Yesterday's Papers

United Kingdom Press

2009-12-29T08:47:00.000-08:00

The United Kingdom Press, of 28, Brydges St, Strand, is one of the lesser known penny dreadful publishers of the 1860’s. From 1805-1836 No. 28 was occupied by The News. Renton Nicholson’s racy newspaper The Town was published here in the 1830’s and another contemporary neighbour was the penny blood publishers James and George Pattie. The Drury Lane Theatre faced Bridges (or Bridges) Street and backed onto Drury Lane. The London Romance Company’s penny dreadful Rose Mortimer; or, The Ballet-Girl's Revenge Being the Romance and Reality of a Pretty Actress's Life Behind the Scenes and Before the Curtain was written by “a Comedian of the T. R. Drury Lane.”

Brydges Street, in Covent Garden, 300 yards west of the main publishing area of Fleet Street, was renamed Catherine Street. It was at one time a disgusting slum full of gin-houses and prostitutes until it was flattened in 1900 and replaced by the Royal Courts of Justice. (Thanks to Nick McBride for his help with the geography.)

The UK Press was the first publisher of Charley Wag, The New Jack Sheppard, and The Woman With the Yellow Hair, probably written by Charles Henry Ross and Ernest Warren, Mysteries of the Divorce Court, and Gipsey Madge, or; the Thieves of London. We can add a slew of titles from the advertisement below found in scraps saved by Ono. Incidentally Barry Ono was falsely accused of inventing the Varney the Vulture as a ghost-title.

They also published the works of the Countess Constance D’Orsay, the Female Sailor, author of the Black Flag; or, The Pirate Fiend of the Secret Cave and Varney the Vulture; or, the Track of the Doomed, a penny dreadful western. Although the Countess was a real person, the wife of the famous dandy Count D’Orsay, I can make no claims to the accuracy of the ‘biography’ given below.

Our Ernie

2009-12-28T17:40:00.000-08:00

Our Ernie by various artists. Amalgamated Press.

Knockout Comics

2009-12-28T17:09:00.000-08:00

Our Ernie was the creation of Charles Holt and ran from 1939-1960 with illustrations by a variety of artists. Denis Gifford drew this for only a brief period in 1950 when a more accomplished artist (seen here) took over. For some reason Gifford was allowed to sign his work, something rare in the UK comics, maybe his name was known through radio and television work.

The artist on this page took over from Gifford. It may have been by Hugh O'Neil. Hugh McNeill was the creator of Pansy Potter the Strong Man's Daughter which had its debut in the Christmas edition of Beano in 1938. This became Pansy Potter in Wonderland in 1949 and the great artwork was by James Clark. McNeil also drew a great adventure strip for one of the Knockout's companion papers, The Sun (there was also The Comet) featuring Dick Turpin and his female companion Moll Moonlight, created by Leonard Mathews.

Stonehenge Kit (1939-52) was created by Norman Ward and the better comics were not by Gifford. Gifford’s work was usually signed. This Stonehenge Kit strip looks something like the work of brother’s Reg or George Parlett.

The only strip originated by Denis Gifford for Amalgamated press was Steadfast McStaunch (1950-52) which was a comic page featuring puzzles, optical illusions and dot-de-dots. Steadfast McStaunch was a funny animal comic about a dog in the middle ages. Others he worked on were William Wagtail (1945) and Dicky Diddle (1952.)

Stonehenge Kit

2009-12-28T16:05:00.000-08:00

Some 1950 samples of Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit, by Denis Gifford.

Film Picture Stories

2009-12-28T15:08:00.000-08:00

The British film comics had their beginnings in the Funny Wonder (1914), published every Tuesday, which featured Charlie Chaplin comics on the front page of some issues. Amalgamated Press began further exploiting the possibilities of the cinema, with Boy’s Cinema Weekly, a tabloid with illustrated text adaptations of popular movies, on Dec. 1919. One comic, Merry and Bright, contained comics featuring popular vaudeville and music hall stars. The editor of Merry and Bright, was the creator of the longest-running film comic, Film Fun (1920-1962) featuring the likes of Harold Lloyd, with art by Billy Wakefield.

That editor of Film Fun was Fred Cordwell, born in Lambeth in 1887 and died in 1948. He worked for Alfred Harmsworth as a copy boy then moved into editing various comics and story papers for the Amalgamated Press. Film Fun had a twin, the Kinema Comic, (1920-1932) with a Fatty Arbuckle comic on the cover of no. 1.

