHARK". IVE GOT

A CARGO OF RKXT
PRIVATE BUSINESS
WONDER COULD
WE HfJS A UTTLE
BUSINESS SESSION
OUST YOU AND ME -

SHANGHAI. I
WE GOTT I
PLACES
I

HERE OUST
MADE FBJ
SECH-COME

WHERE
DID ^TXJ

LEM/E

SHANGHW?

I* GOT" OFF DOWN T

AT THE WATERFRONT
1

AND HEADED INTO

TW TOUGHEST. MOST
ORNERTV DIVE

1647]

VES-HTS THE
SORT OF VITAL
PERSONALITY
HIS
PRESENCE FELTAROOND- YV WQJ.. HE'LL SOON
OOKT VOU?kl BE BACK%. /

CEE.

SURE MISS
f.
HMnN'
SHAHQHAt

WHO MAKES

HE SAIOHES EARNED A \*:AT10N

MY, MY- ALL THE THINGS
HE'S DONE-- HE SEEMED
lE'S
SO CHEERFUL LTEi:<- HE'S
TURH.^H
BEEN SO SORT OF TAOTURH.
UP UNTIL OUST THE
PAST THREE WEEKS
OR SOFRIOAV.

^H

BUT

ACTED AS THOUGH HET>

FINISHED SOME BIG OOBFACT HE SAID THE
OTHER DAY HE FELT UKE
A MAN WHO'D DONE HIS
BIG TASK AND COOLO RETIRE

Inc.,

1938

GUESS

WE D ONT HO/B TD
WORBY ABOUT THAT

OLD iEA- GOING

WILD-<AT- HE^ DOE
- FOR A VACATION AND
',

MEANS TO

HAVE ONE.

IMAGINE-

Chicogo Tnbwne-Ne/^ York News Syndicate,

LATEL-Y HE'S

IN

HAt HAI

i)

EVER StEN- HOPE

HE KMEW WHAT
HE WAS t>0*'-

'

THAT OCO

-f

Inc.,

1938

HMM"
HIS

BIG

'WHOrO DONE
TASK AND CCXXJJ

RETIRE"
THATS SC3RT
OF A FUNNV REMARK TO
COME FROM HIM, ALL THINGS

C0NSI06REO - THAT COULD

MEAN---HM-MM--

[648]

[649]

[650]

Chicogo Tnbune-Nw Yo'k Nwi Syndkot*.

Inc..

1938

[651]

MIDNIGHT- UITTLE ANN\E,

BLESS HER HEART. SLEEPING
AS ONLY TVTOSE WITH THE CLEAR
CONSOENCE OF A CHILD CAM
SLEEP- BRAVE. LCrtAL LITTLE SOULHOPE sHen.L Ntrr think too lu. I
OF ME" GOOD-BYE. MY CHIUD-,

WEEKS HAVE ROLLED BY USTLESSLV

STNCE OUR DEIAR FTirErND. URIAH GUDGE,

'OUR

PUT ON total obscurity. OR WHATErVER HE DID TO DISAPPEAR- ALREADY

HE IS UTTLE MORE THAN A MEMORY
TO MOST- WHERE DID HE GO? WHY? HOW?
APPARENTLY NOBODY KhWWS AHU AFTER OKE
MONTH. NOBODY SEEMS TO CARE SH-H-H

267

Chicago Tribune-Now

Vofl:

Nws

Syndicols,

Inc..

1938

[652]

A JOB WELL DONE - AS POR

RX< -TO STC ft BTTBUT NEVER WAS Or "TO TARRY

W^ MY *Joe WAS CX)NE - CAP>*
ALDB1. SUEEP1NG ON T>C HIU.- HA',
HEX) ENJOY THK- HE WAS ALWm^
ONE FOR A GOOD JOKE - PERHAPS
SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW, HE KNOWS-]
fE. rro BE

ROU.

MIS

ROLL REALLY DOWN TO RlOl

OH. I'D LCWE TO ROLL TO R
SOME OM BEFORE I'M 0LD1'
AHOy, THE'f^'

MISSUS. FOR ROSE AND JACK, OR

LTTTLE ANMIE--THEY CX3N~T NEED
OLD SHANGHAI - NO - PTS TIME
WHO
TO GO. AND I'M OFF
CARES WHBE? ffT" LAST I'M FRffi

AiGAlN

DOWN- ROLL OOWH TO RIO-^

[653]

_
LOOK IN
W THE
BorTOM

TK PUCE GOT A
NOMYMOOS lETTtH- I
rr SAID -LOOK IN
I
TME BOTTOM OF THE I
OLD WEU--- GEE. A
rrs GOT EM QOIN' n
ABOUT CRAZY- /
1

irYEAH

YES.
ha! Ha( I'LL SAY
AND
KS
HE DID- WTTM ROCKS
HE
AND OLD IRON AND
lENT
EVEN
A FEW BAGS O' CEMENT
SODDED
WHEN NO ONE WAS
WHY. HOW
TONS
ANO
LOOKIN",
AND
CAN THEY?
f IT
:ar f
TONS O' DIRT- CLEAR
SHANGHAI
. TO TH' TOP

OF THE
OLD WELL?

J^

^S

SCHOONER*

AND OFF TO SEA-

SAID

THAT

Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicole,

BLTT

WHY irEH? HWE

IT-

THE OLD

OH. BOY' THEYT?e

I WELL? WHAT
MEMBERIN LOTS O' TKJ COOLD BE
THINGS SHANGHAI
THERE"?

SAID

rr

O REMEMBERIN"

FORGOTTEN?

1938

WAS THPT Niorr when

ACE GOT KILLED, TK NIGHT
JOST BEFORE TM' MORNIN' ,''

Tl-WT SHANGHAI STARTED { EH

FILLIN THAT WELL, THAT
MR.
FOLKS SAW THEIR LAST i GUOGE?

WAS SO FOLKS WOULD LOOK IN THE

FORGET IT. -STEAD
BOTTOM OF

VOL)

Inc.,

'.

NOW-

O'

MR. GUDGE -

[654]

Chicago Tribune-Nev.

Ji

[655]

IP MY
WE BROADCAST
ALARM ALL
\
THEORY
RYIS RIGHT
OWER TVC COUNTRY
M
FG
lAlF-l
WITH THAT PEG LEG
WTLL
HA/E HIM
HE CANT GET FAR
THE
BEFORE HE'S
NEXT TEN
PICKED UP

THIS

IS

THKT

TOUGM

WATERFRONT

THE

DIVE THE TRUCK

DRIVER TOLD OS

LOOKING PLACE
L

ALL RIGHTWE'VE BEEN

SEEN- COME

SHANGHAI? SHANGHAI
PEG? ONE-LEGGED BIRC
NOPE. NEVER HEARD O'
NO SUCH SWAa- BUT
LOOK AROUND - YOO
DONT NEED NO SEARCH
WARRANT- MY BUSINESS
IS A OPEN BOOKHEY STINGER-

^H

WELL. WELL- BEEN

Ov/ER EVERY INCH
>4
PLACE. EH?

BUT
WE

HO' ho! YOO COOLO BE

RIGKT, FRIEND-

9 KNOW I
I SHORT MEM'RY- FERGIT ME
ND S HE WAS I OWN NAME. ONLY IT'S
M4D VOU AINT FOUND
H'
HERE r TATTOOED ON ME STUMMCK
HIDE NER HAIR O' TH'
iKIN'
SCOL>REL YER LOOKIN'
A WEEK
WHAT WAS TH' SWAB'S

C MY

GCTT

I
I

FER? CHKl CHK

,A

THEY OQnT Wirz\

NO ACCIDENT

MINUTES

ALL

^
WATER UNDER
T
^ HERE
HAVE YE STEP

[656]

SHOW THESE ^M aye! this

WAtY- WATCH
HERE GENTS
AROUND. STINGER-' YER STEP- GOT
AND BE SURE
A MITE O" DEEP

*'

NAME AGAIN? PEKING 7

COME ONWE'RE

NOT

GET-TING ANY.

WHERE HERESHANGHAI'S

NOT HERE OR
WE'D HAN^
FOUND HIM-

HATTE

BOARD MEeee-

Chicago Tribune-New YofW Newi Syndicote.

WELL. SO
SORRY YOO
GOTTA PUSH OFFDROP IN AGAIN
ANY TIME - IT
AINT ALWYS

"whew! I'M
SWEATIN' ICE
WOTER-THAT

LONG. MATES-

ON A LOOSE

OUtl.-HEftE-;

PLACE GAVE

ME THE CREEPS-

WHY, A MAy
COULD DISAPPEAR
IN

THERE AND

Inc.,

1938

YES- RIGHT
YOO ARE-BLrr
LET'S GET
BACK AND ea

HOW THE

DIGGING

IS

COM*NG ON-

[657]

Chicogo Tribune. New York News Syndicate,

Inc.,

1938

[658]

Maw

Green

Chicago Tribune-New York Newj Syndicate,

269

Inc..

1936

[659]

EH? VOO SPTf

YOO DONX BELIEVE
GUCGE IS IM THE
BcrrroM of that
OLD WELL-TVe<
WHSiE IS HE?

[660]

[661]

[662]

[663]

[664]

gj Tnbun-Nftw York Nwj Syndicate.

Inc..

1938

[665]

Maw

Green

Chicago Tribune-h4ew Vofk News Syndicate.

271

Inc..

1938

[666]

[667]

VEAH-

BOTTOM OF THEWELL.m"
UiST AND THi3!E---ONLY A
MET?1. CftH. SEALED, AECRESSED
TO JUDCE SILAS BUTTON

YES-

AM

FAMILIAR

FAIRLY

WTTM THE

CASE AS EVERYONE

!BUT
WE
FOOND

KXTRE JUST

TYPeT>rl
WOULD BE FOR f
THAt eiqTVB? -

I
I

FOR YOO.
JUDGE

KCREABOUTS IS.
BEUEVE--HA\ HA'.
BUTTOMNO CORPUS OB.ICT1QOITE A DSAPPOINTMBfT
TO THE MORBID
DARE SAY
I

I
8

THAT
METAL

SHANGHAI. THE

EH''

?1

OLD PEG-LEG
PRINTED THAT
ADDRESS -WETJE
CERTAIN O'

COMT AIMER?

MMM-M---

MY NAME, ALL

RIGHT COO
OOO INDEED-

THAT-- I'D BE
CAREFUL WHEN
rrS OPENED

nonsense!

rrS NOT HEAVY

AT AU.---HERESEE YOU HAVE
I

TOOLS THERE

O.K.--Y0U
HOLD IT. CHIEF

READY---OPEN

UP AND WEU.
HAVE 1^ LOOK-

rr

WHILE CUT
THROUGH THIS
TOP END-

AH-H-H--

THOUGHT SO-"
PAPERS- -DEEDS
TmjES - HM-M-M'
AND WHAT-S THIS?
WHAT--? GREAT
-

GOSHEN". THIS IS

SOMETHING-

[668]

[669]

[670]

[671]

c-Nc* Vofk Newi S/ndicole.

Inc. 1938

[672]
IT IS. PRINTED
RX.LIN THE PAPER

HERE
IN
'

I,

URIAH GUDOe, OF
FREE WILL.

