Little King

The Little King by Otto Soglow (1900-1975), London: Duckworth 1933

Len Norris

In a Preface to the 22nd Annual Collection of Norris cartoons, in 1972, Jack Webster described celebrated Canadian cartoonist Len Norris as “a prissy little man, 145 lbs. soaking wet, claims to be 5 foot 10 1/2 ins. (in his lifts of course), balding, round-shouldered, obsequious, and obsessed with his daily routine.” That first annual collection of Norris cartoons, from the Vancouver Sun, had been published way back in 1950. With the cold war heating up, and the populace squirming under the thumbs of pettifogging bureaucrats, Len Norris editorial cartoons reflected the anxiety felt by the middle class residents of Vancouver and Victoria Island.

Norris cartoons, in facile pen, brush, and zip-a-tone, only occasionally took note of world-events, more often they were editorial jokes based on local and national newspaper headlines. The targets of Len Norris caricatures were taxpayers, post-office workers, policemen, beatniks (then hippies). The cartoons, emanating from Norris middle-class conservative viewpoint, were based on headlines about the topics of the day, like baby bonuses, raises in minimum wage, pollution, automobile safety, Canada Council Grants, and sex/violence in the popular culture. He would show the genesis of his idea by featuring a newspaper with a headline somewhere in his cartoon, perhaps draped over the stomach of a sleeping middle-class couch potato, or lying crumpled on a crowded hospital floor.

Norris annual cartoon collections vividly capture decades of mundane history, what people wore, what they were concerned about, and what made them angry.

Warren Tufts (1925-1982)

The Casey Ruggles Sunday strip began on May 21 1949, followed by a daily strip in the Fall. Ruggles was a former cavalry sergeant who, on his return from the war in Mexico found the entire country enthused by the discovery of gold in California. Tufts, a native of Fresno, California, had “spent his life studying California lore and the history of the west.”

Tufts father was a manager in a Fresno produce and frozen foods firm when Tufts was born. After graduating from Fresno High School, Tufts worked as a freelancer in local radio, starting with a series of Twilight Tales he wrote and narrated for Fresno Bee station KMJ. He spent two and a half years in the navy during the war where he turned out weekly how-to-survive adventure comic strips for the publication at the Farragut Naval Training centre in Idaho, and served as editor of the Seattle Naval Air Station newspaper. Tufts had been working as a program manager at Radio Kyno when he quit to produce and market Casey Ruggles in December1948.

“I first got the idea of a Gold Rush strip during the exploration of ghost towns and abandoned mines in the Mother Lode country while I was a boy scout in Fresno.” Tufts had no formal training. “I started drawing comic strip characters when I was about six years old and have made a hobby of it ever since. I guess I have worked up about twenty strips and I have plenty of rejection slips.”

Tufts persistence paid off and he credited A. V. Buel, cartoonist of the Fresno Bee, with the encouragement that kept him going. “Real life characters will be introduced into the feature and I will do my best to keep the story historically accurate,” Tufts told the Sacramento Bee. Alex Toth helped out on Casey Ruggles for a few months in 1950.

Following struggles with the syndicate Warren Tufts resigned Casey Ruggles in 1954 to develop the adventures of Lance, which appeared daily and Sunday. Tufts syndicated the strip himself under the name Warren Tufts Enterprises and did his own writing, drawing, and color separations. Lance was Second Lieutenant Lance St. Lorne, Company B, U.S. First Dragoons, a Virginian fresh out of West Point. He was assigned to fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on the far frontier in 1836. When the story opened in July 1955 Lance was out on patrol in search of Loud Thunder, a rogue Indian who had just scalped and murdered a small party of Sioux Indians.

Tufts details made Casey Ruggles and Lance different from the average run of horse operas. Before beginning Lance he spent two years on historical research and mechanical techniques and it showed. Lance appeared in 15 newspapers with well over 3,000,000 circulation but despite the excellence of writing and drawing Lance failed to survive. Tufts left comic strips in 1960 but continued producing comic book art for various Dell and Gold key titles. He was killed in a plane crash in 1982.

ROTEBOR commented:

Hola, JOHN:

"Casey Ruggles" es una de mis historietas favoritas de todos los tiempos; tiene una conjunción de excelente dibujo y argumento que se encuentra en pocas historietas de largo desarrollo. Sería interesante una reedición cuidada de esta historieta (en España y Portugal se está editando una virtuosa versión de "Lance"). Gracias por recordar esta joya.

