Stripper's Guide

Wednesday, June 12 1907 -- Herriman admonished Angelenos to get out and vote for the Owens River water project, a subject we've discussed earlier in connection with the Mayor Harper on Tour comic strip series. The 'pointing man' imagery was made famous in the "I Want You" posters of World War I with images of Lord Kitchener in England and Uncle Sam in the States. I for one didn't realize that the iconic pointing image pre-dated those, and Herriman here says "with Apologies to a Number of Advertisers", indicating that this was already a popular image in print advertising.

Perhaps a blog reader will educate us on the pre-WWI history of this iconic image?

Friday, June 14 1907 -- With manager Billy Nolan in San Francisco lining up the fight, Battling Nelson takes it into his own hands in LA to drum up interest for his upcoming match against Jimmy Britt.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

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Mort Walker Begins Third Comic Strip
By Ray Erwin (E&P, 1/20/1968)

One of the most successful cartoonists in the country has created a wild and way-out comic strip in which humor verges on the edge of fantasy.

The cartoon: "Boner’s Ark."
The cartoonist: Addison (Mort Walker).
The format: Daily four-column strip and Sunday one-third standard page.
The release: March 11.
The distributor: King Features Syndicate.

Mort Walker, whose "Beetle Bailey" and "Hi and Lois" strips already have marked him as one of the most inventive and prolific of American cartoonists, is responsible for "Boner’s Ark."

Chance to Change
"For quite a while, I felt a need to move in new directions, to change and to grow," he explained. "I guess I’d been looking for a new way to express myself more imaginatively. About a year ago, I began to develop the idea that finally became ‘Boner’s Ark.’

"At first it didn’t jell, and I put it aside for a while. Then when I went back to it, the whole thing suddenly fell into place. I began making sketches and new characters emerged as though they had simply been waiting to be released."

The title character is a plump and warmly funny little ship captain whose passenger list includes the kookiest group of oddly-shaped animals that ever came down a gangplank or across an artist’s drawing board. Boner made his first mistake when he took only one of each
species of animal on board his ark. After that, the other blunders just seemed to come naturally. A procession of wacky, wonderful, way-out quadrupeds marched into the strip displaying all kinds of quirks and temperaments.

Satire and Fun
The ark is a little cosmos in itself; the animals represent the foibles of man and the ship provides a stage for both wicked satire and innocent fun.

The new strip is aimed at young moderns whether they are hip teenagers or adult sophisticates. The byline "Addison" may be a new one to editors and comic strip fans but no secret will be made of the fact that the creator is Addison Morton Walker — Mort Walker — who created "Beetle Bailey," the popular G.I. strip, in 1950 and the popular family humor strip, "Hi and Lois" in 1954.

"Beetle" is distributed by KFS to 1,073 newspapers globally, second only to "Blondie" by Chic Young, which reaches 1,617 papers, according to the syndicate. "Hi and Lois," which Walker produces with artist Dik Browne, appears in 496 newspapers here and abroad.

Walker, who was born in Kansas and educated at the University of Missouri, started professional cartooning young, making his first sale at 11. At 15, he was a comic strip artist for a daily metropolitan newspaper and by 16 more than 300 of his cartoons had been published.
Walker’s wife is the former Jean Suffill, a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. They live in Greenwich, Conn., with their four sons and two daughters.

Labels: News of Yore

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Bearville (aka Bear Land) was the great Gene Carr's very first continuing feature. It ran in the New York Evening Journal for a grand total of six episodes from April 19 to May 7 1901.

Carr's bears were pretty much a straight copy of the famed Little Bears, a feature that brought Jimmy Swinnerton a measure of fame in the 1890s at Hearst's San Francisco Examiner. Hearst brought Jimmy out to New York after the Little Bears feature had run its course in San Francisco, and Swinnerton switched from (California) bears to (Tammany) tigers for his attempt to duplicate his previous success. Swinnerton's new animal choice did well by him -- his Mr. Jack eventually evolved from the tigers and popped up in one form or another for decades in Swinnerton's work.

Although of course it's impossible to know the inside story of Carr's feature, I like to imagine that the budding cartoonist Carr might have come to fellow Hearst man Swinnerton looking for instruction and advice. Swinnerton might have shown him a scrapbook of his San Francisco bear cartoons and told him something to the effect of "Hey, bud, try these on for size. They're easy to draw and they got me where I am today!".

A big tip of the bearskin hat to Cole Johnson who supplied the samples of this extremely rare and short-lived feature.

Labels: Obscurities

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British artist hopes his silence is golden
By Don Maley (E&P, 12/14/1968)

The Register and Tribune Syndicate is offering a comic strip that is an innovation inasmuch as the cartoon character— "Perkins" — says absolutely nothing but is always getting himself into humorous difficulties within his frame of reference.

The cartoonist, John Miles, makes every line in the strip work—the horizons, the borders, the window frames—wherever there is a line, it is likely to become part of the joke.

