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From Little Orphan Annie (Harold Gray) to The Toxic Avenger (Matt Bors) with Molly and the Bear (Bob and Vicki Scott), Spongebob Squarepant (U.S. Postal Service), Chris Ware (USPS again), Barbara Shermund (Liza Donnelly), and Goofus and Gallant (Garry Myers and Marion Hull Hammel)
From Little Orphan to Just Plain Annie
A few days over 101 years ago “Little Orphan Annie” debuted in The New York Daily News. A couple months past 15 years ago “Annie” ended her almost 86 year run in newspapers.
The rhyme “Little Orphant Annie” by “Hoosier Poet” James Whitcomb Riley was told by an orphan (named Annie) sent to a farmer’s home to earn her keep by washing dishes, sweeping and baking during the day. At night, however, she told stories to the farmer’s children warning them they would be taken away by elves, goblins and witches if they were naughty.
“An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you Ef you Don’t Watch Out!”
Kori Rumore and Marianne Mather at The Chicago Tribune celebrate ‘Little Orphan Annie,’ from poem to paper, and to stage and screen (or here), on the occasion of the orphan’s 101 birthday, with some prehistory and a timeline of the comic strip in and out of newspapers.
From last year’s centennial anniversary: The Daily Cartoonist’s timeline of Harold Gray’s spunky girl.
Molly and the Bear, Vicki and the Bob
Speaking of August 5, but the August 5 of just a couple days ago not 101 years ago, that was the release date for Bob and Vicki Scott‘s second original Molly and the Bear book Campers Beware.
Recently Comics Grinder interviewed the husband and wife creators.
Would you share about the evolution of Molly and the Bear, from comic strip to book series?
Bob: Molly and the Bear started back when Universal Press Syndicate ran Comics Sherpa [link added], a web platform for budding comic strips. Sherpa was open to anyone, and the fellow creators were so supportive and encouraging. GoComics is the syndicate’s “Invite-Only” web syndication platform and I jumped on Go in 2009. I love the immediacy of posting a strip and getting immediate reaction.
Vicki: However.
Bob: GoComics audiences tend to hit a plateau, and Molly and the Bear had a couple thousand subscribers and the audience was not growing. But I really wanted more people to see my work. Vicki began suggesting adapting the strip into graphic novels.
Goofus and Gallant Shaped Generations of Kids
There are several regular features in each monthly issue of Highlights for Children. This includes Hidden Pictures, The Timbertoes, Check and Double Check, Brain Play and the ever-popular Goofus and Gallant.
The latter feature is a comic strip that compares the words and actions of two young boys. Goofus is often bad and does most things wrong, while Gallant is often good and does most things right. While different illustrators, from Maurieta Wellman to Leslie Harrington [emphases added], have drawn this strip, there has been little deviation from its original theme.
Michael Taube at Troy Media rediscovers Goofus and Gallant and fills us in on their background and the background of their home turf Highlights for Children (via The Kindersley Clarion).
[I]t’s been the subject of several fascinating academic and mainstream studies.
Here’s one example. “The boys are prepubescent, but their exact age is unclear, as is their relationship to each other,” Julie Beck wrote in The Atlantic on June 28, 2023. “Though the style of their illustration has changed over the years (they were briefly elves with pointed ears before transforming, unannounced, into human boys), they have always been essentially identical to each other. Are they twin brothers? Friends? The same kid in alternate universes? Or is it more of a Jekyll-and-Hyde situation?”
Matt Bors Dives into “Proper Comic Books”
“Other people certainly may have no interest in me doing silly genre comics and wonder why I’m not doing, you know, serious comics journalism anymore,” Bors said. “And that’s fair. I guess I have come around from how I felt when I was younger and was really gung-ho about political cartoons and wanted to do really direct, didactic stuff, which I think it can be easier to reach people with actual storytelling and with things not being as didactic.”
Matt Bors discusses giving up graphic political cartoons and journalism for science fiction comic books with Chris Coplan at AIPT.
“I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect when you take a beloved property and tinker with it a little bit,” Bors said during a recent Zoom call. “Sometimes people are really precious about that, or have opinions about how you’re executing it. I think one thing working in my favor is that Toxic Avenger did not originate as a comic book. It’s a cult movie, and those movies still exist and aren’t sullied by my comic if you don’t like my comic.”
Check out Matt Bors comic book listings at Ahoy Comics.
The Cartoons Of Barbara Shermund
When I say Shermund was a groundbreaker, it’s not because of any clear “first.” She was not the first woman, that first goes to Ethel Plummer, the first woman cartoonist in The New Yorker in 1925. Shermund was groundbreaking in what she drew and wrote about and how she did it. She gave us a peek into what life was like for a modern, feminist woman in NYC in the 1920’s. Her cartoons are sassy, intelligent, subversive, and she teases men like no one had before.
Liza Donnelly has been giving us a series of mini-profiles (with galleries). The latest is Barbara Shermund.
USPS Summer Catalog has a Chris Ware Cover
USA Philatelic Catalog has Chris Ware cover and US residents can get it for free from the Post Office’s website at https://store.usps.com/store/product/usa-philatelic-P_012007 My friend Rodrigo notes there is a pdf with quotes from Ware on page 3: https://www.usps.com/stamp-collecting/assets/pdf/usa_philatelic_catalog.pdf
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