Human Procession

Human Procession, Newark Advocate, January 2, 1914

Every profession has its dean, and Mr. F. Opper does the deaning for American cartoonists. The benign and benevolent appearing gentleman – he is all of that, which proves that looks are often deceitful – has known fifty-seven varieties of annums, having been born at Madison, Lake county, Ohio, fifty-seven years ago today, January 2, 1857. His full name is Frederick Burr Opper, but he signs his work simply “F. Opper.”

Mr. Opper’s alma mater was an Ohio village school. At fourteen he left that institution to take a post-graduate course in a county newspaper office. He had decided that newspaper work offered the shortest path to fame and fortune, and while this would indicate that Freddie wasn’t a very bright lad, it must be remembered that he was only a poor country boy. At school, and while acting as devil in the rural newspaper office, Opper was very fond of drawing, and even at that tender age he made caricatures of local people. It is understood that the subjects of these sketches were no more pleased with them than Mr. Bryan, Mr. Root, Mr. Archbold, and other worthy gentlemen who have since felt the sting of the Opper lash.

After a year in the newspaper office, Mr. Opper decided to go out into the great world. If he had been an ordinary lad he would have chosen Cincinnati or Cleveland or Columbus or Canton, or some other Buckeye state city beginning with C, as the One of his operations. But, no. Nothing less than New York would do for Freddie Opper. For a time he kept the pot boiling by working in a store, drawing display cards and doubling as a salesman. It was only a little while, however, until he placed several sketches with several New York comic papers, including the “Phunny Phellow” and “Wild Oats.” This work attracted the attention of Frank Leslie, who gave the youthful artist a regular job on Leslie’s Weekly. After three years with that publication he went to Puck. For eighteen years his work appeared weekly in Puck, but in 1899 he accepted an offer from Mr. Hearst, and has been with the Hearst publications ever since. His work now appears regularly in all of the Hearst papers and in scores of others.

In addition to the newspaper work, Mr. Opper has illustrated books for Mark Twain, Bill Nye, George V. Hobart, and Finley Peter Dunne. Among his best known cartoon series are “Happy Hooligan,” “Maude,” “Alphonse and Gaston,” “John Bull,” “Willie and his Papa,” and “The Cruise of the Piffle.” “Uncle Trusty” and “the Common People” are well-known figures in Mr. Opper’s cartoons.

The Malice of Humor

The Malice of Humor by T. E. Powers, New York Sunday World, December 5, 1897

Armando D. Condo Revisited

Armando D. Condo* miscellany. Dates can be found by clicking on image and hovering over the comics.

*Steven Rowe found that Armando D. Condo (born 19 Sep 1872) died in Albany, California 24 Aug 1956.

Unexpurgated Penrod

Oct. 10, 1915, New York:

“Master Booth Tarkington Jameson, son of Mrs. Ovid Butler Jameson, a sister of Booth Tarkington, Indiana author, created quite a disturbance at the McAlpin Hotel one day this week. Master Jameson is about twelve years old and is said to be the original “Penrod Schofield.” He has lots of his own ideas and has been delighted with New York since coming from Kennebunkport, Me., where he and his mother spent the summer.

Mrs. Jameson was ready to go to the station to leave on the noon train for Indianapolis. She suddenly realized that Booth Tarkington Jameson was not in the apartment in the hotel. He could not be found. Bellboys were sent scurrying and finally the hotel detective was appealed to. Fifteen minutes before the train was due to start, Booth Takington Penrod Schofield Jameson was located behind the newspaper counter reading the latest story by his uncle. Mrs. Jameson and her son got the train by a minute.”

The illustrated Penrod serials were distributed to newspapers through the Wheeler syndicate and appeared simultaneously in McClure’s Magazine. In 1958 my brother joined the Canadian Navy and gave me a pile of hardcover books from his childhood. There were three titles, Tarzan and the Ant Men, Bob Son of Battle and Penrod . I read them in that order. I enjoyed Penrod, with its evocative drawings by Gordon Grant, so much that I read the book at least fifty times over the next five years. I then lost interest and it wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I found copies of Penrod and two sequels that I would have died to have read when I was eleven, Penrod and Sam and Penrod Jashber.

I was perplexed while reading these stories that one of the key scenes from the first novel was missing. I searched all three books carefully and the hilarious scene was not there. I noticed however that the Penrod book said “expurgated edition” on the title page, so I had not dreamed the scene, somewhere, possibly in the first edition, was the scene I longed to renew acquaintance of. Every time I saw a Penrod book in a library or used bookstore I searched for the expurgated scene with no luck. I have since found that scene through microfilm in the December 20, 1914 chapter of the newspaper serialization of Penrod, entitled The Fall of Georgie Bassett. Now I could refresh my memory. Why was the dimly remembered scene, which we loved to read out loud, expurgated from most printed editions? I thought one reason may have been because it featured two Negro characters, the hilarious pair of brothers Herman ‘n’ Verman. Let’s have a look, shall we?