MY OWN

CONFESS THPrr

PLANNet)

AND DIRECTED THE MURDER

OF CAPTAIN CALEB ALDEN-"

HE GOES ON TO CONFESS
HOW HE THEN GOT HOLD OF

NEARLY ALL O F CA PTAIN

ALDEN'S PROPeirrY--HE
EVEN TELLS HOW HE HAD
HIS MEN KILL THREE OF
JACKS TROCK DRIVERS

VNTI-CUMAX? PROBABLY-- CERTAIKLY IT

WAS A TERRIBLE DISAPPOINTMEHT TO

THE MORBID ONES WHEN DEAR MR. GUDGE
WAS NOT DISCOVERED RECUNING AT THE
BOTTOM OF THE OLD WELL- ONLY Aw
SEALED METAL CAN FULL OF PAPERS
WAS FOUMD THERE BUT WHATT PAPERS
'

Maw

Green

Chicogo Trtbvne-New York News Syndicol*,

273

Inc.,

1938

TerT>-

[673]

and the

Pirates

Milton Canilt

1940

-ajjgg_

^X...

r^a^.A^'

HPAPn

^^S

C676]

[677]

[678]

[679]

News

275

Syndicote Company,

Inc.,

1940

[680]

News Syndicote Company.

[681]

WE SHOT POWN THE

CAIC SICINMED ONE,
VOU ALLOWED A
WO/MAN TO RUSH
OUT OP THE HOUSE
AMP CARKV HIM
AWAV

IN

CAR.'

Inc.,

1940

HE 15 HERE.' TXE HANPSOME ONE^

WAS ABOUT TO POLLOW HU SHEE.TD HELP '
HIS Y0UNi5 PEIENP
BUT TWO 6JCH
MAP CASHES COULP NOT BE 60 U^JKy.'
TD
THE PEA60N
HE IS TOO SAUUABLE
LAPV TO BE WA6T6P THU6... SO I
JUST
STeuCC HliM ON THE HEAD
^HARP ENOUSH TO SAVE HIAA PDR
. . .

PirrWE REPERENCe.'

I?

[682]

Newi

Syndicate Company.

Inc..

1940

[683]

[684]

[685]

[686]

277

Newj

Syndicate Company,

Inc.,

1940

t687]

avs;-

News

Syndicot0 Compony,

Inc.,

1940

In their early days [the comic strips had an importajit function! as

a form of crude but vigorous satire at a time when American literature
in general was saccharine and imitative.

The meaner and littler aspects

of American life amd character were lampooned in the funnies long before

Sinclair Lewis discovered Main Street or Babbitt .

And strip pictures

caricatured U.S. manners and mores at a time when the motion picture had

Mary Pickford, America's sweetheart, as its fairest flower.

Corrupted

by neither a literary training nor a literary tradition, taking their

material from the life they observed around them, the comic-strip artists
presented a series of extremely pointed (and fundamentally ill-natured)
comments on the American public, which promptly roared with lau^ter and
came eagerly back for more,

"The Funny Papers," Fortune

278

April 1933

Dick Tracy

Chester Gould

1935

[688]

CO

AMAvD, AR'30M-SMA>P

HERE
SOME TO

C3UR. PICTURE ST*^^^1D1MC

Llt4E TWlS. U.BZP THAT CiCAJJ. IM -touR.

MOUTI-t.TORA.

I'LL

S>EMD

THE PAPERS ME>a TIME I'M IM TCrv^M.

Uk.& POR 'EM TO PRIMT COOP
PICTURES OP ME AS LOkJC *>.<=>
TMEW'RE PRiwtimG TMEM. ^!Ti"i\
I

\^JHtKJ-

DO

Sou TMIM^C
OP- OUR CWAMCES.
TRACS? THIS
COUkirRWS
CETTIMC VJILDER
\MITH EVERW
r^lLE

THIS IS OME JOB ^

WERE GOIMC TO SEE

THROUCM RC^T THERe WtU. BE t40

.

TURKIIKIC BACK
TILU THE ^RSON

OOO

IS

CAUGHT.*

Chicago Tribune-New York Newi Syndico'e,

279

Inc.,

1935

[689]

cof^& oar wEAE awd

SWOOT TWROUGM 7W6 SWviE
BULXT MOL JuST FOR
I'Vt OJUV
PRACTICE'
kOsiocxED rr oe* tvu^t
POST owce iNj
I

FOUR VEAJ?S

[690]

[691]

[692]

[693]

[694]

rork

News

Syndlcols,

Inc..

1935

[695]

281

Chicogo Tribune-New York News Syndicare,

Inc.,

1735

[696]

guioeo BV VH.IOW>OHV, OtCK

TRACV, P PATTOM AJJO TH6
INOl^U HAN'S OSMe TO THE
.

VERV DOOR OP

CL)TI6"
DiAjvtoNDX Hiosioe c*>/e.

[697]

[698]

[699]

[700]

[701]

Chicago Trtbune-Now

Yoflc

Nwi Syndkote.

Inc..

1935

TUB PIRST CA.VE DOOR, DO< TR^CV OBSERVES TMfc

TWO WIUDCKTS CuAROiKlG TME REA-R ROOM OC TME C*.s/E WW6i:?E
BORIS A^kJD TORA AJISOM AJJO "CLITIE" DlAJ^lOMD AJI.E: IM MOIMG BUT BBPORE WE CftJsl PLAJO A*JS ACTOM/CUTIE" SPRIMGS TO TM6
IMMER, DOOR OP Tl-te C*VE AMD CIRBS k. MAO-IIME CUM *kT
TMB lp&TEC-nV&

CJPeKJIMC

NJLN BW MURLISJC MIMSSLP SUDDiMLV B^CuCwA,RO AJJD PulLIMC TVIE C300R CLOSED, DOES
TSAC-^ AtJOID DEAT)-I, "CuTiE" CXJMTWUES TO
piRE TMROUCM TME OUTER DOOR MOWEVER
AT R6CUL^R iWTERVAiS SO THAT TRAOV AWD
MIS MEW D^RE NOT ATTEMPT 6MTRAMC6 TO
TME CfcVE BUT AT LAST A PLAW HAS BEENJ
.

wORi^ED UP TO DRiVt THE CRIMIMALS OUT.

Ov<1W - QulET MOW

'CUTI6"f BOR\S. WB'Re

.'

GOIMC TO R3RC& YOU TO

.Wt'RE COIMG
TO DRIVE VOU our WITH
CARBON t*OHOXlDE CAS/

COME OUT.

rTH^VET

WANT ^

[702]

[703]

CPS FROM THE

OF THE potice c*kR

iijONOXIDE
EXKAOjrr

oaNC

ITS vwoRx! 'iirne''

D(A>N3.'ZORA.AND BORIS
ARSOM, W! FORCED TO WOTE
THE O.VE.
\s

[704]

[705]

[706]

[707]

()

[708]
S'fcs TO
l~^<5WTN

TMt

Tv.e sec<:jo

cusoa

'CLmt' CMJ^ONO StN^eS

OOAMNG OC Tve CHEAT

BLACK CUtTAJ CatX BEH>MO

g6Xuttj~iS

Am ok* last c668Le ea:oRT

TO v.jfcHD OCC 4E-ViTA8L.e
CAtnuRE. WE kjtE=. TWfc
BOOM JllT>9T DOUWI TH6
MAU. AWO POBTIPCS WIKOSB-C

Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicote,

Inc.,

1W5

[709]

285

ChicoQo Tribune-New York Newj Syndicote, Iac, 1935

[710]

V^ WILL,

Atrrsa ewtERimS TWE WOUS6

AjX> PMOlKXa 'CUTIE'

DIAMOND

IC

SENOJO ML>.^AjsJ Ua.P, DCii

TRACW naES aioc -ra t^je
CA-PaJHE
ST.-L

UO

80RS iiRSOW. W-O

l-o

'^

CAJs) CSET

OC THESE BARS

>S

TWE S6COJO

C'GLiaEO OUT ^
MA' THERE w ARE

IVEGOTTWE

[711]

[712]

[713]

[714]

[7151

<)

Chicogo Tribun-N*w York Nw Syndicate.

Inc.,

1935

11
Cats, Dogs,

Possums, Counts,

and Others
A Comics Miscellany,
1928-1950
This section offers a selection of Sunday pages from some memorable

strips.

The

pre-

ponderance of half-page and tabloid-page layouts rather cheerlessly indicates the encroaching reduction of space allowed comic-strip
first

half century.

artists

But the ample and colorful use of

this

toward the close of the

strip's

halved area by cartoonists

is

sometimes admirable.

Notes on strips in

this section

The

by one

and inwhose Nize Baby, Count

Screwloose, and Dave's Delicatessen are among the most consistendy and irrepressibly daffy of strips. Flowing from one into the other, with some of the same characters traipsing into one feature and out of the other, Gross's strips use names only as
tags of convenience. They are all slices of the great Gross comic cheesecake from
which two dozen delectable books and films were pared in his lifetime [716-718].
The comic strip Felix the Cat was drawn by Otto Mesmer, although it was signed
first

three selections in this section are

imitably individual talents in the strip

by Pat Sullivan

how

all

of the great original

Milt Gross,

field,

until the latter's death. Felix, a feisty, inventive, restless, yet

delicate adventurer in his glass menagerie world, never attained the

following that the charming enchantment

of his

have earned him [719].

Al Capp's irreverent and crudely hilarious

Li'l

weekly and daily

Hejfi

strip,

activities

strip

might

Abner, the veritable yawp of the

was at a creative peak from 1934

are from three of those Abner years [720-722].

newspaper comic

some-

wide

to 1944; the

examples here

was begun when the Hearst chain raised its Simday comic section from sixin 1935, and it provides this wonderful example of what hap-

teen to thirt>'-two pages

pened when Dr. Seusss gorgeous lunacy moved briefly into comics [723].
Abie the Agent, Harry Hershfield's nervy and pioneering development of the first
definitively Jewish strip hero, from 1914 through the thirties, was a subtle, adult work
of humor and unspoken compassion, which deserves more analysis and discussion
than it has received. Here are two examples in the relaxed mood which the strip acquired in Hershfield's later years [724-725].
This

final selection of

Herriman's Sunday Krazij Kat pages [726-733] are from the

great color tabloid period of 1934-44, eight examples of the rare

287

work which, during

the

decade, appeared consistendy in only two United States newspapers,

artist's last

New

the Saturday

York Journal and the Saturday Chicago American. Herriman's

comic work, a national treasure comparable

manence

Daumier's in France, deserves the per-

to

and complete collection in boards, and the dignity of repubsize and color from beginning to end. ( Meanwhile, Nostalgia

of a definitive

lication in the original

Press has provided an anthology,

now

available in softcover.

Pogo [734-737] was a brilliant newspaper adaption, in

and Sunday format, of a major strip which was originated and essentially per-

^^'alt Kelly's

daily

insouciant

the only

fected in comic-book format

moving
medium. Pogo became the first
daily episodes reprinted virtually complete in book form, seinstance of a comic-book creation

wholly and permanently into the newspaper

comic

strip to

have

its

strip

quentially, year after year.

Gus

Arriola's

Gordo, with a cast of

delight in today's papers, with

human and animal

Sunday pages

characters, remains a daily

of e.xceptionally individual graphic de-

sign [738-7,39].

Casey Ruggles [741], Warren

from

May

rative

1949 until

late

1954

and brutal point-of-view

Leone (A

Fistful of Dollars,

Tufts's somber, adult ^^'estem adventure strip, lasted

( and was ghosted

in its later

months )

clearly anticipated the Italian

among

Its

strong nar-

Westerns of Sergio

others) and their imitations on both sides of the

Atlantic.

Krazy Kat, the daily comic strip of George Herriman, is, to me, the most amusing and fantastic
satisfactory work of art produced in America today.
be a work of art I shall not traffic,

having produced,

sind

With those who hold that a comic strip cajinot

Such is the work which America can pride itself on

can hastily set about to appreciate.

has delicacy, sensitiveness, and an unearthly beauty.

...

It is wise with pitying irony

Throu^ them

it

foajn

meauiders Krazy, the most tender and the most foolish of

creatures, a gentle monster of our new mythology.