Film Picture Stories was the last entrant into this early use of film stars in comics but only lasted through 1934-35. Film Picture Stories was the first British comic to showcase dramatic adventures instead of the film comedians.

Bela Lanan Court Reporter

2009-12-23T18:30:00.000-08:00

A 1932 Short Story of the Hammersmith Ghost told by Bela Lanan Court Reporter.

The writer was L. Allen Heine and the artist was (I think) Robert Wathen.

Push-Button World

2009-12-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

There was a time (think 1963) when the future promised us a push-button world. Consider The Jetsons who had a button for every occasion, washing the dog, vacuuming the floor, and making a Dagwood sandwich to order. The scariest push-button of them all was in the hands of the President of the United States. The October 1963 issue of Atlantic Monthly (“New Kinds of Television”) predicted the possibility of cable TV -- television pumped right into your home. The president of TelePrompter Co. “envisions many selling uses. He sees the announcer on the TV screen holding up a kitchen gadget and saying “Mother, if you’d like to own this for four dollars, just hit the acceptance button and it’s yours. You’ll be billed later by American Express.”

Not everybody was pleased by the idea. Norman Rudnick, a small shopkeeper was quoted as saying “Things aren’t tough enough with the chain stores and the mail order stores and the Purple Stamps and all -- now they’re doing this to me! They should all hang by a rope which I will be happy to sell them.”

A Cruikshank comic strip

2009-12-22T08:01:00.000-08:00

Cruikshank strip above from > The Comic Almanack For 1849. George Cruikshank. Second Series, 1844-1853. Folding plate. From a reprint by Chatto & Windus, 1912.

No. 2 GIVEN AWAY WITH No. 1

2009-12-21T07:50:00.000-08:00

‘No. 2 GIVEN AWAY WITH No. 1.’

By E. Latham , Chambers’s Journal, January 1, 1915.

Those of our readers who are not old enough to remember the palmy days of such periodicals as The Boys of England (begun in 1866, and discontinued, we believe, in 1889), The Young Men of Great Britain (begun in 1868), and The Penny Miscellany, when what are termed ‘penny dreadfuls’ were in the heyday of prosperity, say forty to fifty years ago, will not readily recognise the once stereotyped phrase which heads this article. The writer is old enough to remember the time referred to, and he has now before him the ‘penny numbers’ of three of these - novels shall we call them ? - of the period. These fair samples will form the basis of our remarks, and enable our younger readers to form some idea of the kind of fiction which was so plentifully supplied, and for which there was so great a demand, at the time mentioned. The pernicious literature of the present day is perhaps no better in many respects than it was then, but it is very different. We all know what current literature is ; we need only deal with the ‘penny dreadfuls’ and even ‘’a’ penny ‘orribles’ of the sixties and seventies : our readers can make the comparison for themselves.

Of the popularity of such fiction as we refer to there can be no doubt. A footnote in one of the tales we shall notice, referring to a hope expressed by one of the characters that the hero will be popular, says : ‘If a sale of forty thousand of Number 1 of his adventures proves his popularity, he is so. - PRINTER’S NOTE.’

Let us begin with ‘Charley Wag, the New Jack Sheppard, by the author of The Woman with the Yellow Hair, Somebody Else’s Wife,’ &c. The story is in four books, and is issued in penny numbers. We are both right and wrong in this statement. Each fasciculus, published at one penny weekly, consists of sixteen pages and two numbers, numbered on the first and ninth pages respectively, and yet the first week’s issue is called No.1 at the folded edge. This system obtains throughout, Nos. 15 and 16 showing on the edge No. 8, and so on. In this way it may be said that as well as No.2 being given away with No.1, No.4 is given away with No.3, and so on. There are in this story seventy-two single or thirty-six double numbers, plus three pages of text at the end.

