Tag Archives: comics

Making Charles Dana Gibson Sexy Again

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This is a good time for modern comic strip fans to recall Charles Dana Gibson’s role in late Victorian American culture. The most famous illustrator of his day had a calming, languid line and upscale focus that contrasted sharply with everything the early newspaper comic strip represented. Just as a tsunami of recent comic strip reprints celebrate the raucousness of 20th Century cartooning, Gibson’s epoch-defining artistry reminds us of what the “vulgar” new medium was disrupting. It also suggests why the scions of civility found the Sunday supplements so offensive and magazine illustrators like Gibson so engaging.

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Penny Parties: Cartoon Sociology Meets the ‘Bobby-Soxers’

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Like all American mass media of the last century, demographics and market forces provide the frame within which trends in comic strip content lived. Harry Haenigsen’s Penny launched in 1943 directly out of the intersection of two new social realities – gal power and the “invention of the teenager.” It is not surprising, then, that Haenigsen took an almost sociological approach to portraying two things he certainly was not – young nor a girl. Like any good cartoon anthropologist, he decided to go native. The Oct. 6 1946 Philadelphia Inquirer reports how the New Hope artist researched Penny by eavesdropping on soda shop conversations and even hosting cookouts for the local high schoolers.

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Our Shelves Runneth Over: POD Spews a Gusher of Reprints

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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 is flooded with all manner of lost, obscure or woefully overlooked strips of old. I find it hard to keep up with what is available, let alone decide how much of this largesse I want, need or can afford. But in the video below I share just a taste from this ever-expanding buffet of cartoon treats.

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From Oaky Doaks to Bruce Gentry: Behind CSAG’s Reprint Rush

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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 from our conversation with him this week, that library will be growing weekly. Recently retired from the exhibit design team at the National Gallery in Washington D.C., Stefan brings to his comic strip mission a familial and professional background in the arts, digital skills and a penchant for tight deadlines. He keeps himself on a disciplined schedule, and has developed an efficient workflow that produces such a fast-growing library. But as we also discussed, there is also a method for selecting titles for reissue. Stefan is drawn to artists who used this medium to express personal experience, a unique perspective and exceptional artistic style. He is not only resurfacing old strips but also calling attention to an aspect of comics history often missed by standard histories and the familiar canon of “greats” they have established.

Little Lefty: Kid Kommunist

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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 deserves more than a footnote. Like Waugh’s Hank, and the later Pinky Rankin by Dick Briefer, Little Lefty was a genuine and sustained attempt to leverage the conventions of the comics genre towards specific political ends. And it was part of a legacy of leftist cartooning that was already decades old.

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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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Dingbat Calls In the Klan: Herriman’s Bourgeois Obsessive

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Along with chaos, mayhem and violence, obsessive behavior was a core theme of early newspaper cartooning. Consider the many titular anti-heroes of these years, like Hungry Henrietta, Superstitious Sam, Jingling Johnson, Sammy Sneeze. Or the irrepressible raging “Outbursts of Everett True,” the sex addiction of Mr. Jack, the insufferable politeness of Alfonse and Gaston, or the numerous strips about absent-minded codgers or irrepressible pranksters. Seen through the lens of early 20th Century comics, the new American cityscape was characterized by obsessive behaviors, idiosyncratic personalities, uncontrollable ticks – compulsions of every sort. The annoying monomaniacs in our midst formed the heart of early comics. It was an art well-suited to the daily newspaper: a comedy of everyday frustrations and observations. 

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