Gilbert Seldes
"The Krazy Kat That Walks By Himself," The Seven Lively Arts

288

The strange, unnerving, distorted trees, the

language inhuman, unanimal, the events so logical, so wild, are all magic carpets and faery
all charged with unreality.

ajid

192^4-

Nizc Baby

Milt Cross

1928

(716]

NIZE

BABY

lUa

>

Fi.

o*

By

Milt Gross

Count Screw-loose

[717]

Milt Gross

1929

r
OIL!!.

COUNT SCREWLOOSE OF TOOLOOSE

By Milt

Gross

rrr

(B Pr> Publlthins Co.

290

(N.w Ywkl. I9

Dave's Delicatessen

Milt Gross

1932

[718]

Dave's Delicatessen
1

CC-^&.MUKXr C,A^.'
>OU'RE A Pl-A-y-pRCCXiCERS
vvn=E. ^4C?W / vVE. V\UT

TO

n^^E.

TV(e -meA-nirE. ora

PCJR

Tvie.

K.ng Fea'ures Syndcafe,

291

Felix the Cat

Pat Sullivan

Otto Mesmer )

1931

[719]

Nawtpopsr Feotur*

292

Srvict, Inc., 1931

Li"!

Abner

Al

Capp

Alfred Caplin

1938 / 1940 / 1942

AdYicre ^o' ChillLiT^

jLIX

SEE THAT LI'L KID

PASTED HIM ONE

MY KID .
BROTHCR.'J

YfiTIDCflf'-FOR

NUTMIN

by

AL CAPP

"^^c^^^:^^^^^

HAS BEIEN
TRYING TO
HELP HER
SPINSTER COUSINS

MAY AND JUNE.

HUNKS CATCH

A couple: of

CARCTUL WHEN YOU'RE SPEAKlNft TO

OC

H*i)cuNPC)L^T.cwKLANC>.Haimi-^mrrnoim?

^^HOW
KIN A GAL
^m
A YOUNG
G.IT

^^MANI ROMANTICAL
^F^ 'BOUT HER WHEN

7^

THREATENi>
BASH HER V;F

HE.

T'

CLUB efshe:

-fCOME5 NEAR HIM?

HUSBANW.

UNFORTUNATELY

THE VICTIMS

SELECTED, HAIRLESS JOC ANP

LONESOME.
POLECAT FAIL
TO CO-OPERATE-

t.

293

United Feolu^e S/ndtcole.

Inc..

1938

[720]

[721]

LIL
AL CAPP
MOTH ER, OLD THIf3
PREPARE YOOR'SCLF

f!o'

ChiUcm

Chiixuh which holos back each shoulder

dont get nolmd ome5 when they-re oldersevr^tayGeoffSf TAKsry*. s^ff^ h^ula. cmih
IF HER FAMILY IS REAUY
MATTER or FACT,
MAY
MOTHER, OLD BEAN- ARISTOCRATIC
CONSENT TO YOUR
MAVE^f r ASKE^ HER
MARRlAGEr-IF HC.
ABOlTTHER TAMILY
YOU MUST FORGET
YET.'-BUT FROM HER
HERr-MAKE CERTAIN
REGAL MANNER, IM

FOR A BIT OF
A SfOCK.'-YOUR

CEMUC

AayJcTc

IS IM

<0 Unild Fotura Syndicote. Inc.. 1940

294

SISEJ

AL CAPP

G-GULP.'-HYAR'S

FO'TEEN
CENTS,
.

TH-

SAM .'/

ILIUN. DO YOua SCHOOCWORK ON TIME.

OR SOMEDAY VOU rWh' BEG A DIME
SENT IN EST RKHAAO A/LSOK SIOUX fAlLS. j.q

THANK VO'.'.'
TSKr-WAS AH
SHOCKED WHEN
AH

SAW

VO'

TRVIN'T'SNEAK
OFF WIFOUT
PAVIN' ME.AFTER ,
AH MADE VO'
/
INVISIBLE.'/

si.

295

Unit<l rijiwre Sv^orcoi*. Irx., 1942

[722]

Hejji

Dr. Seuss

Theodor Geisel )

1935

[723]

WATOQF has STRANXSE WAVS

IN)

MOOMTAIMS OF BAAKO.
IM LAKES ON) OLD \<XX:ANa TOPS,
WWALES SPLASH AND SPOUT.
0,000 LEAGUES FROM THE
WEAREST sea/
TV-\E

WHAT A
tmis

WHEW.'two
cjOAts that

WEAR ONE.

COMES
MEJJI

BETWEEK)

SnZANGER

1.

It^^^L
AND MERE'S

COUMTCy/^

TURTLES THAT

land

y </-

SOME snjNT, ^ "^^ A *^

^-~>y'A FLOWEK

BROAOCASTING
MUSIC

;C.

Abie the Agent

Hairy

Herslificlcl

1938

[724]

';

MEs. This owe is> from

The Public uBRARy =
l^tK^ SHOOLb 1 RUIN)

SA^AE v;oLUME inJ

WouR Bookcase

hKi FiKie

'

King Fco'yres Sy

c.

T^

EbiTioros?

FtLU^R MWASO Minsk

ft

li

COMlM<i HBE TO BORBOUJ A

HUN^BEC OOLIARS - : CuAflT
^OU 1UX> Ai VJlTWESiES.THAT
I

AMb WllMSV: MBJER. REPAIb ME Fx QOT SBJEM lAllTMEStE^"'

THE OMt>REB *OLV>Rl - ' '^^ WHO SAW ME RETURM
THE MOkJEv TO ABE.
TUlO WITNESSES UJHO SAUJ
I

ME

LOAN HIM THE AAONEy

A WEEK

LATER

(5A\m IT

TO

VOUR HOWOR.TC SMOul VOO

WHAT A LIAR THIS MlHStC
\>-I'M TELLIMQ "VOU NOW
T>*AT I NEVER LENT HIM
,jrVIE MOMEy

\ti

King fca

[725]

Krazy Kat

George Heriiman

1936-1939

[726]

Kmg

foturi SvndiCOTe,

Inc..

1936

[727]

OLE. TT^Xfe'S

rut

~\r

(?e/Mpe<s

4^ Ji^c? ^Ji' ^e.

'^>'

m^.

'^fex 'WV f*'^

'
,

[y

>^ ^^

CouCr CCHG, A(yo

iw^s-A ^/^ppy Dw<H^-

^'^^

[D06e

fOftTJVfe

P0iePU6. Pb&/B

ALL IN FVC>^,

t>AV

/^y^

[728]

[729J

<.vniiiff*m

10^7

[730]

(T;.

King Fcaiufei Syndtcole,

Inc.,

1937

[731]

-**^^^^'*V^-

^4> ._^-.:;.5S)/S.v^v

King feolures Syndicate.

Inc.

1938

[732]

[7331

King Feafurfls Syndicoia,

Inc.,

1939

Pogo

[734]

Walt KeUy

1950

IMVe THE BORKy OF

WHILST

VO' BAIT P060

FEEDS THESE BIRD CHuO-UN'

AN'r TELLS

>OU HOW COME 1 D1?ESCUP LllCe A JACK KAB6it!|

Poil-Holl Syndicate, Inc.. I9S0

'

I
306

[735]

(V Post-Hall Syndlcoie, Inc..

307

I9S0

[736]

PoitHoll Srndicai*.

308

Inc.,

1950

[737]

(ij

309

Posi-Holl Syndtcoto, Inc., 1950

Gordo

Gus

Arriola

1948 / 1949

[738]

f*A 4

Unired Foture Svndicoi.

Inc..

1948

Texas Slim and Dirty Dalton

Ferd Johnson

1943

[740]

Casey Ruggles

Warren Tufts

1951

KIT CO)(...P0N'T

E COOUISH/
IT. .IT WA'S A
J
7UEL YOU ...

YOUe PEIENP

[741]

mm
Little People,

Wise Guys,
and Witches
The Return
What

follows

is

Funnies

o the

a frankly subjecHve, perhaps even cursory, selection of comics, picked

dominant event on the comic pages during the recent past. And

to represent the

much

of the recent history of the comics centers on the arrival, success,

and influence

of Charles Schulz's Peanuts.

The old family strip formula has been turned completely around, for what we have
not a bunch of adults behaving like children but a group of children behaving
like
neurotic adults. And the traditional American "bound to win" has quite often
is

become

bom to loose.
More than that, the influence of the tiny, sparse panels of Schulz's strip, plus the
increasing cost of paper and printing, have shrunk the size of all comics.
So that we
not only see graphics clearly derivative of Schulz's style, but a general shrinkage
in

comics
strip
size.

width and depth. Indeed, the venerable Dick Tracy is but one example of a
drawn so that its bottom quarter can be cropped off entirely, leaving it Schulzin

And some

papers have been

knowm

to shrink all

comics back to a mere two-col-

umn width.
Suffering the most, perhaps,

is

the

Sunday color comic

section, with

most comics

now

available in either a third-page or a quarter-page format, with panels either

shrunk or cropped off or dropped out.

Comics have long had a

flexible format. In the 1930s

instructed to provide three expendable panels.

could become a half-page by dropping

and the Duchess, and omitting

three of

its
its

full

King Features cartoonists were

page of Blondie,

companion top

for example,

features, Colonel Potterby

Blondie panels.

Currently, the different syndicates use different methods for possible squeezing, but
the alert reader will notice herein several examples of the expendable (or expended)
top, whereby a comic could be easily condensed by dropping its top Hne of panels,

leaving

it

two deep

Another

may be

result of smaller panels

delivered,

and often

is

a static quality to

are, in a three-panel

some

except for the dialogue balloons, an approach observable

caricatured Tumbleweeds sequence reproduced here.

Fewer papers using fewer

313

strips also

strips.

Very good gags

format which virtually repeats

means fewer

in

itself

the otherwise keenly

outlets for cartoonists, with the

producing two (and sometimes more)

result that

one cartoonist

in order to

keep up. But more on that matter later.

finds himself

For now, enough of complaints and abnost enough of

history.

humor. Humor, and a gradual moving away from the "soap opera"

dominated the comics pages

"adult," "sophisticated,"

for three decades.

and the

about, and tumble, however,

rest. If it

it is still

United States

is

of

only different

whom

the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. In a major aspect.

chasing spinster stereotype

Notes on

strips in this section

we

all

know from

fairy tale as

fantasy.

The

much

left is

sort has

have
been called

adult on the whole

reflects the

way

to college, sees itself in

Broom Hilda

is,

after

all,

drama

of

the manall kinds.

of comics. Jack Kent's King Aroo

the same sophisticated approach to the naif materials of the

choice of King Aroo strips here

is

Bamaby had done

to a child's

Jack Kent's own, by the way.

influence of Peanuts [742-743] on both Mell Lazarus's Miss Peach [756] and

on Johnny Hart's B.C. [755]

also

it

traditional popular

Krazy Kat had done to the animal fable or

The

less

and

have gone

A short-lived strip, but one much loved by devotees

[744-749] took

is

strips that

contains less out-and-out slapstick, knock-

probably no more or

humor in the past. It

with more citizens, more

than was comics

But humor of that

What

strips

now

given us

Momma

will

be obvious, and

is

acknowledged. But Lazarus has

[759], a comics manifestation of the general consciousness

of the manipulative, possessive mother, be she Jewish or gentile.

half the team, with Brant Parker, of the quasi-medieval farce

What

And Hart

The Wizard of Id

is

also

[757].

has been called the "Mort Walker factory," with Dik Browne and Jerry

Dumas, produces ( or has produced ) Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, Hdgar the Horrible,
Boners Ark, and Sam's Strip. The first three fit into dramatic-comic and strip traditions and the fourth is about those traditions. Bailey is "service comedy, tellingly updated [752]. Hi and Lois is a suburban family strip, but with a not always obvious
element of distaste and even dislike [758]. Hagar, when he is not looting, is as gloriously henpecked as were Jiggs and Dagwood [753]. And Sam's Strip was about strips,
their characters and conventions, themselves. It is therefore a fitting way to end our
volume [761-763].
Meanwhile, there has been Doonesbury [754], which began as a student's strip at
Yale, and was inspired, in its early days, probably equally by Peanuts and by Jules
"

Feiffer's rhetorically

For our omissions

cade and a

314

half,

we

conceived panel cartoons.

in this final

survey

we

apologize. For our brief overview of a de-

hope to incur your enfightenment and your pleasure.

