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Reminiscing Gone Awry

Published: July 25, 2026 1 minute 14 comments

Art Smith reminisces about the comics pages of The Marietta Times and obviously delved into the newspaper’s archive to get the history right and refresh his memory. But did he get it right?

Art could have used a fact-checker – if newspapers employed fact-checkers any more.

The early comics page history of The Marietta Times begins in 1920:

Bringing Up Father by George McManus – August 7, 1928

Comics first started appearing in American newspapers in the late 1800s with a strip called the Yellow Kid appearing in a New York newspaper in 1895.

The Sept. 23, 1920, edition of The Times featured a single strip named Bringing up Father. The strip, later renamed [emphasis added]

Jiggs and Maggie, ran for 87 years, ending in May 2000.

Okay, we pass on that Yellow Kid reference, it was not the first newspaper comic strip by any means.

But Bringing Up Father was never renamed Jiggs and Maggie, at least not officially. The strip was referred to as “Jiggs and Maggie” (or “Maggie and Jiggs”) and apparently some newspapers used that title, but the name of the strip was always “Bringing Up Father.”

And then…

Blondie by Chic Young – June 12, 1940

The Times of 1940 carried eight strips including Blondie. Blondie was introduced to the world in 1930 and drawn by Chris Young [emphasis added].

Chris Young? Blondie was created by Murat ‘Chic’ Young. Even if The Times didn’t credit the cartoonists Chic Young signed every strip.

As someone who makes my fair share of typos I’ll write it off as that (like his “Buzz” Sawyer reference).

But…

Donald Duck by the Walt Disney Studio & Al Taliaferro – December 29June 11, 1938

By 1950 Blondie was joined by 14 other panels, including Lil Abner, the Red Ryder and Donald Duck, drawn by Walt Disney himself [emphasis added].

Yes Walt Disney was credited for every Donald Duck comic strip and he signature was affixed to every one, but people knew that the Walt Disney comic strips were ghost by his studio and, other than the first few weeks of Mickey Mouse in 1930, Walt himself had nothing to do with them.

The Ohio Adventure by Jim Baker – October 23, 1960

I do give Art Smith credit for making me look up Jim Baker’s The Ohio Adventure.

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Comments 14

  1. As long as we are talking about typos, here’s one to fix: “…and he signature was affixed…” — I’m just not sure whether the intended word was “his” or “the” (it would read well either way).

    P.S. As always, you are invited to delete this comment when you fix the typo.

    1. P.P.S. I missed another one: “…ghosted…”

      1. The Spelling Gods must truly appreciate your devotion, sir. I only caught the one.

      2. My typos, I hope, are forgivable, which is more than can be said about forgetting to link to Smith’s newspaper column. That at least has now been corrected.

  2. Ah, “The Ohio Adventure.” I’ve known about that one for several years. (https://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2010/07/ben-hardy-ohio-adventure.html) I never discovered how far — if at all — it reached in syndication outside of Ohio, though. I half-wonder if that’s a cartoon that’s almost entirely unknown except to people who live/lived in the state for many years. Although Marietta is RIGHT on the border with Virginia, so there must have been at least some bleed-over if the strip ran there.

    1. Sorry, I meant WEST Virginia. Point still stands though. 🙂

      1. I have somewhere in the house one of Jim Baker’s books, “How Our Counties Got Their Names,” about Ohio’s 88 counties. It is a small paperback (though the paper is white and fairly thick, not newsprint). Baker’s work was definitely of its era (both in terms of style and content), though there is some charm in the drawing and lettering style (similar to Caniff), and in the wordiness (reminiscent of Billy Ireland).

        Here is the obituary for Baker from the December 31, 1995, Columbus Dispatch:

        ===
        ‘BEN HARDY’ CARTOONIST DIES AT 71 – BAKER ALSO DREW ‘OHIO WAS LIKE THAT’ AT ‘DISPATCH’

        By Bernie Karsko, Dispatch Staff Reporter

        James Wallace “Jim” Baker, a former Dispatch cartoonist whose pen brought alive Ben Hardy, a mythical Ohio teen-ager in pioneer days, died Friday at age 71.

        Baker, who lived in Worthington, was a prolific artist who was producing works in assorted media as recently as October. He died at Riverside Methodist Hospitals of heart failure.

        He worked at The Dispatch from 1946 to 1966. He left to start a business with his wife, Mary Lou. They syndicated the “Ben Hardy” comic strip and another strip, “As You Were,” in 22 Ohio newspapers. They also produced pamphlets and maps about the state’s famous people and places.

        Baker and his wife, a feature writer, had worked side by side at The Dispatch. They married in 1948 after she graduated from Ohio State University and served a stint in the Marine Corps.

        A cartoon panel in The Dispatch Sunday Magazine, “Ohio Was Like That,” won Baker the Frank J. Lausche Governor’s Award. Then Baker switched to a more contemporary magazine strip called “This Is Ohio.”

        He was art director of the Sunday Magazine when he started producing the daily “Ben Hardy” comic on Sept. 7, 1952. Dispatch executives had been working with Baker for months to create a feature that would help celebrate Ohio’s statehood sesquicentennial in 1953.

        Hardy, the celebrated young woodsman, fit the bill. He has a street named after him. The Worthington council took care of that when it learned Baker was building a house on an unnamed street.

        At one time, Baker had two daily comic strips in The Dispatch.

        But his first devotion was oil paintings, and his talent in recent years was dedicated to creating works that hang in private and public collections throughout the 50 states and in Europe and Japan.

        For the last 10 years, copies of the paintings have appeared on calendars. The 1996 calendars, of barns, are being sold around the country, and the ’97 calendars, depicting covered bridges, have been printed.
        Baker’s wife said her husband loved history, humor and his collie, Sunny.

        The Rutherford-Corbin Funeral Home, 515 High St., Worthington, is handling arrangements. Calling hours are 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday. The funeral will be private.
        ===

  3. Also, the name was “Hogan’s Alley” not “The Yellow Kid,” no?

  4. Bud Abbott’s character name is “Chick Young” in “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.”
    Don’t know where else I could mention this.

  5. Re: “Donald Duck by the Walt Disney Studio and Al Taliaferro” – December 29, 1938”
    Correct date for this strip (as per fourth panel lower left) is 6/11 (1939). See Internet Archive Collection of every Donald Duck daily strip from 1938 to 1939. (https://archive.org/details/donald-duck-yd-1938-1939-r-1.0-by-laboratorio-del-fumetto) specifically 6/11/1939 at https://archive.org/details/donald-duck-yd-1938-1939-r-1.0-by-laboratorio-del-fumetto/page/n35/mode/2up
    Also, for those who aren’t aware of Taliaferro’s work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Taliaferro

  6. CORRECTION: Donald Duck “The Shoe’s on the other foot”, June 11, 1938

    1. Ignorance is no excuse dept.:
      In my defense the copy of the strip came from the December 29, 1938 edition of The (Perth, Australia) Daily News where it was dropped off from a slow boat on the way to China.

  7. I’m absolutely serious about this question – a 5 MINUTE READ? What the hell is the matter with their readership?

    I skimmed it in 5 seconds.

  8. Not only Buzz Sawyer but also Blondie Boppadoop.

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