A few extracts will be interesting, either for the purposes of comparison or taken by themselves. Book I. is entitled ‘Childhood in the Gutter;’ the first chapter is headed, ‘All but Murder,’ and begins ; ‘A woman ran wildly down one of the several steep flights of steps leading from Hungerford Market to the quay below, and creeping along upon the slippery stonework overhanging the water, paused for a moment at the extreme point, cast one fearful, shuddering glance around, and FLUNG HER CHILD INTO THE RIVER. The rain was lashing heavily against the window-panes, and the wind sweeping in fierce and fitful gusts along the deserted streets above, while every now and then a streak of livid lightning rent the air, followed by deafening peals of thunder -... she was young and almost beautiful, but deadly pale ; her hair -... Her flashing eyes, set teeth, and knitted brows bespoke her courage and determination, and her DEADLY PURPOSE. She tore the sleeping babe which a moment since had nestled at her breast, from its warm shelter beneath her thick, plaid shawl, raised it high in the air, to give her the more power, and flung it fiercely from her into the black and sluggish waters gurgling at her feet. “Thus perishes the record of my sin and folly.” It was more a murmured than a spoken thought, for her blanched lips scarce gave utterance to any sound ; but had it been instead the loudest shriek, the raging tempest would have drowned her cry in its boisterous fury.... No one had seen her, no one followed her. The darkness hid her retreating form, and Heaven alone was witness to her crime. The would-be murderess fled away, careful alone of her own safety, heeding not how fared the little living bundle the dark waters swept along towards death. What hope was there for it ? What guardian angel came to rescue it ? None other than TODDLEBOY.’

Well, the child is taken to a public-house, ‘The Drinking Fish,’ frequented by Mr. Toddleboy, and under the care of the landlady revives ; and the author remarks : ‘Of course you know very well, gentle Reader, as well as I do myself, that I never intended the baby to die, or else what good would there have been in rescuing it and intruding it upon your polite consideration ? No - to ease your suspense - supposing you feel any (and if you are a very young reader, I don’t know that you may not after all), I may as well tell you that in an hour’s time IT WAS ALIVE AND KICKING.’

Then follow various expedients resorted to by the successive people into whose hands the baby falls, each trying to get rid of it in pantomime fashion, until at last it comes into the possession of a kind-hearted woman who takes care of it. The hero, Charley Wag, becomes in Book II. ‘The Boy Burglar,’ and in Book III. ‘The Jailbird.” Book IV., the last, occupies more than half the whole, and is entitled, ‘The Most Successful Thief In London.’ Of course Charley turns out to be the son of a duchess.

The following is from the last chapter : ‘In one of the handsomest mansions in Park Lane, a ball, given in honour of some foreign princes, was taking place. In the brilliantly lighted salons were assembled the elite of England’s aristocracy. All seemed to partake of the gaiety around, and the host, a handsome young man, was about to lead the lovely daughter of the Earl of Dumbledore to join the dancers, when a tall, grave-looking man approached, and requested a few moments’ private conversation. The host conducted his fair companion to a seat, and complied with the stranger’s request. The stranger proved to be a detective, and the gentleman whom he came to apprehend on a charge of murder, and with whom he had requested a few minute’s private conversation, was our hero, Charley Wag !... A verdict of guilty was found, and our hero was condemned to death. The sentence was to be carried into effect the following morning, when, to the astonishment of the officials at Newgate, the prisoner was respited, and afterwards pardoned. The Duchess of Heatherland had saved her son’s life. On the day before the execution was to take place she had an interview with the Home Secretary ; to him she had explained all, and to him she proclaimed our hero, Charley Wag, as the heir to the dukedom and estates of Heatherland. This will, in ‘some measure’ - in ‘some measure’ is refreshing, and the respite and subsequent pardon of a murderer, even though he be the son of a duchess, requires a very strong imagination on the reader’s part - ‘account for Charley’s respite and subsequent pardon. Feeling that the position he had succeeded in establishing in society was gone for ever’ - we should think so indeed - ‘our hero determined upon going abroad, where he passed the rest of his life in strict retirement.’ Probably he did.