Peanuts

Charles Schuiz

1972

2j,z(zeia)

(imS 11"

ATaeof Two

Cities

King Aroo

-me

Jack Kent

1956

picTUKEi),

MK.EUEPHAKVT?

()

316

McClure Newipopvr Syndicol*. 1956

[748]

[749]

Tumbleweeds

Tom

K.

Ryan

McClure Newspoper Syndicate, 1956

1971

[750]

lOi WHAT'S PIS?i A LILLIPUTAN FRAIL

WIT'CIN PA WOIRSO'PA IMMORAU PARP)
*P16 ROUN' TEARS COURSlU' ONE ANUPPER
POWN CAT INNVCENT SNOOT,
IN mVOUS CHASE"! WHAT,
6IVES, ME CHILE?!

9,28

Lit 0NE,1LDW/

ME T'

VEH...SN00K1E'5 A MITE
URGE FER HIS AGE!... A

INTERPUCE

ME PA^V CRUPPER ^SNOOKlE'YA&e

12)i...SN0OKlE, PEAR, MEET PIS
WEE 0ROAP WHAT GOES PV PA NOM
PEPLOOMO'

HE'S

ONLY
12?!

PHENOMYNON PRUNfrAWUT
PY A ALTERATION r HIS
P'TUITAR/ aANP WHILST
HE

WAS A

The Register

&

Tribune Syndicote. 1971

1751)

PA WY'S CHRISTENIN, OUR OIL

MAN, IN HIS EXUP'RANCE,EMPLOY'P

...AT

A MAGNUM

0'

CHAMPAGNE INSItAP

C PA USUAL CHIANTl POTTLE!

PAPEi!

ECHO"i

Jkl

]M--

ii

ca

317

The

Rttgiiter

&

Tribune Syndicot*. 1971

Beetle Bailey

Mort Walker

1953

[752]

Hagar the Horrible

Dik Browne

King Feoturei Syndicote,

1953

1974

[753]

Yoj'pB
SPECIAL-

OF

AG'S.

iM

A Very

PLACE ... FULL

AMD MYsTeCY..

(^

318

Inc.,

King Feoturci Syndtcole.

Inc..

1974

Doonesbury

C. B. Trudeau

1971

[754]

^Dooqesbury

^(5^^^
ruMKS
FCHK PICKING

t^e

UP...

NO
PROBLEM,
AiACK.
I

YVU KNOU),lve
ACWAYi> kJfiiNTED

TO FtNO our

mAT

A TRUC^

PI?lUR. /S

Uke..

OH, Lue'/zer

pperrr much
THC sp^e AS
ANYBODY ei5t

FA/^TASTIC!
our., you CAN
PCEASe TAkS MF JOIN MF IN
WITH YOU, MR
SFARCH
mua^ pRiveR. MYFOR^
X, TOO, hJANT TO
TRUTH.
FINP AMFRlCA'
/
I

WOL, BA5ICALLX,
ReALCr? AfiE
YOUR GOfidJ> THE r 6USS I'M
SAMe? k/HAr
LOOI^Ne FOfi
eKf>UT~Y ARE yvU
AMORICA...
COOfaN6 FOfi.
IN uFeZi

FINDING AMOilCA HAS

3ecoMe KiNP OF A ouesr
FOR MF. Z" /refi^ THlNfclNe>
it's eoiNe TO bf akovnd
rue NEXT BeND.. but XU.

F/A/P

IT,

T frNOU)

IT.

WFLLFHANKie
BOY, YOUVB

DONE IT
again!

1971, G. B. Tfudeou

Distributed bv Unlversol Preii Syndicate.

319

B.C.

Johnny Hart

1965

[7551

Publiiheri

Newpopr Syndlcote, I9AS

Johnny Hon ond Fild

B.C. by prmitsion o<

320

Enterprisei. Inc.

Miss Peach

Meli Lazarus

1965

[756]

Publiihefs

Newjpop' Synd'COte, 1965

Miss Peach by

321

MeM

Lozorus. Covrlesy of Mll Lozorus

and

Fiald

Nwspapr Syndicoie

The Wizard

of Id

1976

Johnny Hart

[757]

S>>

f\6WT\

>

[758]

Broom Hilda

Russ Myers

1974

mmmm

[760]

The Chicago Tribune. 1974

Sam's Strip

Jerry

Dumas

1962

[761]

SAM, yi>

-iOO

PeowiSE To ^UT UP AlOV

CACTCOO GHA2ACTEK lOHO
SHOUDEO UP F02 TWe

AwyotJE

King Feoiurej Syndicote,

Inc.,

1962

[762]
IT'LL

WHILE All TUE^E

\ ( S^^\..)
OLD CDfA\C dWAEAJTEK \ V^
*'
A2E W(2, I'D SUKE
Lik^E TO JSE ThEU
IM
STS\P

TAKE SOME

THilOKIlOa-,

BUT

A PECSOIO
SAM...

CM

PROBABLY
iOOEK THEM ItJ
SOMEHOuJ

UOITW

AfOD IMASlMATIOtJ

TO

TWifOk:

MV lUTELLl&EOCE.

SMOULD BE ABLE

OF SOME WAV/

[763]

Ktnj

^cMum

S)ndxHt.

Iih

I'^r.J

IB

f.|fM
(S)

323

King Falures Syndicate,

Inc.,

1962

A Selected,
of

Introductory Bibliography

Books and Articles on Newspaper Comics

Note: The editors do not recom-

Abel, Robert H., and David

mend

New York: The

all

of

the

titles

listed

equally informative and factual.

number
ily

as

are perfunctor\' and sketch-

researched, and the data given

are often contradictory. But these

are the best

known and most

available

titles

covered

in

readily

shallowly

field.

Manning White,

eds.

The Funnies: An American Idiom.

Free Press of Glencoe, 1963.

Aldridge, Alan, and George Perry.

The Penguin Book

of Comics.

Harmondsworth,

England: Penguin Books, 1967.

Becker, Stephen.

Comic Art in America.

New York:

Blackbeard,

"The

Superhero of

in

Bill.

First (Arf, Arf!)

Color For a Dime, ed. Dick Lupoff and

Simon and Shuster, 1959.

Them All" (on Popeye).

Don Thompson. New Rochelle,

In All
N.Y.:

Arlington House, 1970.

.

LupofiE

"Mickey Mouse and the Phantom

and Thompson.
.

Comics. Boston: Houghton

Thomas

(with

Peter C. Marzio.
.

New Rochelle,

New

The Endless

Comic
York: Harper & Row, 1976.
The

ed.

Mifflin, 1973.

Inge). "American

Art:

The Comic Book Book,

In

Artist."

N.Y.: Arlington House, 1973.

Literature of the

Art." In

Comic

Nation of Nations, ed.

New York:

Strip.

Oxford Uni-

versity Press. Forthcoming.

,

ed. Series of classic

comics reprints. Westport, Conn. Hyperion Press. Forth:

coming.
Couperie, Pierre, and Maurice Horn.

History of the

Comic

New York: Crown

Strip.

Pubhshers, 1968.

Craven, Thomas. Cartoon Cavalcade.

Goulart, Ron.

New York: Simon and

The Adventurous Decade.

New Rochelle,

Shuster, 1943.

N.Y.: Arlington House, 1975.

Horn, Maurice, ed. The World Encyclopedia of Comics.

New

York: Chelsea House,

1976.

Murrel, \\'illiam A.
for
'

Donald Phelps, one of (he most

perceptive critics of the comics,
listed

Whitney Museum

History of American Graphic Humor.

of

American Art (2

vols.

),

New

1933 and 1938

York: Macmillan,

(o.p.

Phelps, Donald. "Rogues Gallery/Freak Show." In Prose (no. 4),

New York,

1972.

is

here for onl) the most readily

oi>tainahle of his inaf^a/ine pieces.

Robinson, Jerr\
G.

P.

The Comics: An

Illustrated History of

Comic

New

York:

Cushman and

Flint,

Strip Art.

Putnam's Sons, 1974.

Mis other essa\s on the comics ha\'e

l)ei*n

pnl>hshe<l largeU in obscure,

ephemeral, sometimes mimeo);raplied

Giwxis or

little
Till'

niu^a/ines like
Mi/nlfriinis Barri-

tildes.

His work on the .American

comic

strip cries out

for anlliol-

Sheridan, Martin. Comics

and Their

Creators. Boston: Hale,

1942 (paperback edition: Luna Press, 1971).

Waugh, Coulton. The Comics. New York: Macmillan, 1947 (paperback

Lima Press, 1974).

ogizing.

324

edition:

An Annotated
Abbie

an' Slats

[485-496]

began

Index of the Comics

in 1937, its eccentric characters

Al Capp,

who

lustrator

Raeburn \'an Buren

also

wrote the

brother, Elliott Caplin,

who

and

its

strip for its first

to

later

[724-725]

first

by

locale created

draw it. Capp

became a prolific plotter of strips

by

was succeeded as the writer

continued to write Abbie an Slats until the

Abie the Agent was

somewhat amorphous

nine years and persuaded magazine

strip's

demise

il-

his

of all kinds. Caplin

in 1971.

introduced by Harry Hershfield as a minor character

drama Desperate Desmond. Abe Mendel Kabibble appeared

in his

in his

burlesque melo-

own

strip in

1914

as a sympathetically conceived ethnic type, a perpetually worried, fiercely active,

lower middle-class

New

bom

York businessman. Hershfield himself was

Cedar

in

Rapids, Iowa, and had been a journeyman cartoonist since the age of fourteen in

Chicago and San Francisco. Abies success, and

as a writer
life as

Alley

Oop by V.

[432-434]

and
and
and
and

his creator's

and speaker and raconteur, took Hershfield

to

own subsequent

New York.

career

Abie ceased

his

a Hearst feature in 1940.

Newspaper Enterprise Association feature in 1933

lived it as a comic caveman. Then in 1933, Hamlin introduced Professor Wonmug
his time-machine, and that device carried Alley forward to the twentieth century
then backward again to any era where the possibilities for a comic adventure
seemed
for strong graphic design and (on Sundays) the fanciful use of color
T.

Hamlin began

his life as a

promising. Hamlin, a native of Perry, Iowa, retired from the strip in 1971.

Mutt by Bud Fisher began as a sports page

[41-46]
five months. See Mutt and Jeff.
A.

feature in 1907.

He was

joined

by

A. Piker Clerk appeared in the Chicago American in 1904, a pioneer cross-page daily
[47]

strip,

horse-racing background, and the direct progenitor of A. Mutt, above.

Clare Briggs, was

known

bom

in

Redsburg,

for his daily panel feature,

Friend, There's

One

in

Every

^^'isconsin, in 1875. Briggs

which was variously called

Office,

and other

titles,

When

Jeff

was

Its

within

with a
author,

later better

a Feller

and Mr. and Mrs.,

his

Needs a
Sunday

page. Briggs died in 1930.

Barnaby, Crockett Johnson's (David Leisk's) delightful, somewhat literary fantasy of a boy
and his cigar-chomping fairy godfather. Mister O'Malley, began in PM in .\pril 1942.
[505-539]
the feature over to others between late 1946

The author turned

Bamaby was

dropped, to be briefly revived in 1962. Johnson,

He

York, had begun as a magazine cartoonist.