Penrod and his companions were discussing their futures. “When I’m a man,” said Sam Williams, “I’m going to hire me a couple of colored waiters to swing me in a hammock and keep porin’ ice water on me all day out o’ those watering cans they sprinkle flowers from. I’ll hire you for one of ‘em Herman.” “No; you ain’t goin’ to,” said Herman. “you ain’t no flowah. But nev’ min’ nat, anyway. Ain’t nobody goin’ hiah me whens I’m a man. Goin’ be my own boss. I’m goin’ be a rai’road man.” Penrod wanted to be a General, Maurice Levy was razzed for saying he would own a big store and marry Marjorie Jones, and Sam was to be a policeman. Georgie Bassett shocked the crew with his announcement that he was going to be a minister.

Herman, the “colored expert” questions Georgie on his qualifications: “How good kin you climb a pole?”

“Preachers don’t have to climb poles,” Georgie said with dignity.

“Good ones do,” declared Herman. “bes’ one ev’ I heard, he clim’ up an’ down same as a circus man. One ‘nem big ‘vivals outen when we livin’ on a fahm, preachah clim’ big pole right in a middle o’ the church, what was fo’ to hol’ roof up. He clim’ way up high an’ holler: “Goin’ to heavum, goin’ to heavum, goin’ to heavum now! Halleluiah, praise de’ Lawd!” An’ he slide down little, an’ holler: “Devil’s got a hole’ o’ my coat tails; devils tryin’ to drag me down! Sinnuhs take wawnun! Devil’s got a hole’ o’ my coat tails; ahm a’goin’ to hell, oh Lawd!” Nex’ he clim’ up little mo’ an’ yell an’ holler: “done shuck ole devil loose; goin’ straight to heavum again! Goin’ to heavum, goin’ to heavum, my Lawd!” Nex’ he slide down some mo’ an holler” “Leggo my coat tails ole devil! Goin’ to hell agin, sinnuhs; goin’ straight to hell, my lawd!” An’ he clim’ an’ he slide an’ he clim’ an’ all time holler “Now ‘m a goin’ to heavum; now ‘m a goin’t to hell! Goin’ to heavum, heavum, heavum, my lawd!” Las’ he slide all a way down, jes’ a squallin’ an’ a kickin’ an’ a rarin’ up an’ a squealin’ Gone to hell! Gone to hell! Ol’ Satum got my soul! Gone to hell!”

Herman possessed that extraordinary facility for vivid acting which is the great native gift of his race, and he enchained his listeners.

“Herman, tell that again!” said Penrod, breathlessly.



My sentiments exactly, tell it again, Herman! The rest of the chapter concerns Georgie Bassett, urged on by his companions, re-enacting the pole-climbing scene just described by Herman, outside the window of Georgie’s house wherein Georgie’s mother is entertaining a bachelor clergyman. It seems this scene was considered so injurious to a boy reader’s morals that it was ‘expurgated’ from future editions.

How to Recognize a Frazetta

I recieved a recent email query from the happy owner of a piece of Li'l Abner original Sunday art from 1955 "How do I tell if this is a Frazetta work or not?" Frazetta worked on Li'l Abner from 1953 to about 1961 although he was not the only 'ghost' artist in Capp's employ. Frazetta undoubtedly worked from Capp's pencils so the strips can only nominally be said to be true Frazetta pages.

The best way to identify a Frazetta ghosted page is by examining the *gulp* women in the strip, in particular the rumps (rumps is the only word that fits) of the women. The Frazetta 'rump' is easily recognizable in both his comics and oil paintings. Frazetta preferred a rump that stuck four feet in the air, a train's caboose of a bottom, proudly waving in the breeze. To prove my point what follows *choke* at 'bottom' are two samples of the Frazetta women, one from 1955, the other from 1956 based on the hourglass figure of Marilyn Monroe.

How a Panorama is Made

How a Great Battle Panorama is Made
by Theodore R. Davis from
St. Nicholas, Vol. XIV, No. 2, December 1886

Grimm's Fairy Tales

I painted this large illustration completely with a single-action Pasche airbrush filled with Dr. Martin's Indian Ink and frisket to hold the outlines on an indestructible and expensive piece of illustration board about 1989 (yoicks, a long time ago). I sold it but, like the 'cat who came back,' it returned to me nicely framed. My muse was a volume of George Cruikshank's illustrated Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Early California Cartoonists

Swinnerton Self-Portrait, Oct 15, 1897 Denver Daily News

Early California Cartoonists (Note: Parts of this piece appeared in earlier Yesterday's Papers posts on Tad Dorgan, Bud Fisher and Hype Igoe. I may have forgotten someone important, if so I may update this post further in future.)

