Misanthropic and petty, scheming and nagging, reviled by their neighbors and barely tolerable to themselves, The Bungle Family was the quintessential domestic comic strip of the 1920s. Critical historians like Bill Blackbeard, Rick Marshall and Art Spiegelman have singled out Harry J. Tuthill’s masterpiece as an especially dark and pointed critique of the modern petit bourgeoisie. But George, Jo and Peg Bungle were really the penultimate satirical family of 20s strips. George was no more a man on the make, looking for that get-rich-quick invention or financial scheme, than Barney Google, A. Mutt or even Andy Gump. His wife Jo was no less socially self-conscious and ambitious, nor more of a nag, than Jigg’s Maggie. And Jo wasn’t even in the habit of throwing things. Nor was the Bungle family dysfunction any worse than the in-fighting at Moon Mullin’s boardinghouse.
In early 20th Century theater and film, the “sissy” was the dreaded antithesis of two-fisted pulp hyper-masculinity, at best, and at worst was a stereotypical euphemism for what was unspoken in general culture, homosexuality. Wimpy, the dandyish, appetite-driven counterpoint to Popeye’s principled violence, is of course Popeye’s best tutor for all things “sissy.” To make this sexual dynamic even weirder we have Popeye’s Pappy bewildered by his prancing progeny. It reads like an unintended burlesque of Popeye “coming out”. Per a previous post, These dailies precede Popeye deceiving the underground demons to come up and fight.
It is important to note that this gender-bending sequence was followed immediately by another adventure cycle involving Popeye getting the crap beaten out of him in a land of highly muscled women. And this is all happening right after E.C. Segar’s death in October 1938. The strip was being continued unsigned by assistants for the time being.
The new generation of print-on-demand (POD) platforms, most notably Lulu, has inspired several ambitious strip aficionados to become one-man reprint publishers. And so, our cup runneth over. In just the last six months the zone… Read more: Our Shelves Runneth Over: POD Spews a Gusher of Reprints
Among several self-publishers in the reprint space, Stefan Wood and his Comic Strip Appreciation Group are far and away the most prolific. His Lulu Bookstore boasts about 25 titles as of this writing. And judging… Read more: From Oaky Doaks to Bruce Gentry: Behind CSAG’s Reprint Rush
As we found with Coulton Waugh’s lost gem Hank, the radical comic hero Little Lefty is often mentioned in comics history but rarely read. This mainstay of the Daily Worker through much of the 1930s… Read more: Little Lefty: Kid Kommunist
Gladys Parker was among the most recognizable and well-reported cartoonists of the 1930s and 40s. It was hard to miss her. She was the spit-curl image of her avatar Mopsy, the sharp-tongued and stylish star… Read more: Quips and Curlicues: Mopsy’s Stylish Return
Panels & Prose 