{Harold and

his Purple

he devoted himself
Barney Google and Spark Plug began
[149-150; 278-319]

Crayon and

its

and 1952, when

bom

in

1906

in

New

turned to children's books in the 1950s

sequels). In his later years (he died in 1975)

to nonobjective painting.

as a harassed

husband, an offshoot of

its

author Billy

De

Beck's previous car-

toon work, but reappeared as a sports-oriented strip in the San Francisco Herald-

Examiner

in

June 1919. Barney developed into a widely popular, picaresque rogue of

the big city during the 1920s and the Great Depression era. After a wistful, knock-

kneed race horse. Spark Plug, appeared in 1922, the strip changed its name, as it
did again soon after Barney encountered the hillbilly Snuffy Smith in 1934. De Beck,

bom

of middle-class parents in

Chicago

attended that

in 1890,

Fine Arts and went immediately into cartoon work

Google and Snuffy Smith continues today

Baron Bean was one of George Herriman's early

strips.

in

in 1910.

He

city's

Academy

of

died in 1942. Barney

Fred Lasswell's version.

See Krazy Kat.

[54-77]

B.C.
[755]

first

appeared as a comic

1958. Its author,

similar idea of a

325

strip

through the

New

York Herald Tribune Syndicate in

Johnny Hart, bom in Endicott, New York, in 1931, had tried out a
caveman community in earlier magazine cartoons. Hart began as a

cartoonist in the Pacific Stars

Korean

conflict.

Bear Creek Folks was an early

and

Stripes

when he was

See also The Wizard of Id.

strip

in the Air

Force during the

by C. M. Payne, better known

Pop?

for his S'Matter

[24-25]

Beetle Bailey was the

[752]

first

(1950) of the

Mort Walker, who had already

strip successes of

gag and panel cartoonist

estab-

The Saturday
Evening Post indeed Beetle, as "Spider," first appeared there. \\'alker was bom in
El Dorado, Kansas, in 1923 and raised in Kansas City. He received only a few casual
art lessons, served in the infantry in World ^^'a^ II, and worked as an editor for Dell
Publications in New York while cartooning in his spare time. Walker is also founder
and guiding force behind the Museum of Cartoon Art in Greenwich, Connecticut.
See also Hi and Lois, Sara's Strip, and Hagar the Horrible.
lished himself as a

in such publications as

Blondie was begun

[173]

in

The

strip

Bobby Thatcher, George

who pursued

was soon converted

died in 1973.

[179-190]

1930 by cartoonist Murat "Chic" Young of Chicago as a

concerned a gold digger

The

strip

is

into the

a naive but rich playboy,

girlie strip. It

Dagwood Bumstead.

most popular matriarchal family

series.

Young

continued by son Dean and John Raymond.

Storm's second boys' adventure strip, set standards for graphic style, char-

and narrative invention and pace between 1927 and 1937, after which
Storm decided to discontinue his tale. Storm was earlier responsible for Phil Hardy,
which began in 1925 and has been called the first boys' adventure strip.

acterizations,

Boob McNutt, Rube Goldberg's Sunday-only strip, lasted from 1915 to 1934. Begun as a low-comedy
[157-158]
gag strip, it was converted to comic adventure with the addition of Boob's girlfriend.
Pearl, a rival named Major Gumbo, the twins Mike and Ike (they look alike), and
Bertha the Siberian Cheesehound. Goldberg,

bom

in 1883,

began

as a cartoonist with

campus magazine of the University of California at Berkeley, and was a major

contributor to the development of the comics. Best remembered for his zany cartoon
inventions, he created and drew many other comic and sports page and even editorial
the

cartoons before he died in 1970.

Braggo the Monk was one

[34]

Bringing

locko the

of several alternating titles given to

Monk and Hawkshaw

Up Father, George McManus's

[144-145; 479-484]

Gus Mager's "Monk"

strips.

See Sher-

the Detective.

low-comic saga of

Jiggs,

an Irish-American bricklayer made sud-

denly wealthy by the Irish Sweepstakes, and Maggie, his socially ambitious wife,

began

McManus, born

as a daily strip for the Hearst papers in 1913.

in St.

Louis in

had been a cartoonist for that city's Republic, beginning at age sixteen. Bringing
Up Father juxtaposed his broad caricatures with his fine draftsmanship and sense of
space and depth. The strip has been continued beyond McManus's death in 1954 (although it had sometimes been ghosted meanwhile ) See The Newlyweds and Nibsy
1884,

the Newsboy.

Broom

Hilda, Russ Myers's cigar-chomping, beer-guzzling witch

[760]

married to Attila the Hun),

bom

in Pittsburg, Kansas, in

first

who

claims once to have been

appeared on the comics pages

in 1970.

Myers was

1938 and spent his apprenticeship conceiving humor-

ous greeting cards for the Hallmark Company.

Buck

humanized animal
Yak
See Old Doc
and The Gumps.

Nix, Sidney Smith's early

[92-95]

1908.

strip,

began

in the

Chicago Examiner

in

Buck Rogers concerned a twentieth-century American who awakes after a sleep of five centuries.
[427-428]
It began as pulp fiction, Armaggedon 2415 by Phil Nowlan, and in 1929 became the
first science-fiction comic strip, as plotted by Nowlan and drawn by Dick Calkins.
The feature continued until 1967, the work of a number of writers and illustrators
after 1947.

The Bungle Family, Harry

[163-169; 540-541]

of

Tuthill's penetrating

burlesque of the compulsive and harassed big-city

George and Jo Bungle, has been called one

326

of the

most inventive and

lives

artistic of all

comic

strips. It

born

Tuthill,

began

in the

New

in the

Chicago slums

York Evening Mail

in

1918 as

in 1886, led the life of

Home

Sweet Home.

an itinerant salesman from

the age of nine, offering everything from newspapers to fake patent medicines, while

would carry

trying to teach himself a drawing style that

human

character and relationships.

He

landed his

the Post-Dispatch in the art department in

courses with the income.

He

because of syndicate pressure

first

his

wryly comical sense of

newspaper job

in St. Louis

1910 and took some night-school

on
art

folded the successful Bungles in mid- 1942, apparently

to

make

eight months later and distributed

it

it

more cheerful family

himself.

He

retired in 1945

strip,

and

but revived

it

died in St Louis

in 1957.

Buster

Brown was
[3-5]

R. F. Outcault's second important strip, the adventures of a likable, upper-class

brat, in contrast to his lower-class

bom

1863

in

old Life

Kid

Yellow Kid (see Hogan's Alley). Outcault was

in Lancaster, Ohio, and had established himself with gag cartoons in the
and Judge magazines before introducing his hearty urchins and the Yellow

to the

New

York World. Buster's adventures began

in

1902

in the

New

York

Herald, and, although they were discontinued in 1920, Buster and his grinning dog

Tige remained familiar figures in American popular culture, even after Outcault's
death in 1928.

Captain Easy was (also as Washington Tubhs

[435-437]

II

and Wash Tubbs) the premier comic adventure

in 1924 as a humor strip but soon began its journeys to the far comers
and imaginary world. Roy Crane, whose inventive and innovative graphics
carried the strip as much as did his narrative fancy and sense of pace, was bom in Abistrip. It

began

of the real

lene, Texas, in 1901. In

1943 Crane began Buzz Sawyer, while Easy and Tubbs were

taken over by his former assistant, Leslie Turner. See

Wash Tubbs.

Casey Ruggles was the work of ex-actor and radio and television scripter Warren Tufts, bom in
Fresno, Calif omia, in 1925. Tufts had little formal art training, but his strip work was
[741]
thoroughly professional from the start. He did the short-lived science fiction strip The
Lone Spacenmn, as well as Lance, a full-page art feature with highly sophisticated
color treatment. Casey Ruggles began in May 1949.
Chantecler Peck. Beyond the fact that
[38]

World,

we

it

appeared on March

11, 1911, in

can offer no further information on

Joseph Pulitzer's

this feature or its artist.

New

concept of the rooster, and his name, go back to a whole series of medieval
course, one of

Count Screwloose
[717]

which Chaucer

York

The popular
tales, of

retold.

was one of several zany strips by Milt Gross. He began it in 1929 and
bottom or top Sunday feature until 1934, when the Count
joined the company of clowns at Dave's Delicatessen. Gross 1895-1953) was a native
of New York Cit>' who began drawing at age twelve, and created a variety of strip
characters {That's My Pop, Nize Baby) and books of humorous doggerel verse, frequently in Yiddish dialect {Hiawatta Witt No Odder Poems)
(

of Tooloose )

continued

it

either as the

Dave's Delicatessen began as a 1931 daily and Sunday feature by Milt Gross. In early 1935,
[718]

by Gross's other

favorite.

Desperate Desmond was Harry Hershfield's

[37]

Count Screwloose

first strip

for the

it

was joined

see preceding )

Hearst papers and a direct imitation of C.

W.

Kahles's Hairbreadth Harry. See Abie the Agent.

Dick Tracy was created by Chester Gould in 1931. Gould, bom in Pawnee, Oklahoma, in 1900,
the son of a newspaper publisher, had been a sports cartoonist and had done a movieburlesque strip, Fillum Fables. With his plainclothes detective, he discovered an ex-

[688-715]

ceptional talent for strip narrative and a bizarre, sometimes bmtal, sense of characterization

Dok's Dippy

and atmosphere.

Duck by John "Dok" Hager appeared

[84-91]

locally in the Seattle

Times

in 1917.

Hager had been

a dental surgeon (hence the "Dok") with an interest in caricature until he

from Terre Haute, Indiana,

tired in

327

to Seattle in

1889 and went to work for the Times.

1925 because of blindness, and died

in

1932 at seventy-four.

moved

He

re-

Doonesbury began
[754]

Record

as Bull Tales in the Yale

(named

following year, and

for

paper syndication in late 1970.

York City in 1948 and

is

one of

It is

moved

Yale Daily News the

moved into national newsGarry Trudeau, who was bom in New

in 1968,

to the

protagonists)

its

the work of

a graduate of the Yale School of

.\rt

and Architecture. His

has occasionally been censored by having daily episodes dropped by subscrib-

strip

ing papers for his satiric but candid treatment of politics, drugs, and sex.

The Family

was The Dingbat Family, George Herriman's early

Upstairs. This

[48-53]

Felix the Cat

[719]

strip, in

whose basement

Krazy Kat first appeared.

began

an animated cartoon, the work of Australian-bom Pat Sullivan, and moved

to the comics in 1923. The strip was ghosted by several hands. Otto Mesmer being
as

the most frequently mentioned and talented candidate.

Flash Gordon was the work of magazine and comics illustrator Alex
[430]

born

plot the strip),

New

1909 in

New

Raymond although he did

not

York. Ra>'mond

had previously
worked with Russ Westover on Tillie the Toiler and Lyman Young on Tim Tylers
Luck. Raymond's best work was a unique combination of physiological realism and
graphic fantasy. During the Second World War, when Raymond served in the Marine
Corps, the strip was taken over by others. When Raymond retmned to civilian life,
he began the detective strip Rip Kirby, and continued it until he was killed in an
in

Rochelle,

automobile accident in 1956.

Gasoline Alley began (at
[151-156]

as a single panel) in 1918,

first,

fascination with automobiles. It

in "real time"

as

opposed

to

became

"dramatic"

and was devoted to the country's then-new

which the characters aged

a family strip in
or,

one might

say, "strip time" )

with the

in-

troduction of the foundling "Skeezix" on "Uncle Walt" Wallet's doorstep in 1921 and

The

Walt's subsequent marriage to Phyllis Blossom.

