Tag Archives: 1940s

Quips and Curlicues: Mopsy’s Stylish Return

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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 of her own single-panel comic (1937-1966). It is hard to say which came first, Parker’s cartoonish look or Mopsy’s, but they shared the same shock of black curlicues, sharply lined brows and eyes, and a precisely “sticked” set of lips. And since Parker was also a noted, audacious clothes designer, Mopsy was a working girl with a seemingly endless closet of ultra-modern fashions.

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Calling Dick Tracy…Again: Shaking Up the Reprint Game

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Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy has been among the most reprinted strips of all time. The reasons are obvious, and I don’t need to rehash this site’s exegesis on my personal favorite. Tracy was the strip that turned me on to classic newspaper comics. Gould’s singular visual signature, his grisly violence, grotesque villains and deadpan hero made Dick Tracy compelling on so many levels. And now we get yet another packaging style from the same Library of American Comics group that finished its magisterial 29-volume complete Gould run, 1931-77. With new publishing partner Clover Press, LOAC has reworked some of its earliest projects, like the magnificent upgrade of Terry and the Pirates and the first six volumes of The Complete Dick Tracy. And now we get slipcased, paperback editions of prime-time Gould, 1941 through 1944. Much more affordable, manageable, and available than the original LOAC volumes, each of which covered about two years of comics, the four $29.99 books are also available as a discounted set from Clover. This new series started as a crowd-funded BackerKit project last year.

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Peg-Leg Bates Gets a Cameo in Hank

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The Weekly Weird. Coulton Waugh’s experimental adventure hero Hank was the first disabled character to lead a comic strip. Shortly after losing his leg, the veteran Hank finds inspiration from real-life Broadway sensation, Peg-Leg Bates. Bates was a sensation on the stage show circuit around the country during the 30s and 40s on Broadway. The sharecropper’s son lost his leg in a cotton gun accident at the age of 12. He was determined to overcomethe disability and eventually turned it into a dance routine. More on Hank and Bates here.

Recovering Hank: America’s Anti-Fascist Hero

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A WWII veteran amputee who doesn’t want to journey (or save) the world. Just a grease monkey who yearns to get back to the garage, marry his sweetheart, and figure out what he and his pals’ great sacrifice really meant. That was Hank Hannigan, the titular, unlikely hero of the short-lived 1945 comic strip Hank, which creator Coulton Waugh conceived as an answer to traditional adventures. “To get a new character I go into the subways and actually draw them,” he told Editor and Publisher before Hank’s April launch. “I want the people of America to stream into the strip.”

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A Merry Dick Tracy Christmas

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Christmas always had a special place on the comic strip page. Many artists creatively wove Yuletide celebrations into their storyline or just broke the fourth wall for a day to send holiday messages directly to readers. Over the next few days we will recall some of the most creative examples. But let’s start with one of the heartiest celebrants of the holidays, Dick Tracy, and trace how he and Chester Gould treated the holiday.

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Alley Oop’s BFF: Chris Aruffo Reanimates the Caveman

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Chris Aruffo may not have planned to be a publisher, but somehow he managed to accomplish something that others couldn’t. In just a few years he published the full run of V.T. Hamlin’s Alley Oop dailies as well as Dave Graue’s run. More than that, he made the series affordable and used pristine source material for best possible rendering of this beautifully designed strip. Chris sat down with me recently to reflect on that experience. We discuss his history with Alley Oop, locating good sources, why this series comes in so many different dimensions, and can reprinting old comics make business sense? But with this interview we launch a series of interviews with reprint publishers where we brainstrom ways that 20th Century comic strips can be made relevant and inspiring to the next generations of comics fans and creators.

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Advertising Decency: The Cartoon War on Hate

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Hate is an easy sell. In the marketplace of hearts and minds, intolerance, grievance, anger are some of the most compelling product features of any cause or candidate that is new to the political shelves. Likewise, simple, high aspirations tend to market more easily. See “Hope and Change.” Appealing to base instincts or ambition and aspiration is Marketing 101 in America’s cultural economy.

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