Much has been written about the early New York cartoonists from the early years of the newspaper supplements, much less about the cartoonists of California, many of whom worked for Hearst‘s San Francisco Examiner and its rivals. Two of the earliest California cartoonists of all were George Frederick Keller of the San Francisco Wasp and Carl Browne of the Weekly Graphic and Anti-Monopolist. These two political cartoonists were active in the seventies and eighties.

By 1895 with improved technological advances in the reproduction of illustrations and cartoons a new generation of cartoonists and illustrators emerged to fill the pages of the weekly supplements. One of the earliest was Charles H. Owens, who reminisced about his life in the newspaper world of the nineties in a 1930 article titled Ink-slingers. Charles learned the rudiments from a forgotten sign painter named Charley Arcanne, and a Mr. Lemos, who ran an art class in Santa Cruz, where shy Owens would eavesdrop on classes from the doorway. His first boss was Charlie Edwards on the old San Francisco Record, a chalk-plate artist, who became redundant with the advent of new ways of reproducing newspaper illustration.

While memories of Owens have disappeared into history the next two ink-slingers on the list, Homer Davenport (1867-1912), and Jimmy Swinnerton (1875-1974), had world-wide reputations. On Swinnerton’s 97th birthday Milton Caniff called him “the grand daddy of us all.”

On 17 August 1895 the Oakland Tribune reported that “the art of making illustrations for newspapers is a branch in itself. The advance made in magazine works is one of the notable features of the nineteenth century. A school of magazine and newspaper illustration has been opened at 424 Pine Street in san Francisco, under the most favourable auspices. The best illustrators of the metropolis have lent their names and will give the benefit of their training to the institution.”

The instructors for what may have been the earliest school of commercial newspaper art in the country (Partington’s School of Magazine and Newspaper Illustration), were J. H. E. Partington, Gertrude Partington of the Examiner, and R. L. Partington of the Call. Visitors and examiners were the cream of California cartoonists and illustrators, Jules Pages, Homer Davenport, and James Swinnerton all employed on Hearst’s Examiner. Students studied painting from the antique and from live models using both oils and watercolours.

Jules Pages, the son of an artist, was born in San Francisco, studied under Jules Tavernear, who taught many early California artists, and worked his way to fame as a newspaper illustrator, first on the San Francisco Call, then as head of the art department of the Examiner, and finally on the New York Journal. Passing under his wing at one time or another were Davenport, Swinnerton, Harrison Fisher, Hayden Jones, and Gertrude Partington. He saved his money, studied Fine Art in Paris, and became a world famous artist, decorated with the Chevalier of the Legion ’d Honneur from the hands of the French Republic. He dropped dead of a heart attack on a downtown San Francisco street on 23 May 1946.

Homer Davenport was born in the mining town of Silverton, Oregon, 8 March 1867, and, like most boys spent his time drawing pictures of the teacher on the fly-leafs of his work books. A cousin visiting from Chicago was impressed with a sketch of himself drawn by the young boy and suggested the old man send Homer to art school in San Francisco where he eventually ended up on the Examiner.

On 5 October 1896 it was reported that Hearst, proprietor of the Examiner, had purchased the New York Reporter. “This statement is born out by the fact that Homer Davenport, the well-known artist, Mrs. Orrin Black, better known as Annie Laurie, and Charles Dryden, a clever writer, have left for New York in compliance with orders from Mr. Hearst.”

A year later, according to an article in Hearst’s Evening Herald, Joseph Pulitzer “sat in his palatial quarters” at the World building looking at Davenport cartoons. He called a subordinate and sent for Mr. Davenport. The popular cartoonist, the story goes, was offered $150, but, on Davenport’s expressing the opinion he was satisfied with Mr. Hearst, it was upped to $200. Davenport rushed out in the street to think it over and ran headlong into William Randolph Hearst himself.

“Mr. Hearst,” he said, “Mr. Pulitzer has just offered me $200 a week.”

“Come right into the office,” said Hearst. “I’ll make your salary $250 a week, but don’t you go back and see Pulitzer. He can’t have you.” When they were seated in Hearst’s private office, the editor said: “I’ve been thinking sometime of making you a present. I was going to wait for Christmas. But I guess I’ll make the present now.” So saying he took out his check-book, and wrote a check for $5,000. Davenport gasped. “I guess you need not see Mr. Pulitzer again,” concluded Hearst.