King, was
ist

bom

Cashton, Wisconsin,

in

on the Minneapolis Times

in 1901.

in

strip's author-illustrator,

Frank

1883 and began as a professional cartoon-

Moving

to

Chicago, he tried several unsuccess-

Bobby Make-Believe

( in 1915 ) and then Gasoline Alley. King's gentle continuity reached its narrative best in the 1930s and 1940s. King died in 1969
but his strip has continued and is today done, daily and Sunday, by Dick Moores, who

ful strips until

on

carries

Gordo, Gus
[738-739]

its

Arriola's brilliant graphic fantasy

lor,

began

the

start. Arriola,

in

animator on

The Gumps, Sidney

began

on the

interest.

of a contemporary

life

bom

MGM

in

1917 in Arizona, grew up in Los Angeles and worked as an

He was also the only artist to suspend

World War II and resume it after his discharge.

cartoons.

Smith's enormously popular serial

drama

in

animal

Bloomington,
strips.

Smith was

Illinois, in

of lower middle-class family Hfe,

character,

its

early years). Smith

was

1877 and had been responsible for the humanized

Buck Nix and Old Doc Yak, in both the Examiner and Tribune. When
The Gumps was continued by his assistant, Gus Edson.

killed in 1935,

Hagar the Horrible was begun by Dik Browne

[753]

his daily strip

conceived by Chicago Tribune publisher Joseph Patterson and exe-

in 1917,

cuted by Smith (and sometimes ghosted by others, even in

bom

Mexican bache-

1941 and featured strong characterizations and attractive graphics from

during his service in

[96-102; 128-129]

and

tradition of graphic resourcefulness

who

in

1973 and became an almost instant success. The

looks remarkably like

Browne

himself,

is

title

a sort of cross between an

ancient Viking plunderer and the traditional henpecked husband and father. See Hi

and

Lois.

Hairbreadth Harry was the work of C.

[143]

the age of

six.

W.

Kahles,

bom

in

Germany

in

1878 and raised in Brooklyn after

Kahles had already been a cartoonist for several years

when he

first

drew Harry in 1906. Harry began as a boy hero, but around 1916 had reached young
manhood. On Kahles's death in 1931, the strip was continued for eight more years by
F. O. Alexander.

The Hall-Room Boys was

[35]

the work of illustrator-cartoonist H. A. (Harold Arthur) McGill and began in the

New York American in

328

1906.

It

was

at first a three-column, upright panel, usually di-

vided into

six

frames, and presented the adventures of two of Mrs. Pruyn's ambitious

boarders. McGill later continued the strip as Percy

ami

by the

Ferdtj, distributed

Sun-Herald's syndicate. McGill died in 1952 at age seventy-six.

Hans und

Fritz.

See Katzenjammer Kids.

[7]

Happy Hooligan was

[9;

159]

the classic Irish-American tramp. Fred Opper's strip began in Hearst's Sunday

comic sections
ison,

Maud

Hawkshaw

in

both

New

York and San Francisco

Opper was born

in 1900.

in

Mad-

Ohio, the son of Austrian immigrant parents, in 1857. Opper also introduced

as well.

Mule and Alphon^e and Gaston, and became a Hearst political cartoonist
Failing eyesight forced him to discontinue Hooligan and most of his other

work in

1932.

the

He died in

1938.

Gus Mager's Sherlocko the Monk in 1913 when the American repreConan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, threatened a
lawsuit. Sherlocko was quickly humanized along with his assistant, now called "the
Colonel." Mager discontinued Hawkshaw in mid-1922, but he was later revived as a
companion feature to Rudolph Dirks's The Captain and the Kids. Mager sometimes
did the strip on this revival, but during other periods it was ghosted (as was The
Captain) by the gifted Bernard Dibble. Hawkshaw retired with Mager in the later

the Detective was born out of

[31]

sentatives of A.

1940s. See

Hejji
[723]

Braggo the Monk.

was a Hearst-King Features Sunday page of comic fantasy by Dr. Seuss that appeared
briefly in 1935. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) had previously done magazine cartoons (a
well-remembered series in Liberty) and advertising drawings ("Quick, Henry, the
Flit!" was his ) He later, of course, became famous for his children's books ( The Cat
in the Hat, Horton Hears a Hoo, et al. ), and he was a master of comic doggerel verse.
.

Hi and Lois by Mort Walker (scripts) and Dik Browne (drawing) is a suburbanite family strip
which first appeared in 1954, and which frequently reverses the attitudes and char[758]
acterizations of older strips in its genre. Browne was bom in 1918 in New York City
and worked his way up from newsboy to cartoonist on the old New York Journal. Before joining the Walker group, he had done advertising art. See also Beetle Bailey
and Hagar the Horrible.
Hogan's Alley was one of several slum place-names given to R. F. Outcault's Sunday feature page in
the New York World. It was also the name which stuck. Hogan's Alley featured
[1]
a bald child in a yellow nightshirt who quickly became known as "The Yellow Kid,"

and Outcault's page was renamed again. See Buster Brown.

Jimmy,
[10]

Jimmy, was James Swinnerton's most famous strip, begun in 1904 (but
appearing sporadically at first) and continuing until 1958, except for a break in the
1940s when Swinnerton switched to Rocky Mason. Swinnerton was bom in Eureka,
California, in 1875, and raised in Stockton, where his father was a newspaper publater Little

lisher

and

politician.

ings. Little Bears,

The younger Swinnerton began

on the San Francisco Examiner

a series of

weekly bear draw-

children's page, the

first

contin-

uously presented graphic character feature in a newspaper. Swinnerton also did Mr.
Jack, the well-remembered, female-chasing,

humanized

turned to landscape painting, and died in Arizona

tiger.

He

retired in

1958,

in 1974.

Johnny Wise, by Thomas Aloysius "Tad" Dorgan, was a short-lived, weekly 1902 color-page effort
by a man who was later and better known for his slangy sports cartoons and "Indoor
[2]
Sports" panel feature. Dorgan was born to laborer parents in San Francisco in 1877
and had been urged to develop his drawing talents while recuperating from a factory accident at age thirteen. His drawing style and comic attitudes had an effect on
early cartoonists

Katzenjammer Kids
[6;

146-148]

and readers

alike.

He

died unexpectedly on

Long

Island in 1929.

German slang of the time "the hangover kids" was begun in 1897 by Rudolph
Dirks when Rudolph Block of Hearst's Neic York Journal suggested he model a
comics feature on the captioned German cartoon series of Wilhelm Busch depicting the
(

in

329

Max und

combined strip continuity and

time in comics history. Dirks was bom in Germany in 1877,
and emigrated to Chicago at age seven with his parents. At twenty he was selling
cartoons to Life and Judge, popular humor magazines of the time. In one of the most
destructive brats

Moritz. In the result. Dirks

talk balloons for the first

went

interesting events in early comics history. Dirks

1912 and Hearst had

on a European vacation in
and after much litigation he

off

his feature continued. Dirks sued,

was awarded the rights to use his characters, but Hearst retained tide to the strip.
Thus Dirks began Haas und Fritz, later The Captain and the Kids, and Harold Knerr
(1883-1949), of Bryn Mawr and Philadelphia, took over Katzenjammer Kids and
continued their adventures in sometimes superbly conceived destruction. Dirks died
in 1968.

The

Both

strips,

however, continued into the 1970s.

Kin-der-Kids was created by painter and illustrator Lyonel Feininger for the Chicago Tribune in
[16-18]

1906 at the suggestion of James Keeley. Keeley undoubtedly had the Katzenjammers
in

mind, but Feininger wrought a motley crew of kids and adults and put them into

uniquely ludicrous adventures. Feininger,

a musical education in
illustrator for

Germany by

magazines there and

bom

in

New

in 1871,

had been given

he began a career as an

France and the United

in

few months after a contractual dispute with

after a

York

his parents. In 1894

He quit the

States.

his publishers

and pursued

Kids

a suc-

cessful career in painting until his death in 1956.

King Aroo
[744-749]

is

one of the most celebrated

largely

among devotees

strips of

the recent past in the comics, but celebrated

and appealing largely to members of the readerand Little Nemo. The King was the crea-

of comics,

ship that loved Krazy Kat, Bamabij, Togo,

tion of Jack Kent,

bom

in Burlington,

Iowa, in 1920.

formal art training that led him to a loose-lined art

It

st\'le,

was probably Kent's lack

with panels

of

of characters

full

was surely his innate artistic ability that kept those panels from lookThe strip began in 1950 in national syndication but was discontinued
after a few years. It was kept on in limited syndication until 1965 by Stanleigh
Arnold's small Golden Gate Features. Today Kent devotes most of his time to chiland

activity. It

ing cluttered.

dren's

book

illustration.

Krazy Kat, the most highly praised of all comic strips, was begun by George Herriman
[170-172; 726-733]
and-mouse chase, a part of his Dingbat Family strip. Krazy got his own strip
ber 1913, and thus the imaginative fantasy

life

other inhabitants of Kokonino County began.

William Randolph Hearst liked

It

of

in Octo-

Krazy and Ignatz Mouse and the

was continued, often

solely because

although a mass public did not, until Herriman

it

died in Los Angeles in 1944. Herriman had been

was

as a cat-

bom

in

raised in Los Angeles. Estranged from his family, he

1880 in

New

Orleans but

was drawing cartoons and

boy at the Los Angeles Herald before he was t\venty. He rode the
New York and finally landed a staff cartoonist job at the World in 1901, eventually ending up with Hearst for whom he did several strips before settling down to
Krazy Kat alone.
working as an

office

rails to

Abner began with almost instant success

lin), whether he was really aware
[720-722]
Li'I

in

the favorite American story of the

August 1934. Cartoonist Al Capp

Alfred Cap-

own feisty variation of

yokel (or, in this case, Yokum) who exposes the
slickers simply by maintaining his own naivet^.

of

it

or not,

was

offering his

and corruptions of the city

Capp, who still manages to people his strip with memorably lampooned characters
and events after more than forty years, was born in 1909 in New Haven, Connecticut,

foibles

who wrote and drew his own comics for the amusement of his family.
Capp attended a number of art schools and did some work at the Associated Press be-

to a father

fore he
Little Joe

[438-439]

became an

assistant of

Ham

Fisher, creator oijoe Palooka.

was a Sunday feature by Ed Leffingwell, Harold Gray's cousin, assistant, and letterer
on Little Orphan Annie. The story concerned a thirteen-year-old on a modem cattle
ranch owned by his widowed mother and managed by Utah, a cowhand with a shady
past. Gray himself wrote and drew much of the strip. When Ed Leffingwell died his

330

brother, Robert,

who

also assisted Gray, took over as Joe's

nominal author. The

continued into the late 1950s in both the Chicago Tribune and

New

strip

York Sunday

News comic sections.

Little

Nemo

[11-14; 140-142]

undoubtedly grew out of Winsor McCay's

which showed the nightmarish

earlier

Dreams

of a Rarebit Fiend

Nemo
New York

results of his protagonist's overeating.

1904),

first

ap-

Little Nemo in Slumberland the following year in the

and represented pictorially the feelings and transformations experienced in the dreams
of McCay's boy protagonist. When McCay moved to Hearst's papers in 1911, he simply retitled his feature In The Land of Wonderful Dreams and continued Nemo's
nocturnal adventures until 1914. Nemo reappeared in 1924, this time back in the

peared as

Herald (and, of course,

Michigan,

in

its

syndicate) until 1927.

1869 and received basic

McCay was

born

in

from a teacher

art instruction

Herald,

Spring Lake,
in Ypsilanti.

When he was

seventeen he was in Chicago seeking more instruction but working professionally on posters as well. He began as a cartoonist on the Cincinnati Enquirer in
1903. McCay was also a pioneer in film animation, beginning in 1909. His best-known

movie cartoon
fantasy.

Next

is

to

Gertie the Trained Dinosaur, but he had also earher filmed a Nemo
George Herriman's, McCay's comics work has probably received the

widest recognition and praise.

