Posts
by Rick Marschall
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1– Book illustration
by Billy Marriner, from Billy Burgundy’s Letters (1902)
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Dwig’s Rime Of the Ancient
Marriner
(Clare Victor Dwiggins and Billy Marriner)
★
“Dwig” is a
signature that was commonly seen in American comic strips, book illustration,
and other cartooning venues during the entire first half the 20th
century.
Clare Victor
Dwiggins (1874-1958) drew magazine cartoons for Judge; a multitude of
Sunday funnies for the New York World, Ledger and McNaught Syndicates, and
various McClure syndicates; serious book illustrations and humorous drawings
for books of aphorism and poetry; hundreds of comic postcards; a Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn feature that was licensed by the Mark Twain Estate; color
strips for the Farm Journal and Ford Times; poster designs and
sheet music covers; comic-book work, including in Supersnipe; and
several children’s books written by August Derleth.
Some of his book
illustrations and postcards (with his version of Gibson Girls) were racy for
their day, but the consistent flavor of his work bespoke “native humor” –
insouciant themes, freewheeling lines, and casual compositions. His top strip Footprints
On the Sands of Time predated the birds-eye views and dotted passage lines
of Bil Keane’s Family Circus.
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2– Photo of one of
the 17 x 20 inch letters from Clare Victor Dwiggins.
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As his work was
figuratively all across the comics landscape, so were the places he hung his
hat through the decades. He was born in Pennsylvania, and spent the formative
years of his career, and those of the comic strip itself, in New York. He spent
his last years in Pasadena (where he lived near the ranch of his friend,
cartoonist J R Williams) and he died in North Hollywood. A fine treatment of
Dwig and his work can be found by Jay Rath in Nemo magazine number 11.
During his time in New York he
admired the work and became the friend of a fellow World cartoonist,
Billy Marriner (1873-1914). Marriner, who earlier had drawn for Puck,
was a public favorite and influential with other cartoonists. His wispy lines
and big-headed, good-natured characters,
particularly kids, were trademarks of his style. Among his many strips for the World
and the McClure syndicates were Foolish
Ferdinand; Mary and her Little Lamb;
Wags, the Dog that Adopted a Man; and
Sambo and His Funny Noises.
Responding to a
fan letter in the 1950s, Dwig remembered Marriner: “Billy Marriner was tops. He
tried to refine my ‘line’ and was responsible for the style I used in [the
book] Crankisms, and the several books, similar, which I did at the turn
of the century. The delicate line. I worked out of it, however, as I rolled
along, to wind up with a heavy, black treatment, more like the beloved Zim
[Eugene Zimmerman], who is my Hero No, 1. McManus, too, was influenced by
Marriner’s light line. And he stuck to it.”
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3– Portion of letter
by Dwig, and two caricatures of Billy Marriner – full, pie-eyed, face; and at
drawing board.
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Dwig’s letters
were as peripatetic as his his drawing style. He seemingly reached for, and
wrote on, any paper nearby. One letter, also from the 1950s, was scribbled
in pencil on an enormous sheet of
newsprint – 17 x 20 inches, then folded to fit an envelope.
I will trust to
the miracles of new scanning technology, and the skills of YP’s good John
Adcock, and hope that the images and scrawl of two “captures” are clear and
legible. I share three drawings by Dwig of Marriner: a face and Billy at the
drawing board; also a sketch of the diminutive Marriner trying to get his arms
around his latest “big woman.” A photo of a wall-to-wall letter is on the
subject of pen nibs, pencil types, and brushes he preferred through the years.
In the
caricature of Marriner at his drawing board, you will notice that Dwig drew a
bottle or flask on the floor. He was, unfortunately, as addicted to booze as he
was to gargantuan wimmen. Unlike the innocent and friendly characters he drew,
Marriner met a violent and horrible end. In Harrington Park NJ (the next town to
where I grew up) he was in a frenzy about his missing wife, and was heard by a
neighbor threatening to burn down the house and himself. Apparently drunk, he
fired gunshots as his house indeed burned to the ground.
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4– Dwig’s sketch
from memory of Billy Marriner trying to get his arms around one of his large
girlfriends – having fun at her expense.
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Marriner’s
strips were continued, in his approximate style, by the neophyte Pat Sullivan,
a few years before Felix the Cat was created.
Them was
the happy days, all ways around, as Dwig wrote.
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5– The original
artwork for one of Dwig’s glamour girl postcards.
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★
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