Hearst’s next star cartoonists was Jimmy Swinnerton, born in Eureka, California in 1875, who took a year of art school in San Francisco when he was 15, and in 1892 was recommended by Davenport for a job in the Hearst Examiner art department. There he drew a panel featuring a comic California Grizzly Bear prognosticating the weather. He followed this with a comic strip work titled “The Little Bears and the Little Tykes” in 1894.

He soon moved on to Hearst’s New York American. The cartoonists, Homer Davenport, Swinnerton, ‘TAD’ Dorgan, and ‘Hype’ Igoe, worked hard and long at their drawing boards. “We existed on liquor and black coffee,” he told reporter Neal Ashby in 1966. In 1905 he launched a kid’s strip, Little Jimmy, and it ran for forty years in a colour Sunday. A second cartoon called Canyon Kids appeared in Good Housekeeping Magazine.




Bobo Baxter, Feb 20 1928

Herbert A. (‘Hype‘) Igoe, sporting cartoonist, and “probably the best informed writer on boxing that ever lived,” according to Damon Runyan, was born 27 April 1878 in Santa Cruz, California. He and his best friend’s Rube Goldberg and Thomas Aloysius “TAD” Dorgan, (1877 -1929), attended Polytechnic High School where they were taught art.

Hype Igoe started his newspaper career at 15 as an office boy, alongside Tad, for Homer Davenport and Jimmy Swinnerton on Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner. It's been said that Igoe got Bud Fisher his first job, on the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1905 Swinnerton, famous for the “Little Bears” cartoons , brought the inseparable pair to New York. Brisbane only wanted Tad, who refused to make the move without Hype Igoe. Both were hired and moved to the Hearst newspaper building at 238 William Street. Hearst was publishing two newspapers from the plant, the Morning American and the Evening Journal.

There were a lot of stories as to the origin of the name “Hype” including this one :“It was Dorgan who helped popularize the label “Hype”, which Igoe had hung on him by a 300 pound Negro elevator operator. The operator took one look at the slender 15 year old copy-boy back in the days when he was working for the San Francisco Examiner and observed: “Mr. Igoe, yo ain’t no bigger than a hypodermic needle.””

Thomas Aloysius “TAD” Dorgan, (1877 -1929) sports cartoonist, comic strip artist, and coiner of slang, died in his sleep in Great Neck, Long Island on May 2, 1929 age 57. A heart ailment had kept him confined to his home for eight years. His wife Isole Dorgan, a writer before marrying TAD, cleared up his estate and started a successful doll furniture factory. She was vice-president of the National Doll and Toy Collectors Club. Together they had raised two Chinese children to adulthood.

Tad was born in San Francisco and his father ran a cigar store. When Tad was a boy his hero was scientific boxer Gentleman Jim Corbett. When he wasn't spending his time following fighters around Tad was drawing boxing pictures on the walls of neighbourhood warehouses and stables. According to one chronicler he was left with just the thumb and first knuckle on his right hand, the result of an accident when he was ten. Other accounts differ saying he lost the fingers on his left hand.

Tad’s brothers Dick and Joe drew as well. Dick Dorgan drew two comic strips, Kid Dugan and Mr. Gilfeather (later to be drawn by none other than Al Capp). Tad, along with fellow student Rube Goldberg, attended Polytechnic High School under art teacher Rosey Murdoch.At fourteen Tad joined the art staff at the San Francisco Bulletin. The New York Journal hired him in 1902 as their sports cartoonist and reporter. Along with Rube Goldberg, Hype Igoe, and Robert Ripley he became a celebrity in the sports world.

In 1910 Tad was covering the Jeffries vs. Johnson heavyweight prize-fight. Negro boxer Jack Johnson laughed all the way through his fight with Jim Jeffries. TAD asked him “Why do you laugh?” “You would laugh too if you had such a picnic as I am having.”

Tad was generally given credit for inventing the term hot dog. He did popularise the words ‘hot dog’ worldwide through his cartoons. Every Christmas Harry Stevens, who claimed to have “discovered” the hot dog, used to send a box of cigars to Tad in appreciation.

The star single-panel cartoonists of the 1920's were Clare Briggs of the New York Tribune, T. A. (Tad) Dorgan of the American and Journal, and HT Webster of the World and Herald Tribune. Tad’s most famous comic creations were Indoor Sports and Silk Hat Harry’s Divorce Suit. Tad was famous just for being Tad.

Goldberg, Fisher, and Dorgan let their mugs be used for Tuxedo pipe and cigarette tobacco advertising; “tuxedo can’t be equalled in soothing refreshing qualities.” Billed as the greatest cartoonists in the country “they all smoke and endorse TUXEDO.” Tad joined a vaudeville ticket giving chalk talks with Winsor McCay, Rube Goldberg and Bud Fisher.