Little

Orphan Annie reputedly began

[644-672]

as a

redheaded orphan
narrative

began

He

died in 1934.

boy in Harold Gray's original conception, and was changed to a

by Joseph Patterson of the New York News. In any case, her
1924 and lasted beyond her creator's death in 1968 in contin-

girl

in

uations of ever-decreasing interest until reprints of Gray's earlier strips replaced

in Kankakee, Illinois, in 1894 and served his apprenticeship
Sidney Smith on The Gumps. With Annie he established a feature of excep-

them. Gray was born

assisting

and pace. Although, of course. Gray did use assistants, he

to draw or plot Annie, and maintained his personal interest in

tional narrative interest

hired no ghosts either

his

Mama's Angel Child,

[23]

work

for forty-five years.

was the work of Penny Ross of whom little is known except that he was a man,
and that he had assisted Outcault on Buster Brown and possibly ghosted that strip
Esther,

on occasion.

Maud was
[8]

established as

Happy Hooligan

And Her Name Was Maud

in 1926.

[161]

as

was and

Oh! Margy
is

best

in his earlier strips.

in the late 1920s

known

Fred Opper's

But the character of the grinning, stubborn, kicking mule,

Maud, had been used by Opper

Merely Margy began

as a topper strip to

See

and was a comics

Happy Hooligan.
effort

by John Held,

Jr.,

for his depiction of leggy, flat-chested 1920s "flappers."

who

Bom

Held was from Salt Lake City. He had begun as a cartoonist when barely sixteen, and had also been a sports page and, later, magazine illustrator on Vanity Fair
and The New Yorker. Margy lasted until 1935. Held died in 1958, having long since
in 1889,

turned to sculptiire.

Mickey Mouse was not the first star of animated cartoons to gain a strip of his own, but he had one
by January 1930. Three months later, when the Walt Disney studios turned the project
[542-643]
over to Floyd Gottfredson, and he introduced broadly burlesqued adventure and
melodrama as its basis, the strip began to thrive. By the early 1950s, however, King
Features, which distributed the feature, had urged the elimination of all action-adventure from humor strips, and Mickey returned to a domestic gag-a-day. Gottfredson,
bom in 1907 in Kaysville, Utah, was delighted with the comics as a young man, and
took correspondence courses in cartooning.

He moved

to

Hollywood, applied

and was put on as an apprentice animator. Until 1938, he

charming Mickey Mouse Sunday color strip.

ney's,

Midsummer Day Dreams by Winsor McCay. See

Little

also did the

at Dis-

frequendy

Nemo.

[40]

Minute Movies, the creation of Edgar Wheelan, began as Midget Movies in 1918. It not only parodied
movie serials, it also helped establish the idea of continuity in the daily strip.
[191-196]

331

his own imaginary studio and stable of stereotypical stars and conRalph McSneer, Hazel Deare). He cast them in mysteries, adventm-es,

Wheelan created
tract players

The

love stories, and (later) the classics.

mid-1930s (but

was

bom

in

later

appeared

San Francisco

in

new

in 1888,

on the comics pages

strip lasted

until the

episodes in the Flash Comics book).

and graduated from Cornell.

Wheelan
His mother had been

a comic-strip cartoonist, and he began with the Hearst papers as an editorial and
sports cartoonist.

Miss Peach
[756]

first

appeared

He died in Florida in

1966.

to instant success in 1957.

Admittedly and obviously inspired

Peanuts, the feature was the work of Mell Lazarus,

1927, where, as he has said, he hated school

See

Momma
[759]

bom

and "even flunked

in part

New

in Brooklyn,

by

York, in

high school."

art in

Momma.

was Mell Lazarus's second successful

strip,

introduced in late 1970.

sion of the possessive, manipulative "Jewish mother,"

the temi

if

comic-strip ver-

taken to

is

mean

generic and descriptive and not necessarily ethnic type. See Miss Peach.

Moon

Mullins, Frank Willard's winning rogue, put in his

[138-139; 221-277]

first

appearance in the Chicago Tribune

in

1923, partly as an answer to Hearst's success with Barney Google. As the strip accuits own ( Kayo, Emmie Schmaltz, Lord Plushbottom, Mamie,
and a narrative pace of its own, it became one of the classics of the
comics page. Willard was bom in the Chicago area in 1893, the son of a physician,
and he early determined to become a cartoonist. He died suddenly in 1958. His assistant (and sometime ghost) Ferd Johnson continued Moon, but today the continui-

mulated characters of

Uncle

ties

Mr. E.

Z.

Mark was
[32]

^^'illie)

of

its

the

past are gone

work

of F.

and

it is

a gag

M. Howarth

1890s probably helped pave the

strip.

1870 ?-1908), whose

way

strip

drawing

in

Puck

in the

was approached
was the Luhi and Leander pages. Howarth

for the

comic

strip.

In 1903 he

by William Randolph Hearst and the result

never employed talk balloons, even in the Hearst section.
Mr. Jack, James Svvinnerton's humanized, pop-eyed, skirt-chasing
[33]

arate feature in late 1902

and ran almost weekly

tiger, first

appeared as a sep-

until early 1904. It

was revived

an

as

occasional daily from 1912 to 1919, only to be revived again as a top feature above
Little

Jimmy in

the 1930s. See Jimmy.

Mr, Twee Deedle was a Sunday

[20]

Mutt and

Jeff

[28-29; 108-125; 136-137]

feature, a fantasy-fairy tale for small children by Johnny Gmelle, creaRaggedy Ann. The strip replaced Little Nemo in the New York Herald when
Winsor McCay moved his feature over to Hearst. Gruelle, born in Illinois but raised
in Indianapolis, was the son of a landscape painter, and was a cartoonist with the
Indianapolis Star and Cleveland Press when still in his late teens. He contributed
illustrations, cartoons, and children's stories to a number of magazines, and wrote the
Raggedy books and others. Gruelle lived in Connecticut after 1910. He returned to the
comics with the Sunday strip Brutus in the late 1930s. He died in Miami in 1938.
tor of

began

as A. Mutt,

when H.

C.

"Bud" Fisher established the

first

continually published

six-days-a-week strip on the San Francisco Chronicle sports page on

November

15,

1907. Fisher, born in Chicago in 1885, left for a job at the Chronicle during his third

year at the University of Chicago. His unique drawing style and comic point of view

developed quickly during the early years when he did the

strip himself,

moving

it

from syndicate to syndicate as the value of his services rose. Fisher died in 1954, but
the strip had by then been ghosted for years. And, of course,

The Naps

of Polly Sleepyhead
[21]

was Peter Newell's contribution

his fanciful children's

to the early

it

continues today.

comics page. Newell, better known for

books (Topsys and Turvys, The Hole Book, The Slant Book),

was bom in Bashnell, Illinois, in 1862 and was largely self-taught, although he did
some work at the Art Students League in New York. He died in 1927.

Naughty Pete was the work

[22]

of Charles Forbell,

tural perspective

332

drawings

who was

in Puck, Life,

best

known

and Judge.

It

for his cityscape

appeared

in

and

architec-

Judge from

after

1910 until

demise

its

in the late 1930s.

that of other cartoonists)

The Newlyweds
[19]

for

to Forbell's

name (and

Arthur Crawford, a cartoonist's agent and gagman.

The Newhjueds and Their Baby) was the feature which George McManus did
for Pulitzer's VV'orW between 1904 and 1912. When he moved over to Hearst in that
latter year, McManus renamed the feature Their Onhj Child. When his Bringing Up
Father had established itself by 1918, he discontinued Their Only Child. But in the
1930s, he brought it back on Sundays as Snookutns, a cofeature to Maggie and Jiggs.
(or

Up Father.

See Bringing

Nibsy the Newsboy, another early George

[15]

was

The "& A.C." appended

McManus

feature,

appeared

in

New

the

York World between

April 1905 and late Jul\' 1906. Nibsy 's imagination could turn any

'Funny Fairyland" and a kind of lower-class takeoff on

Little

New York street into

Nemo. See Bringing

Up Father.
Sunday color page), appeared in the New York World (and
its syndicate ) between 1927 and 1929. However, the wild adventures of the nefarious
infant and Looy Dot Dope were abandoned by the restlessly inventive Gross for
Count Screwloose.

Nize Baby, by Milt Gross (his

[716]

Old Doc Yak was Sidney

[

103-107]

first

Buck Nix when he moved

the Chicago Tribune. See The Gumps and Buck Nix.

Smith's very successful transformation of his

from the Chicago Examiner

to

Our Boarding House, with the braggart Major Hoople, began in 1923 as a single daily panel in comics form
for Newspaper Enterprise Association. On his Sunday page, the Major (in true strip
[497-504]
form was joined by the top-of-the-page "Nut Brothers" Ches and Wall ) in a surreal
comic fantasy. The strips were the creation of Gene Ahem, born on Chicago's South
)

Side in 1895.

He

attended the Chicago Art Institute for three years, hoping simply to
become a funny cartoonist. Ahem moved to King Fea-

acquire enough technique to

tures in 1936, doing a variant of the

same Boarding House

while his former syndicate continued

strip as

Room and

Our Boarding House, and does

still.

Board,

Ahem died

in 1960.

Out Our

Way

[175-178]

began national

November 1921

distribution in

as a single-panel, daily feature

and

soon developed a set of memorable recurring characters and a unique comic viewpoint. The author was J. R. \MUiams, born in Nova Scotia in 1888 of American parents,

and raised

in Detroit.

He

left

home

to shift for himself in his mid-teens,

worked

the railroads, and did a hitch in the cavalry before settling into a factory job, where

he did
his

his

cartooning for the company's catalog. After Williams's death in 1957

first

drawings were frequently reissued by

tant,

Ned Cochran,

contributed

Peanuts, introduced on October

[742-743]

recast the size

2,

and shape

new ones

his syndicate,

NEA, while

his

former

assis-

to the series.

by Charles Schulz, revived interest in the humor strip,

strips and the format of the comics page, and became one
of the comics. Schulz was bom in Minneapolis in 1922

1950,
of

of the great success stories

by a correspondence course before he graduated from high school. He

had placed a few gag panel cartoons in newspapers and the Saturday Evening Post
before finally placing his strip, which he originally wanted to call L'il Folks, with
and studied

art

United Features Syndicate.

Pogo, by ex-Disney animator Walt Kelly, actually began

[734-737]

1943 under the

title

Bumbazine and Albert the

Animal Comics in
Pogo the Possum was

as a feature in

Alligator. In

it,

a minor character at best. Very soon the clownish Albert was more promiBumbazine (a boy) dropped out, and Pogo got a bigger role. By the
featured,
nently

initially

moved the feature to newspaper format in the short-lived New York

Star in 1948, it had become simply Pogo, and in it humanized animals daily dramatized the idiosyncrasies of their human counterparts. The political spoofs for which
the strip probably became best known in the mid-1950s had actually been impUcit
time that Kelly

somewhat earlier.

See nos. 734-737) Kelly was

of a painter of theatrical scenery.

333

bom

in Philadelphia in 1913, the

He had been a reporter and

son

cartoonist for the

Bridgeport Post just out of high school.

continued by

Her

Pals (at

[130-135]

first

was begun

Positive Polly in 1912)

period. Its author

was

Kelly died in 1973, Pogo was briefly

Kelly's

widow, who devotes

herself

for the

New

wanted

to

as

one of several "daughter"

strips of the

bom in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, in 1883. He atNew York for two years, and he began as a staff artist

Cliff Sterrett,

tended the Chase Arts School in

New

When

was soon withdrawn h\

books which collect his work.

to editing

Polly and

others but

York Herald in 1904, moving to the Titnes in 1908. However, Sterrett

be a cartoonist, and three years later he began four different strips for the
York Evening Telegram. Settling on Pollij, he gradually developed one of the

most whimsically individual graphic st\les in the comics section, particularly on

Sunday color work. He and Polly retired in 1958 and he died December 28, 1964.

his

Popeye. See Thimble Theatre.

