CSotD: Comic Strip of The Day 100 Years Ago
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Let's join the New Year's Eve 1913 party, already in progress over at Bud Fisher's. (There will be lots of clicking to get larger versions today, by the way. On my computer, Chrome allows scrolling down on those pull-outs, Firefox does not.)
Nice of him to apply labels. A lot of familiar faces, but not all would have come with names. New Year's parties are like that in real life, too.
Starting at the front, then clockwise: Silk Hat Harry, Dingbat, Gloom, Happy Hooligan, Flip, Little Nemo, Buster Brown, Mutt and Jeff, Jiggs, Polly's Pa, Desperate Desmond, Shrimp, Joy, Pinky, Newlywed.
If you can fill in on the ones not linked, please do so in the comments, but, just in terms of the ones I knew, that's one heckuva party. (Update: DD Degg to the rescue. See comments. One mystery left.)
I particularly like the non-disclaimer under his sig at lower right. You tell'em, Bud.
Fisher had a pretty good selection of well-known comic strip characters to sit around that table, but "Those Kids Next Door" were also pioneers in what was still very much the early days of comic strips with continuing characters.
"Toonerville Trolley" had just started in 1913 and Fontaine Fox was still doing other stuff. But the style of this panel makes the signature somewhat superfluous.
By the way, that "slit skirt" of hers may seem pretty innocuous, but …
It was apparently quite the scandal back then, and you can see there was one judge who took it seriously and a whole lot of people who did not. Imagine if today's papers had taken this WGASA attitude towards some of the click-bait that passes for "news" today.
Though the difference between click-bait and stuff-that-makes-you-buy-the-paper is mostly in who you serve. Getting people to buy your paper is common sense. Serving them up to advertisers is an act of reader betrayal. Editors and ad directors have long fought over where to draw the line.
What hasn't changed was that the scandal is being reported in "A Clean Wholesome Paper For California Homes." Yes, indeedy, nothing quite so clean and wholesome as women in slit skirts dancing the tango. Shameless hussies!
I would strongly suggest that, if clicking on this page doesn't yield a readable size, you download it and enjoy the coverage. If newspapers were all this entertaining, what a different world it would be for newspapers.
Newspapers back then had a sense of obligation, however imperfectly they may have fulfilled it. I wasn't able to track down Deane Powell, who drew for the Omaha Bee, but, like Billy Ireland in Columbus, he made his paper feel like a neighbor.
Which is the trick to gaining subscriptions, folks. One-size-fits-all fits nobody very well. This panel was embedded amidst a number of text blocks of New Year's messages from various local dignitaries.
Powell also offered this relatively standard New Year's cartoon.
Nobody seems to have a lot of specific things to accuse 1913 of, but, as this Harry Murphy panel suggests, they were all perfectly happy to see the last of the old fellow.
And there was a lot of confidence expressed in the new kid, but I suspect if we looked at New Year's cartoons from 1915, we'd see he had grown up to earn the same disdain.
The sports pages offered somewhat more focused criticism of the old fellow. Oddly enough, in addition to this panel featuring Frank Chance, I spotted another one that referenced Joe Tinker. The trio that had inspired FPA's poem about "Tinkers to Evers To Chance" had broken up by then, and Chance was managing the Yankees.
Jack Johnson, also seen here, had a tough 1913 indeed, having fled the country to avoid jail for, technically, violation of the Mann Act but, more specifically, having violated the Mann Act with a white woman. Not sure who the "white hope" next to him is, the only fight of note I could dredge up that year being against another black boxer. Possibly an anonymous stand-in for the succession of tomato cans the champ had systematically knocked over in his career.
And I'll leave it to you to research English polo.
The subject of personal reform was more productive for cartoonists that year. With the nation only six years away from Prohibition, "the only paper in Seattle that dares to print the news" seems to have been pretty firmly in the "dry" camp.
Man, this piece would have gone viral on Facebook if it had run yesterday.
But young men did have choices to make about where they were going, in 1914 and in life, and drunkenness was not the only pitfall that awaited them.
I'm gonna assume that's more than a mausoleum at the end of the straight-and-narrow. At least, I hope that's not where a decent young man who made moral choices could hope to arrive by the end of the new year.
Somehow, Rube Goldberg seems a little less certain that New Year's promises of reform are worth a whole lot.
Perhaps because he had wandered into a few watering holes on New Year's Eve himself. Or do you suppose he got all this from hearing confessions down at St. Reuben's?
(This reminds me of one of Richard Thompson's "Richard's Poor Almanac" entries. A bit more Runyonesque, but then, at the time, not only was Damon Runyon an active journalist, but he was covering boxing in New York in competition with Bat Masterson. It was a pretty colorful era.)
And while we're on the topic of journalists, Scoop the Cub Reporter was an established strip, and Scoop was determined to give up the evil weed, purely for economic reasons.
This fellow was determined to give up all his evil habits. With a few asterisks. "Indoor Sports" was by Tad Dorgan, who also did "Silk Hat Harry's Divorce," seen at the table with Mutt and Jeff. Pretty interesting guy.
Tobacco — the giving up of — seems to have been a major topic.
Best part of this light-hearted cartoon is that it's by Hal Coffman, who also drew that sanctimonious little sermonette about avoiding moral pitfalls.
Here's to cartoonists who choose humor over hot air.
Now, here's your moment of print-medium zen:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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