Tad Dorgan was so well known for his linguistic inventions that, on his death in 1929, W. L. Werner wrote an article for American Speech with the anguished title Tad Dorgan is Dead.

According to a MacLean’s article of June 1916 titled Making a Fortune out of Comics, how “Bud” Fisher is Capitalizing “Mutt and Jeff,”: “As soon as the boy was big enough to hold a pencil he began expressing his infant soul in scrawls. His father’s linen collars, off or on, were his favourite drawing boards …” Bud Fisher never took a drawing lesson in his life but his bigfoot style was very influential, most noticeably with George Herriman, author of Krazy Kat. In 1917 a close study of Mutt and Jeff appeared in the shape of Hitt and Runn, by Oscar Hitt.

Harry C. “Bud” Fisher was the unlikeliest person you could think of to draw Mutt and Jeff. John Wheeler, of the Wheeler Syndicate, described him as a belligerent “dapper cocky little guy,” a sun dodger, who hated the daylight. Fisher, along with most of his contemporary cartoonist-journalists pals, enjoyed fights, chorus girls, gambling, and saloons. Fisher liked to shoot up hotel rooms with his pistols, one of which was a gift from Pancho Villa, indoors when he was drunk. His first wife was a Vaudeville showgirl who led a tragic life. In 1927 his second bride, a Countess, charged Fisher with throwing her out of their luxurious Riverside Drive apartment and beating her on several occasions. “Bud” wasn’t present when she was granted separation, he was aboard a ship to Europe.

Wheeler seems to have studied Fisher carefully and concluded, “Fisher’s life was full of crises, most of which he made himself. He was a strange contrast of shrewdness and stupidity about his own affairs.”Al Smith, one of Fisher’s ‘ghosts,’ told the Associated Press that “Ghosting for Fisher was rough. He fired me three or four times and I quit three or four times.” Smith ghosted Mutt and Jeff from 1932 to 1954, when Fisher died, and Smith took charge of Mutt and Jeff, and created its topper, Cicero's Cat. “I really love doing it. The years have passed so quickly, and Mutt and Jeff have become a part of me. I wake up in the morning, and there they are, waiting for me to go to work.”

Harry C. Fisher was born in 1885 in San Francisco and moved with his parents to Portland, Oregon, to Milwaukee, and then to Chicago, where he attended Hyde Park High School.He attended a brief course at the University of Chicago before drifting west to San Francisco, where he earned fifty cents apiece doing cartoon drawings for tradesmen. His application for a job on the San Francisco Examiner was turned down but he was accepted at the San Francisco Chronicle at fifteen dollars a week. He worked for the Chronicle from 1905 until near the end of 1907. The San Francisco fire ruined the Chronicle offices and he found himself laid off and pounding the pavement again. Fisher moved on to Los Angeles.

“There he ran into a man named Steele, who was getting out an emergency Sunday section for the wrecked Chronicle, on the presses of the Los Angeles Times. Steele could not gat any good artists to work for him, because all the local men were employed by the Los Angeles Examiner, and could not accept retainers from another paper. He offered Fisher fifteen dollars a page.”

“I took him up,” says Bud, “and then I got a lot of the Examiner artists -- who could not work for Steele, but could work for me -- to make me these pages at seven dollars and a half apiece. I cleared the other seven-fifty. At that rate, I didn’t really care how long the fire lasted.” (*All the newspapermen who went through it referred to the Earthquake as “the fire.”)

He returned to San Francisco and the Chronicle with sixteen hundred dollars in his pockets and went back to work at twenty-two-fifty a week. On November 15 1907 A. Mutt was introduced to the sports-page of the San Francisco Chronicle and on December 10 the Examiner, (a Hearst paper,) who years before had turned Fisher away, made him a mighty attractive offer which he accepted. Soon after Augustus Mutt was joined by little Jeff (Mar 27 1908) and Fisher’s reputation spread East, leading to another move, New York.

In 1913 Fisher’s Hearst contract (for $300 a week) would shortly run out. John Wheeler took the opportunity to visit Fisher in his New York office and offer him a guaranteed $1000 a week and sixty percent of the revenue from syndication. Hearing of the impending departure the art director at Hearst hired Ed Mack to ghost a supply of Mutt and Jeff dailies for stockpiling. When Hearst lost the ensuing lawsuit Fisher hired Mack as his assistant. In 1914 Ed Mack drew an obscure comic Sunday for the Star Company syndicate entitled “Living in Lonesomehurst,” drawn in a Fisher influenced style.

