The more I read of Bill Conselman and Charlie Plumb’s Ella Cinders strip (first explored here), it is clear this spunkiest of comic strip heroines has been woefully underrepresented in pop culture history. She was at once big-hearted and hard boiled. She rode the roller coaster of 20s and 30s boom and bust, passing through pop culture fads and economic trends. And this girl took no shit. She was aiming withering barbs at cocky lovers years before Mae West, trading edgy banter a decade before Kate Hepburn, Carol Lombard and Barbara Stanwyck. Comics historians who point to Connie Kurridge, Flyin’ Jenny, Miss Fury or Brenda Starr as pioneering women in comics pages are missing one of the most interesting examples. Ella Cinders resembled Little Orphan Annie, a picaresque that was less ponderous and lighter. And the tale of a New Woman making her way through inter-war America was rendered as a unique distinct world – with its own linguistic and visual style. The panel above shows how the strip’s sharp voice and thoughtful composition could work together. Ella and brother Blackie, backs to us, framed by a predatory pawn shop, quip about getting fleeced.

In a 1933 sequence, reprinted in book form in 1934, Ella experience rapid fire whiplashes in their fortune. She loses out on a generous gift from her own Daddy Warbucks, “Pa,’ gets mixed up with an ad-man’s hair-brained ballyhoo scheme, and even ends up in the slammer.

If Ella has an irritating flaw it is a cloying inferiority complex. She tends to internalize bad luck, finding ways to blame herself for misfortune. And yet, this is another place where writer Conselman psints this character with nuance and hues that are richer than most comic strip characters generally and women characters especially. But Ella’s short trip up the river is an especially interesting side trip into hard-boiled, tough-talking prison dames, another trope you don’t expect from your daily funny page. In just a couple of exchanges with inmates Emily and Dora Conselman uses just a couple of strokes to build portraits of defeat deflection. You could imagine Harold Gray tackling a similar topic, but across multiple weeks and hundreds of word of soliloquy, shaming and political finger pointing. The casualness of Conselman and Plumb’s treatment give it an artful impact…and sadness.

In the limited runs of Ella Cinders I have grabbed from online, and this one contemporaneous reprint from 1934, Conselman’s background as a journalist and screenwriter is apparent. Not only is his dialogue sharp and even lyric, but his social and cultural sensitivities are apparent. Whether it is Hollywood in the 20s, skid row, 30s ad puffery or a women’s prison hitch, he had his heroine bring her spunk through interwar Americana, showing insight and jadedness along the way. A well-edited reprint of Ella Cinders highlights across the 20s and 30s would offer a different take on the era.