The tale concludes : ‘After justice had overtaken Bloodyer, Faversham,’ whom the duchess had married, ‘had altered visibly, and latterly the duchess perceived that his mind was affected. She seldom permitted herself to lose sight of him ; but on one occasion he succeeded in evading her vigilance, and set off for London by the last train at night. The duchess discovered his absence soon enough to catch the same train. Curious to know where he would go, she did not interfere with him, but kept him in sight from the moment of leaving the terminus at Waterloo-bridge. Striding onwards, Faversham made his way to his old house in Bayswater.’ We should think the duchess was rather tired if she followed him on foot. ‘At the back of this house was an old cellar which Faversham rented ; in this he had, years ago, caused a bricklayer to build him another or inner cellar. In this place were the bodies of all Faversham’s victims ! To this cellar the madman bent his steps. Entering the first cellar, the door of which he left open while he procured a light, Faversham passed into the other chamber without observing that he was followed by the duchess. Here a sight presented itself which curdled the blood of the shrinking woman. Lying about in all directions were the bodies or skeletons’ - a modern Bluebeard, eh ! - ‘of the unfortunates who had been murdered by Faversham ; and in a corner, over a few bones, the madman was crouching down and muttering incoherently. The duchess, unable to control her feelings at the ghastly spectacle, gave vent to an exclamation of horror. Uttering a yell, the maniac sprang to the door and closed it. The unfortunate woman was shut in with this infuriated demon. Vainly did she beg of him to spare her life and return home with her. The madman heeded her not. She must die. His vow must be fulfilled. Again giving the terrible yell, he clutched her by the throat, nor did he relax his grasp until his victim was a corpse. Then, flinging the lifeless body from him, he sat chattering by the bones in the corner until late in the night, when he fell asleep. When he awoke he was sensible of the horrors of his situation ! His wife, murdered by his own hand, was lying a corpse at his feet, the bodies of his victims around him, and, oh ! horror ! escape impossible ! The door of the inner chamber closed with a spring, and thus the madman in his frenzy had sealed his own death-warrant. For days the wretched man’ - wretched indeed - ‘remained fully alive to a sense of what his fate must be ; but at length, worn out and exhausted from want of food, and his efforts to make his terrible position known to the outer world, death came to his relief, and the charnel-house of those he had murdered became his own tomb.’

We may mention that there is a copy of this interesting work in the British Museum Library ; but the last one hundred and thirty-nine pages are missing ; the writer’s copy wants pages 529-40 and pages 543-58, but is otherwise complete. The comparative scarcity and bad condition, or incompleteness, of existing copies of this class of literature (!) is probably accounted for by their destruction or ill-treatment, like school-books, by their youthful owners.

Having given sufficient particulars of Charley Wag to serve our present purpose, let us glance at another typical example, The Blue Dwarf, by Lady Esther Hope (a pseudonym, we believe). Book I. is called ‘The Foster Brothers.’ In the first chapter a figure steals into the bed-room of a sleeping youth and replaces a bottle on a small table at the bedside by another similar one. Shortly afterwards a figure crawls from beneath the bed and substitutes another similar bottle for that left by the previous visitor. The second figure chuckles - not too loudly, it is to be hoped - and silently leaves the apartment.

Here is a description of the Blue Dwarf, from whom the story takes its name : ‘When the assassin fled.... it was no imaginary cry which pursued him as he rushed down the dell. A rushing sound followed his escape, and something entered the room in which the foul deed had been done. It was a man with a dark lanthorn, the light of which was now shed upon the insensible body. And such a man ! About four feet high, with short legs, and arms that reached considerably below the knee, this sudden apparition appeared to have no redeeming point in his deformity. His face was hideous ; grizzly hair like that of a negro surmounted a low, narrow forehead ; little red-circled eyes, themselves rather green than any other colour’ - he preferred green, we may take it - ‘a huge mouth, revealing teeth filed to a point and died’ - ‘died’ is good, but probably this is not the author’s fault - ‘jet black;’ - we should have thought a ‘dead’ black more appropriate, had the author known - ‘a beardless chin- might have all passed still as accidents of nature to be explained by sickness; or premature birth,’ -but the filed teeth, how can they be explained in this way ? ‘or some awful terror on his mother’s soul’ - a kind of accumulation of birth-marks, we suppose. ‘But his skin was blue’ - ah, we had overlooked this incontrovertible and inexplicable fact - ‘blue as indigo, with spots all over his face, neck and arms of a blue-black.’ Stephens’ ink must have been nothing in comparison. ‘He was shaggy too, like an orang-outang. He wore a fantastic dress like a gnome-king in a pantomime, composed of coarse stuff of a foreign make.’ Enough, or the picture will be too much for our imagination.

This novel, too, is in four books. Book II. has no title. Book III. is ‘The Great Rat-trap,’ and Book IV. ‘The Blue Dwarf’s Story.” In this case No. 2 is given away with No. 1, and the rest are issued singly; and with No. 26, so it says, is presented gratis Nos. 1 and 2 of The Confessions of a Page. By the author of the Fourth Series of The Mysteries of London.