Although Miles describes his strip as "functionally graphic," comic buffs will recognize it as pantomime. Because pantomime is so rare in America the syndicate’s editors had to cross the Atlantic to find "Perkins". Miles is a bearded Englishman who resembles a Victorian buccaneer. "Perkins," his brainchild, came into existence in the London Sunday Times as a once-a-week strip (the first and only comic strip to ever appear in that paper), but Miles quickly demonstrated that he was full of too many good ideas to wait a whole week to present another.

"Therefore," says the syndicate, "he has agreed to do six- a-week and share them with the whole world." So far the "whole world" consists of 41 newspapers.

The 34-year-old cartoonist, described as "a keen observer of situations from which he derives a great deal of his inspiration," is rumored to be a quiet person (it is hoped, however, he is more talkative than his brainchild "Perkins"), who "doesn’t conform to routine and works during the night if so inclined." A voracious artist, he’s done portraits, poster, silk screen, advertising layouts, brochures and other commissions. In 1964 he was rated as one of the top designers for his designs of children’s toys.


Miles, an art school dropout, now lives "in one of the best known stately mansions in England." He didn’t always. During his tour of duty with the British Army he lived and served in Germany, drawing maps and geographical designs. Later he, his wife of 13 years, Margaret, and their daughter moved to Bermuda where he worked on the island Press. Tiring of palm trees and incessant sunshine they moved to Greece.

"He’s remembered in Bermuda," says the syndicate, "for his drawings of people who looked like their dogs at a dog show, and he’s remembered in Greece for his drawings of Greek Orthodox priests with their tall hats and umbrellas."

It is hoped that he’ll be remembered in America for his "Perkins" strip. "I am very enthusiastic about this strip," says Denny Allen, the syndicate’s managing editor, "because it simply brings fun and laughs to the comic page ... which is just what that page is for. This is something which is not imitative of another comic strip. It’s fresh, creative and offers a brand of humor to readers which they deserve. And, best of all, it was not conjured up to capitalize on some particular fad or mood. It is just one man’s attempt to - provoke laughter by clever drawings."

Labels: News of Yore

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In response to a request made yesterday, here's a few more Children's Tales strips. As you can see the book publishers (and McNaught worked with quite a few on this series) get credited on the strips. It didn't occur to me while I was putting together my index on this series that anyone would be particularly interested in the publisher credits so I didn't make note of them. However, since the titles and creators are given I imagine it would be easy for a children's book fan to determine who published what in book form.

My question about the book adaptations is whether the strips are condensations of the books or complete reprintings. I always assumed the former to be the case but maybe I'm wrong.

EDIT:
Alberto Becattini informs me that most, perhaps all of the Children's Tales book adaptations were redrawn by Frank Bolle. Becattini explains that because the original artwork to these children's books was painted, that line-drawn equivalents were needed for the newspaper feature. He believes that Bolle used a lightboard extensively in order to faithfully translate the styles of all these various artists. Bolle did occasionally hide his signature in these pages, and he was pretty darn sneaky about it. Even with Alberto's directions to finding a few of them I could barely make them out. If you'd like to play hide-and-seek for Bolle signatures, here's some from Becattini to give you a head start:

2/5/67 - fourth panel, on canteen
2/26/67 - fifth panel, on wall on the left
4/30/67 - first panel, on door
8/20/67 - last panel, in box on the right
8/27/67 - last panel, in picture frame
11/26/67 - sixth panel, on tree trunk
12/03/67 - second panel

Thanks for that important inside story to this feature, Alberto!

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This obscure Sunday series is aptly described by its title. The McNaught Syndicate feature was designed to appeal to the younger set, featuring multi-part stories that were meant to interest elementary school readers. In addition to original material, some stories were adapted from contemporary children's books, others from classics, and yet others featured well-known animated cartoon characters.

The information on this series has been terribly hard to track down because it ran in very few papers. This wasn't really a reflection on the quality of the material, though. The strip had two problems that made it unappealing to editors. First, it was offered only in half-page and tab formats in an era when most strips were being run as thirds. Second, because the stories were always multi-parters, the strip could never be bumped from the comics section to accommodate an ad (a problem that also hastened the downfall of Sunday continuity strips).

It took me the better part of a decade to get the story list as complete as you see below, but its been worthwhile as a number of famous illustrators made their only Sunday funnies appearances in this feature. Later in the run the big name talent disappeared and most stories were written and drawn by the ever able Frank Bolle.

I would be VERY interested in hearing from anyone who knows of any earlier or later stories in this series. As far as I know the list below represents the complete run of the feature, but only because this is all I've been able to track down.

Labels: Obscurities

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Jim Ivey's new book, Graphic Shorthand, is available from Lulu.com for 19ドル.95 plus shipping, or you can order direct from Ivey for 25ドル postpaid. Jim Ivey teaches the fundamentals of cartooning in his own inimitable style. The book is 128 pages, coil-bound. Send your order to:


Also still available, Jim Ivey's career retrospective Cartoons I Liked, available on Lulu.com or direct from Jim Ivey for 20ドル postpaid. When ordered from Ivey direct, either book will include an original Ivey sketch.

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

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