Prince Valiant began in 1937 as a carefully researched, meticulously illustrated Sunday saga of imag[431 ]

was created by Harold R. "Hal" Foster, bom in Nova Scotia in

young Foster bicycled his vva\' to Chicago, to the Art InNational Academy of Design, and Chicago .Academy of Fine Arts. He was an

inary Arthurian times.

It

1892. In 1921 the ambitious

stitute,

established advertising illustrator

illustration strip

new Tarzan

the syndicators of a
first

text-and-

daily Tarzan sequence in early

Sunday episodes from 1931 until he began Prince Valiant. He

from the drawing of Prince Valiant in 1971 but continued to plot his tale. See

1929 and
retired

when

approached him. Foster did the

later did the

Tarzan.

Sam's

Strip, unsuccessful

[761-763]

with the public, was a well-remembered

which fondly spoofed the conventions, characters, and

\\'alker

conceived the idea with

Detroit in 1930,
his school days.

had very

He

little

Jerr\'

make

histor>' of

Dumas, who did the

comic

strip

comic

strips.

Mort

art.

Dumas,

bom

in

formal training, but has been cartooning steadily since

on most of the Walker

assists

effort to

strips, lettering, pencifing, inking.

See Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois.

School Days was one of several Sunday and daily strips by Clare Victor Dwiggins
[26-27; 197-208]

(1874-1959)

which depicted the almost idyllic small town life of a group of school boys. One of his
strips was an authorized version of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Dwiggins was himself bom in mral Ohio and attended country schools. He undertook cartooning while working as an architectural draftsman.
to 1932.

Between 1945 and

his death,

He drew

Dwiggins worked

as a

School Days from 1917

book

illustrator.

Secret Agent X-9 was

[475-478]

begun by Hearst's King Features Syndicate in 1932 as one of several efforts to

answer the success of the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News detective feature,
Dick Tracy. The syndicate hired mystery writer Dashiell Hammett

to plot

(he did the

first four sequences) and Ale.x Raymond to illustrate. The strip has been through
numerous transmutations since that time, with various writers and illustrators con-

tributing. It continues

Sherlocko the

Monk was Gus

[36]

five.

Mager's Holmes burlesque, later transformed into

See the

latter

and

Skippy began his cartoon Hfe

[

174]

today as Secret Agent Corrigan. See Flash Cordon.

also

Hawkshaw

the Detec-

Braggo the Monk.

in the

pages of the old humor magazine Life as a somewhat

sar-

donic ten-year-old commentator on the passing scene and the world adults had made.
In 1928, Skippy

ued

until

became

a King Features comic strip, daily

Percy Crosby withdrew the feature

ized commercial use. Crosby,

whose drawing

and Sunday, and

in 1943, in protest against its

contin-

unauthor-

was always closer to sketch-illusYork, in 1891 and did newspaper and

style

was born in Brooklyn, New

York World and for the McClure Syndicate before Skippy
tracted the attention of King Featiires. He died in 1964.
tration than cartoon,

strip

work on the

New

Slim Jim, an early and all-but-forgotten

[30]

notably by

334

its

originator,

at-

was drawn variously by several cartoonists, most

Charles Frink (who died in 1912), and his successor, Raystrip,

mond Ewer, who contributed

in 1910,

and continued

S'Matter Pop? was one of several similar

[39; 160]

Payne was born

in

our

until 1937,
titles

fine selection here.

Slim Jim began as Circus Solly

mostly distributed to rural papers.

assigned to the best-known strip of Charles M. Payne.

Queenstown, Pennsylvania,

hired by the paper as a

staff cartoonist.

use of the page as well as

its

He hung around

in 1873.

the Pittsburgh Post and offered cartoon ideas while

still

the offices of

a teenager; later,

he was

S'Matter Pop?, notable for Payne's decorative

humor, began

in the

New

York World

tinued for thirty years. Payne died in poverty and obscurity in

New

in

1919 and con-

York

in 1964, the

victim of a mugging. See Bear Creek Folks.

Sunday feature in the New York Herald Tribune (and its syndicate) by New
Yorker illustrator and art editor Rea Irvin (1881-1972). Irvin was from San Francisco and was an established magazine illustrator and cartoonist both before and
after his stylized interlude on the comics page.

The Smythes was

[126-127]

Somebody's Stenog, distributed by the Philadelphia Public Ledger's syndicate, was one of the best of several "working girl" strips that began in the late 1910s. It was the work of A. H. Hay[162]
ward, who was hired away from the New York Herald by the Ledger. The strip lasted
into the late 1940s.

Stumble Inn was another of George Herriman's early

strips.

See Krazy Kat.

[78-83]

Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs's jungle lord

[429]

tribe of African great apes

strip

titled

English heir raised from infancy by a

entered the comics page

rendered by Hal Foster

via a daily illustration-and-text

in early 1928. Foster also

tween 1931 and 1937, including the

much

did the Sunday version be-

celebrated "Lost Egyptians" sequence. See

Prince Valiant.

Terry and the Pirates began in late 1934, the work of Milton Caniff who revitalized the style of newspaper
adventure strips with his effective use of impressionist graphic techniques and his
[673-687]
somewhat exotic adventure narrative. Caniff was born in Hillsboro, Ohio, in 1907. He

most notably Dickie Dare, before approaching Captain

York News with Terry. The strip was his answer to
for
a "blood and thunder" suspense adventure strip "with
desire
Patterson's expressed
a juvenile angle." Terry was taken over by George Wunder when Caniff began Steve

had done

several features,

Joseph Patterson of the

Canyon

New

in early 1947.

Texas Slim and Dirty Dalton, a Sunday-only slapstick cowboy strip, was the work of Ferd Johnson, who otherwise
assisted Frank Willard on Moon Mullins ( and continued that latter strip after Wil[740]
lard's death ) Johnson was bom in 1905 in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, and was draw.

ing published cartoons before he entered high school.

demy

of Fine Arts in 1923, but his

first

He

attended the Chicago Aca-

job resulted from his spending most of his

time hanging around the cartoonist's desk at the Tribune, where he attracted Willard's

sympathetic attention. Texas Slim began in 1925.

Thimble Theatre, by E. C. Segar, is one of the most celebrated comic-adventure strips. It began as Wil[443-474]
liam Randolph Hearst's idea of one way to replace his recently lost Minute Movies.
It was the work of Elzie Crisler Segar, bom in Chester, Illinois, in 1894, the son

He diligently taught himself to draw, with the help of a correspondence school course, and presented himself at the Chicago Herald, where he
got his first work. Once founded, Thimble Theatre developed a set of mnning charof a house painter.

Oyl and her husthng brother. Castor. Popeye the

Sailor first appeared in an adventure in January 1929, and immediately captivated
the strip's growing audience, as well as its author. A series of memorable adventures
acters, chiefly the spinsterish Olive

and characters

(J.

Wellington Wimpy, the Sea Hag, Alice the Goon, the Jeep)

fol-

lowed. Segar generally kept the story continuity in his daily episodes separate and

used his Sunday pages for self-contained gags. On the one occasion when he broke
with that practice, he produced the masterly "Plunder Island" adventure which is

335

reproduced here. Segar died in

others,

His feature has been continued since by

but usually with quite different intention and quality.

Toonerville Folks, Fontaine Fox,

[209-220; 442]

late 1938.

Jr.'s

and Sunday

daily panel

habited his imaginary, then

strip

on the engaging eccentrics

semirural suburbs, was

still

who

in early 1915.

Mickey "Himself" McGuire, the

vignettes of the trolley's Skipper, the tough kid

rible-tempered Mr. Bang, and the

begun

in-

The
ter-

1955. Fo.\, born in 1884 in Louis-

rest, lasted until

Kentucky, went to work for the Louisville Courier right out of high school, do-

ville,

ing reporting and cartoon work.

but dropped out to become

He

later briefly

attended the University of Indiana,

began in the
nationally. Fox died in

a full-time cartoonist. Toonerville Folks

Chicago Post before the Wheeler Syndicate distributed

it

1964.

Tumbleweeds

is

[750-751]

to

Tom K. Ryan, born in Anderson,

a cartoonist. He began in commercial art,

the work of

be

did a burlesque Western comic

strip.

Indiana, in 1926,

who

always wanted

read Western novels, and eventually

Tumbleweeds began modestly

in

1965 and has

built gradually in popularity since.

Wash Tubbs,

b\'

Roy Crane, began

as

Washington Tubbs II

in 1924.

See Captain Easy.

[320-426]

White Boy
[440-441]

first

appeared

as a

Sunday, half-page

sequently also in the

New

several changes of focus, format,

to realism,

juvenile readers.
strations for

Chicago Tribune

York Daily News. The

youngster captured by an Indian tribe

switched

strip in the

in the late

and even

strip, initially

The

feature
fiction

historical time. In

was the work

and

his

concerning a white

them, fantasy narrative

in efforts to

of Garrett Price, best

New Yorker

cartoons.

and continued

The Wizard

of Id

[757]

is

Wyoming

known

appeal to

for his illu-

White Boy became SkuU

Valley toward the end and disappeared in August 1936. Price,

Kansas, graduated from the University of

1933 and sub-

nineteenth century, went through

switched to gags, and back again, possibly

magazine

in

bom

in

Bucyrus,

and the Art Institute of Chicago,

art studies in France.

the collaborative effort of Brant Parker (ideas and drawing) and Johnny Hart

was a Disney cartoonist

and later an illustrator for International Business Machines. He judged an art show
in Endicott, New York, that included the work of a highschooier named Johnny Hart
in the late 1940s and a friendship developed. The vaguely medieval Wizard first ap(ideas). Parker, a Californian born in Los Angeles in 1920,

peared

336

in 1964.

Bill

Blackbeard

cisco

Academy

is

of

the director of

Comic

tlio Sail

Fran-

Art, a nonprofit educa-

devoted to the study of popureproduced in this

collection were obtained from its archives. Blackbeard founded the academy in 1967 in the

tional institution

lar narrative arts. Tlie strips

course of planning a book on the comic

strip,

dismay that there were

only a few books, superficial and inadefjuatc,
existing in the complex comic-strip field. To
properly prepare his work, he was forced to
create his own public research and study center,
accumulating what is now a vast collection of
bound newspaper files, popular fiction and cartoon periodicals, books in all genres of fiction
and associated background data, and literally
after discovering to his

millions of comic-strip episodes.

Blackbeard has written and edited extensively

in

many

the narrative arts fields, including

ar-

and books. He prepared a sizable number

ticles

World Encyclopedia
Comics (Chelsea House). Blackbeard is now
editing a series of fifty or more reprint volumes
of the entries in the recent

of

of classic

comic

strips

in

complete sequences,
worth

starting with the earliest daily strips of

Hyperion Press ), and is also preparing a factual

and critical history of the comic strips Oxford
for which much of the contents of this Smithsonian volume will serve as illustration.

Martin Williams has been an English teacher

(Columbia University) aiKl book editor (Macmillan), but most of his time has been spent as
a critic of the popular and performing arts. He
has written on literature (including children's),
theater, films, radio, television and comic strips.
Chiefly, his work has been in jazz. As editor, his
books include Tlw Art of Jazz (Oxford) and
Jazz Panorama (Collier); as author, Where's the

Melody?
(

Listener's

Introduction

Pantheon ) Jazz Masters of

;

millan

The Jazz Tradition

New
(

Oxford

Jazz

to

Orleans
;

Mac-

and Jazz

(Macmillan). He has written on

jazz for dozens of magazines and newspapers
in

Transition

and was

for nine years the regular jazz critic for

the Saturday Review.

Since 1971 Williams has been the director of

the Jazz and Popular Culture Program of the
Division of Performing Arts, Smithsonian Institution,

where he produced the much acclaimed

album The Smithsonian Collection of

record

Classic Jazz.

Needless to say, Williams

aficionado.

is

also

a comics

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