In the last chapter the Blue Dwarf, whose name is Goldy Gordon, alias Sapathwa, disappears from the scene in the following manner. A solitary horseman arrives one stormy night at the door of a small tenement adjoining Berlin Cathedral, and, presenting an order to the keeper of the vaults, desires access to Vault 20. ‘When they arrived at the entrance to the vaults, “Thank you,” said the stranger ; “give me your light. I know my way now. I will not trouble you further.” “The lamp will not last you long,” suggested the old man. “It will last quite as long as I shall require it,” said the other. “And when you come out again, may I ask you to be so kind as to fasten the portal after you ?” “Yes,” replied the stranger, with a sad, strange smile; “when I come out I will do so.” The keeper then tremblingly gave him the light, and the unknown descended. “Well,” thought the old man, as the other disappeared, “I shouldn’t much like to go down there so late, and on such a night as this ; but there’s no accounting for tastes - he looks quite delighted at it. Well, he’s gone, and I will go too.” He was gone. The door closed after him, and closed after him for ever. He never returned; and not until his dying day did the old man narrate to any the story of his strange visitation.... It was about the time of the old keeper’s death that the foundation of Berlin Cathedral was found to be slowly sinking, and it was necessary for workmen to descend into the vaults. The mystery of the strange visitant was then, at length, cleared up. In that vault, which contained the coffin of Miriam Blakesley, was discovered, clasping the last relic of the inanimate form, the skeleton of him who was known in life as THE BLUE DWARF.’

You see both these edifying narratives end with skeletons in vaults, a murder, and the murderer’s involuntary death in the one case, and a voluntary death in the other.

The British Museum Library contains two copies of The Blue Dwarf, one of the first and the other of a subsequent issue. The earlier copy (1861) is imperfect, wanting all after page 392; the writer’s is complete, with 478 pages. The later edition (1875) is considerably abridged, and, as stated in the catalogue, ‘after chapter lxxxv., the text of this edition differs from that of the preceding.’ The change comes suddenly in the middle of chapter lxxxv., and there are only one hundred and forty-two pages in all, and the story ends quite differently. It is difficult to account for the alteration, but evidently for some reason it was desired materially to abridge the story.

Another anonymous novel of the period is Schamyl; or, The Wild Woman of Circassia ; and the following are advertised in its pages as ‘now publishing in penny weekly numbers:’

Vice and its Victim; or, Phoebe the Peasant’s Daughter; and The Ocean Child; or, The Wanderer of the Deep.

Then there was The Boy Sailor and The Boy Soldier; and although as usual, No.2 was given away with No. 1, these were issued in halfpenny numbers of eight pages each. The Skeleton Crew was the enticing appellation of another of these ‘’a’penny ‘orribles,’ the vogue of which, we are pleased to see, has passed away. No longer is it necessary, as an inducement, to give away No.2 with No. 1 of any novel; indeed, they are no longer issued in penny or half-penny numbers at all. In these days of cheap printing, complete novels are issued at sixpence and sevenpence per volume, and those of the Charley Wag type are ‘as dead as a door nail.’

The End.

Just a postscript here ; when I first read the following ;

“What guardian angel came to rescue it ? None other than TODDLEBOY.’” I recalled seeing that name somewhere. On December 18, 1867, ten years after the appearance of Charley Wag, a captioned comic page appeared in Judy, or, The London Serio-comic Journal, boldly signed 3 times : C. H. Ross, CHR and CHR again. The title? Tommy Toddleboy’s Tail Coat.

Ross had previously done a comic page about Ally Sloper, a character he had originally called ‘Arry Sloper’ in a Reynolds’s Miscellany serial titled ‘In Search of a Wife.’

Christmas with the Cartoonists

2009-12-18T08:19:00.000-08:00

Cliff Sterrett (1883-1964)

2009-12-13T10:53:00.001-08:00

Cliff Sterrett was born at Fergus Falls, Minnesota, on 12 December 1883, where he drew on any blank space he could find; on fences, barns, and sidewalks. He once covered the entire floor of the post office with drawings of naked boys at the swimming hole before the postmaster discovered him and chased the boy out of the building. His father was a druggist and his mother died when he was two, leaving Clifford and his younger brother Paul to be raised by a maiden aunt, Miss Sallie Johnson, while the father moved on to Seattle.