By 1916 Bud Fisher was the highest paid cartoonist on earth. He made $150,000 total a year at his peak. He and his ghosts’ drew six comic strips a week, for forty-eight weeks a year, for a total of $78,000. The remainder was made up from Vaudeville engagements, Mutt and Jeff theatrical shows, Mutt and Jeff animated cartoons, an annual Mutt and Jeff comic book and licensing for postcards, plaster statues, and buttons. When leaving the Examiner Fisher had used a subterfuge to gain copyright to his own creations and was now fabulously rich.



Bobo Baxter, Feb 24 1928

Rube Goldberg was born on the 4th of July, 1883, in San Francisco. He claimed to remember the day he was born, and that his first act was asking his mother for a pencil. He started drawing cartoons for his Lowell High School publication. After high school he worked as a city engineer for awhile before landing a job on the San Francisco Chronicle between 1904-1905 at $8 per week.

His next berth was the San Francisco Bulletin (1905-1907) where he replace TAD Dorgan as a sports writer and cartoonist for that paper. He took a train to New York in 1907 and hit every newspaper office in the city before landing a job on the New York Evening Mail. His most famous creation, Boob McNutt, was distributed by Hearst’s Star Co. in 1915.

Other cartoonist with beginnings in California were Merle “Bug” Johnson, Bob Carter, Haydon Jones, Harrison Fisher, Bob Edgren and Dan Smith.



Bobo Baxter Feb 25, 1928

Songs of the Pogo

A friend gave me an old 78 (he had two copies) featuring 3 songs from the 1956 album Songs of the Pogo; Don't Sugar Me, Lines Upon a Tranquil Brow, and Go Go Pogo. Don't Sugar Me has vocal by Fia Karin, the others by himself, Walt Kelly.

How to describe the voice of the satirist/cartoonist. Lets see -- take equal parts of the voice of hipster comedian Lord Buckley, Tom Wait's growl, and Harmonica Frank Floyd's nasal howl and you have Walt Kelly's Go Go Pogo. He snarls, snorts, yodels, and testifies like a cornpone medicine show auctioneer, a backwoods preacher, or a beat poet on bad bennies backed by an orchestral jazz band. Dig these crazy lyrics sung at tongue-twisting breakneck speed:

Wheeling, West Virginia

With ev'rything that's in ya

Down the line You'll see the shine

From Oregon to Caroline,

Oh, eenie meenie minie Kokomo go Pogo

Tishimingo, sing those lingo

whistling go

Shamokin to Hoboken

Chenango to Chicango

It's golly

I go goo goo goin' go go Pogo!

Interpreting the News

Interpreting the News
COMIC STRIPS COME UNDER FIRE
By Joseph MacSween
Lethbridge Herald, May 23 1962.

It was probably inevitable that the trend of United States comic strips would eventually draw a blast from Soviet officials. Some “funnies” have already caused uneasy comment at home.

For Vyacheslav N. Bounine, first secretary of the Russian embassy in Tokyo, it was just too much that a pig starring in the current episode of Pogo looks curiously like Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Bounine wasn’t comforted when the cartoon character – instead of confining himself to oink-oinks – began spouting proverbs in the manner of Khrushchev.

Chatting with a well-bearded goat who bears a striking resemblance to Premier Fidel Castro of shortage-ridden Cuba, the talkative porker declaims:

“You forget prominent proverb! Very funny in Russian: The shortage will be divided among the peasants.”

Pogo artist Walt Kelly has used satire against figures of both left and right in the political field. He depicted the late senator Joseph McCarthy as Simple J. Malarkey and recently published a collection of strips dealing with the Jack Acid Society, aiming at the rightist John Birch Society.



But at least one magazine -- the New Republic – has carried criticism of a new trend in U.S. so-called comics, naming of all people, Little Orphan Annie as the chief offender -- “presenting real political situations at home and abroad, often with extremist right-wing solutions.”

Ben H. Bandikian wrote in the New Republic that “the old pow! zock! blooey! school of humor in the next-to-last page of the paper is becoming illustrated political propaganda.”

Things had changed since 1947 when author Coulton Waugh was able to speak in his book The Comics of a not-so-unwritten law that comics syndicates kept out of politics.

Even loveable old Maw Green – inspired no doubt by foreign aid debate in Washington – recently told a tax-collector: “Try an’ give my money to some really nice country, eh?”

Bagdikian is intrigued by the way little Orphan Annie, who is really 37 years old although ever a little girl, toppled Castro as Mustachio Toro, dictator of Tributo.

The writer once counted 75 men killed or maimed in Annie’s strip in 3 months, “all done in with patriotic righteousness.” Other un-comic examples:



A high-busted lady in the aviation strip Smilin’ Jack was recruited as a double agent against a spy ring at Cape Canaveral.

Terry Lee of Terry and the Pirates, having foiled a Russian attempt to cover up a man-in-space failure in the Pacific, flew to Berlin where one of his men became entangled with a ballerina who was really working for her maid, a soviet spy, a ringer for Mrs. Khrushchev.

Joe Palooka rescued an American scientist from Communist agents in Austria.

Buz Sawyer marshaled the South Vietnamese to fight Red guerrillas from North Vietnam.

The Blue Waterfall

Best story ever featuring George Herriman and Jimmy Swinnerton: The Lincoln Star, October 11, 1922

A trip through the Arizona Desert, taken two weeks ago in the cause of art, came close to having a tragic ending for George Herriman and James Swinnerton, the cartoonist creators of “Krazy Kat” and “Little Jimmy” when a search for water led them to a “hole in the wall” hedged by steep cliffs which for centuries has been a strategic stronghold for Hopi Indians but which has not been visited by white men since a United States survey party was guided through it thirty years ago.

Swinnerton and Herriman found their way into it by accident and remained inside its baffling labyrinth for two days when a sudden fog descended and obscured the narrow point of entry which forms the only opening by which anyone can get in. When finally they were rescued by friendly Indians they had eaten the last of their food and had lost all hope of finding their way out.

It was in the expectation of finding a certain “blue waterfall” which is one of the wonders of the desert country and which Swinnerton was anxious to embody in a landscape painting that the two artists began the journey which so nearly ended fatally for them. Both men have spent many summers in the southwest country and know the desert well. They began their journey from a trading post sixty miles away from the waterfall, travelling on horseback with their food and camp equipment strapped to a pack horse.

It was on the second day while seeking water for the horses that they lost themselves in the strange rock formation from which they were rescued just in time. They had come to a known water hole clearly marked on the chart they carried. They had found it dry but decided that there must be water in a steep formation of cliffs which lay to the north of the trail about a mile away.

Riding up to the foot of the cliffs they found what appeared to be a natural path up the face of the steepest of them and leaving their horses made their way up, carrying only a small amount of food for they were certain that they would find water and be back in a couple of hours. Fog is the exceptional phenomenon in the part of the country through which Herriman and Swinnnerton were travelling and they did not notice, as they toiled up the steep wall of rock that a heavy vapor had filled all the valley below and was growing denser every moment and slowly creeping up behind them as they climbed. Neither of them looked back when they had reached an opening, just large enough to crawl through, in the blank face of the rock and saw that it led into a wide bowl among the cliff tops several hundred feet in area and filled with upstanding rocks many of them as high as fifty feet and all set close together. What mostly interested them was a shining pool of water at almost the exact center of the natural amphitheatre. Then they stepped through into the open space and the fog followed them and filled it.

For two days they were prisoners there. Their compasses were of no use to them for by the time they tried to get their bearings from them they had lost the general location of the small opening by which they made their way in. It seemed to disappear, as they have explained since, as soon as they were a few feet away from it, and in the semi obscurity created by the fog all the high stones about them became alike for any help they offered as distinctive points from which to work a way out to safety.

As Herriman describes it:

“It was exactly, but in deadly earnest, like being in one of those made labyrinths which used to be such a feature of expositions and the amusement parks. It was completely baffling. Every rock and rock face appeared exactly like every other piece of stone, and although we gave every moment of our daylight to the search for the way out we had come in by, or some other way if there was one, we found no success whatever and we were getting close to the lowest frame of mind there is – frantic despair – when at almost one and the same moment the fog was dispersed and help came.

The help arrived in the form of two Indians who had come upon the artists’ horses in the valley and figured that their owners must have gone up the face of the cliffs, and lost their way. The Indians happened to be two who were familiar with the entrance to the cliff pocket and who knew how to get out again after getting in. The circumstance was fortunate for Herriman and Swinnerton for many of the younger Indians thereabout no nothing of the place.

Years ago it figured conspicuously in the hill wars of the Indians, for it had great strategic value to a war party since the single entrance to it could be guarded indefinitely by a few warriors against hundreds. The only entrance and exit is the one by which the artists stumbled in, and although they think they could find it again they do not expect to make the attempt but on the contrary propose to avoid it the rest of their natural lives.

Shuster's Hideous Drawings

There were rumours* that "Joe Shuster used to draw hideous illustrations for sex-sadistic torture-pornography paperbacks..." as far back as 1971, although it was a long time before the "hideous" drawings came to light as shown in Secret Identity. Clizia Gussoni has put together a hilarious animated short set to music at Secret Identity blog HERE.

*Riverside Quarterly Vol. 5, No. 1,
From a Corner Table at Rough House's
by Bill Blackbeard pg. 54