Sterrett moved to New York at eighteen, armed with a letter of introduction from a local Episcopal clergyman, where he studied under George Bellows at the Chase Art School. He joined the New York Herald in 19o4 as an art staff assistant and began submitting cartoons to the New York Telegram published by the same company. His first comic strip was Ventriloquial Vag, followed by Merry Ha-Ha, When a Man’s Married, Before and After, and For This we Have Daughters. He left the Telegram and did general newspaper illustration for the New York Times, then joined the New York Evening Journal where he originated Polly and Her Pals in 1912. Polly appeared in Spanish, Danish, Portuguese and Japanese. Polly and Her Pals was the first feature with continuing characters to run six days a week with a Sunday page. “I insisted on sticking to Polly and Her Pals instead of doing other characters for the Sunday.”

“Since that time the changes have been many. The whole field has changed, the ‘girl’ strip having come into its own. Old comic art editors used to say, “No one is interested in girls -- girls in cartoons anyway.” Now the realization has come that people are interested in girls -- in cartoons or anywhere else!”

In addition to his comic work Sterrett painted in oils and took up hunting -- with a camera, since he “loathed killing anything.” His wife helped come up with gags as well as acting as a censor, proof reader and spelling corrector. His Aunt Sallie, who had acted as a surrogate mother, lived with the couple in New York city. Sterrett died 28 December 1964.

I borrowed the color Sunday from the ASIFA blog and many more samples of Sterrett’s Polly can be found THERE.

Spectre of a Man

2009-12-13T08:20:00.001-08:00

“When I arrived at my Inn, I saw a thin pale Spectre of a Man, walking in the Yard, as if he wanted something, and yet had nothing to do. Being curious who this Human Phantome might be, I was told he was a Bookseller in the Strand; who, every Day that the Coach or Waggon came in, hawked at the Inn for Oxford Scholars, as Fishmongers do at Billingsgate for a Mackrel Boat.

“Before my Informer had done speaking, this Living Ghost, who, it seems, haunts most of the Garrets in Grub-street, clapped his Glass to his Eye, and drawing up the dry Skin of his Face, into a hideous form, fell a kenning me for some time, and then approached me.”

-- Thomas Gordon 1735, The Humourist

Charles W. Kahles (1878-1931)

2009-12-12T10:02:00.001-08:00

“Hairbreadth Harry” was extremely popular with early audiences, and inspired three early films. Kahles comic strip was based on popular stage melodrama and turns out to have been a strip of some importance, influencing Harry Hershfield’s “Desperate Desmond,” and “Dauntless Durham of the U. S. A.” and Ed Wheelan’s “Midget Movies.” When Ed Wheelan left Hearst, changing his comic strips title to “Minute Movies,” his strip was replaced by Elzie Segar’s “Thimble Theatre,” birthplace of the immortal Popeye.

Charles W. Kahles, Comic Artist, Dies

Cartoonist was Native of Germany, Coming to America at Age of 7.

Great Neck, N.Y., Jan 31.-

Charles W. Kahles, creator of the comic strip “Hairbreadth Harry” died today at his home here of angina pectoris. He was 53.

Kahles first comic strip, “Clarence the Cop,” which he drew for the New York World in the latter ‘90’s was called the first serial strip cartoon, introducing to newspaper comic strips the innovation of telling a story which was carried along day after day.

The cartoonist came from Germany with his parents as a boy of seven and lived for many years in Brooklyn. After he left The World he worked for the New York Journal and other papers. He had lived in Great Neck for 13 years. His widow, Helen, and a daughter Jessie, survive him.

> The Atlanta Constitution, 32 Jan 1931.

*Thanks to Leonardo De Sá

The Old Home Town

2009-12-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

Lee W. Stanley’s The Old Home Town ran from approximately 1934-1944. In the later years of the comic the artwork began to resemble Bill Holman’s. Stanley held the copyright to The Old Home Town which was distributed first by Central Press and then by King Features. More can be found HERE.

James Frank Sullivan

2009-12-10T09:11:00.001-08:00

James Frank Sullivan is an artist I don't know much about and worse I have lost the date of this article from The Magazine of Art between 1891 and 1895. Sullivan worked for Fun and Thomas Hood's Comic Annual.

London's Ha'Penny Comics

2009-12-09T18:00:00.001-08:00

London's Ha' Penny Comics by Gelett Burgess, The (American) Bookman,Volume 14, issue 4, 1901.

The Rise of the Comic Paper

2009-12-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

The Rise of the Comic Paper by David Anderson,

The Magazine of Art, Vol. 14, 1891.

The Dog Knew What to Do

2009-12-09T08:06:00.001-08:00

Art by Ed Carey, Dec 10, 1904

Ella Cinders

2009-12-08T11:59:00.000-08:00

Ella Cinders had been created by writer Bill Conselman and artist born Missourian Charlie Plumb. Plumb was a cartoonist on the Los Angeles Times when he teamed up with a reporter named Bill Conselman to produce Ella Cinders. The partners tried selling the strip for a year with no success; they offered it free to their home newspaper, the Times, and were rejected. The Cinderella tale was begun in a daily on 1 June 1925, syndicated by United Features, and added a Sunday page in 1927. The Ella Cinders comic strip closed, showing its age, on 2 December 1961, after 33 years of popularity.

Charlie Plumb, a vagabond who carried a cartoonist kit wherever he went, enjoyed the good life in Florida and Mexico. He left the property in the care of an “understudy” for six months while he toured Samoa, returning to Hollywood with the resulting book (“Tin Can Island”) in hand. Conselman worked in Hollywood as well writing for movies for the likes of Bing Crosby. Colleen Moore played the title role in the Ella Cinders movie, the first comic strip to be filmed.

Ella Cinders began as a poor girl, slave to a cruel stepmother and two domineering sisters, Prissy and Lotta Pill, just like in the fairy tale. Her young brother Blackie shared the home. Ella’s epic search for her Prince Charming was a soap opera and an adventure strip. She won a beauty contest which earned her free ticket to Hollywood where she worked as an extra for awhile until she met a big movie magnate who, it turns out, was her long-lost father Pa Cinders, on the lam from his harsh-tongued wife. Ella became a big movie star, made one fortune, lost it, almost married Tommy Harris, discovered a lost country where it was still the 1890’s…

The strip had gripping continuities and was beautifully drawn (until the feeble Fred Fox took over the strip) often approaching a dark surrealism. Ella herself, a freckle-faced gamin, had the wide eyed look of a silent movie star.

The color Sunday is borrowed from HERE, while the beginning dailies are HERE.

The Package from Siam

2009-12-08T09:15:00.001-08:00

The following story appeared December 5 1928 in the Syracuse Herald. The package from “Siam” was a plot device that was widely used in comic strips and comic books by artists like Elzie Segar and Carl Barks >

St. Louis, Mo., Dec 4. - Col. George Bungle has taken the offensive against his creator and tormentor, Harry J. Tuthill, comic strip cartoonist. Tuthill has just received, at his home in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb, a fine large monkey. The brute was delivered by express, and the crate it traveled in bears this inscription: “From George Bungle, Siam.”

Now, as all the world of newspaper readers knows, George Bungle is the leading character in “The Bungle Family,” a comic feature produced by Tuthill. Col. George Bungle has been through many strange adventures in the course of his remarkable career in the comic strips. He suffered aphasia once, and was pursued by a designing woman. He got into a neck of trouble over a necklace that he never stole, and he has had remarkable experiences on the stock exchange.

Recently, however, Col. Bungle was flabbergasted, so to speak. Somebody sent him a white elephant. A real one, that actually ate enormous quantities of expensive hay and did a lot of damages in garages and other parking spaces. Bungle and his family were furious. They lay awake nights trying to identify the wicked sender of the elephant.

While the white elephant mystery was at its height artist Tuthill received the monkey. He doesn’t know who sent it, but the tag said it came from George Bungle. Tuthill has been almost as much embarrassed by his new pet as Bungle was discommoded by the elephant, that’s certain. Tuthill can’t give the beast away, and he doesn’t know how to support a monkey in the style to which he has been accustomed in the Siamese woods. But there is poetic justice in the situation, as Tuthill’s neighbors knowingly remark. The poor comic strip characters have to put up with a lot and Col. Bungle is the first one of them to turn on his master with some of his own bitter medicine.

Mysterious Ed Carey

2009-12-06T11:44:00.001-08:00

Mysterious Ed Carey

Ed Carey was one of the masters of early American comic strip art, once seen his grotesque faces and anatomy are hard to forget. His most well-known strip was “Simon Simple,” from the New York World, which had been previously illustrated by A. D. Reed. Other strips included “Brainy Bowers,” “The Troubles of Dictionary Jacques,” and “Professor Hypnotiser.”Carey was born in 1870 and died in White Plains, N. Y. on October 11, 1928.

Love and Ruin

2009-12-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

The deep, dank bowels of Universities round the world hide curious books bound in human skin leather, a practice known as Anthropodermic Bibliopegy. Skin was commonly used as leather to bind 15^th century Bibles and accounts of the trials of the French Revolution. In America the bodies of slaves and criminals were stripped of skin which was tanned for bookbinding. The most famous example is the book at Moyses Hall Museum, in Bury St. Edmonds, about the murder of Maria Marten, the“Murder in the Red Barn,” a murder which helped give rise to illustrated journalism. Corder’s miraculous hair periodically starts growing again according to the supermarket tabloid Weekly World News which annually resurrects the story.

William Corder was the murderer of Maria Marten in the infamous Red Barn, and it is his skin which adorns the cover of the infamous book. I have never seen the book but did correspond with a nice lady who gave me the following eyewitness account: “Yes, I have seen the book. Quite ordinary until you look closely and see the hairs. The same museum also has his scalp (with one ear attached) as well as a death mask.”

Strangely there is not much interest shown by visitors to the contents of the book. It’s difficult to say just which book was contained in the grisly leather; one account says it consists of the collected newspaper clippings of the murder as reported in the Times, another says it was the account written by penny-a-liner James Curtis, ‘The Murder of Maria Marten.” It may even have been the book “The Red Barn: a Tale Founded on Fact,” which has been attributed to Robert Huish but is more probably the work of Fraser’s magazine editor William Maginn.

The story of William Corder, and his craven murder of Maria Marten in the Red Barn, has another dubious distinction, it inspired the earliest known penny dreadful, The Gipsey‘s Warning; or, Love and Ruin an Entirely Original Romance of Real Life, By H. J. Copson. Benjamin D. Cousins published the first version in penny parts at 156 pages circa 1830.

Big Chief Wahoo

2009-12-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

Allen Saunders worked as a reporter, columnist and drama critic at the Toledo-News Bee until 1938 when he joined cartoonist Elmer Woggon, then the advertising director on the Toledo Blade, in creating Big Chief Wahoo. Woggon’s art style on Big Chief Wahoo was similar to that of Boody Rogers and Al Capp. Big Chief Wahoo’s title was changed to Steve Roper in 1947. Saunders worked on Mary Worth and Steve Roper until his retirement retired 1979.

Top Nov 22, 1936

Bottom July 16 1939

Stanley's "Footprints"

2009-12-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

I came into a whole whack of reading copies of old John Stanley stories, great stuff like Little Lulu, Dunc ‘n’ Loo and Thirteen Going on Eighteen. I hadn’t read Thirteen Going on Eighteen since I was -- well-- thirteen; an awful age. I still loved comics but dreaded having my peers spot me leaving the L&J newsstand with the latest batch of “kid stuff”. Sliding into the alley I would tuck them under my shirt and into my pants where they stayed until I was out of sight of prying eyes and hecklers.

John Stanley used certain themes and plots over and over. One for instance is that Lulu would be the victim of a theft and Tubby, as The Spider, would disguise himself and go after the perpetrator, who, as Tub instinctively knew, was none other than Lulu’s dad >

Another well-used gag involved story-telling, most evident in the Witch Hazel and Little Itch stories but used in various other titles to good effect also >

Stanley left his autograph on a story in another way through the use of sound effects. There was “OW!” >

And there was “YOW!” >

Even the use of recurring characters was sometimes mirrored from one title to the next >

Stanley’s style helped to identify him in the minds of readers; we may not have known John Stanley by name between 1950 and 1964 (or that other great cartoonist/storyteller, Carl Barks) but we knew he was the same creator as that working on Kookie, Dunc ‘n’ Loo, Nancy and Sluggo, and Melvin the Monster, his “footprints” were all over the comic books.

Comic Advertisements

2009-11-30T19:07:00.001-08:00

Here's a variety of comic ads published between 1950 and 1960 in New York. For sale are bullwhips, (use it for self defense or to train cats and dogs,) blackhead removers (using the needle-shaped Vacutex,) Goya's Spanish Nude stamp (25 cents,) disappearing keys (they had a spike on the back of the key with which you would, while feigning a pass, impale it onto the back of your hand,) an invisible helmet, or a 500 page comic book (Treasure Chest of the World's Best Comics.)