'WE WUZ DOGPATCHED!'

 A vignette, a step back in time, regarding a legendary cartoonist, a neglectful studio, and the Golden Age of comics collecting.

More than (gulp!) half a century ago, I was cartoonist, columnist, and editor at the Connecticut Sunday Herald. In college I had been active, during the turbulent '60s, in conservative student publications and campus politics across the country. In that capacity I got to know Al Capp a bit -- the Li'l Abner cartoonist was enjoying his new "home" on the Right (he had been a liberal icon for years) -- with more contacts than through the comics world.

And within a couple years, I became Al's editor at the New York News Syndicate. And I conducted what would be the last interview with him. On the basis of that interview I was contacted by Al's nephew Tony (his agent) and Simon and Schuster to write, or ghost-write his biography. That never happened: a story for another column.

But while I was at the Herald, the legendary columnist and my mentor Harry Neigher said that he spotted a classified ad in, I think, Saturday Review of Literature. Someone was selling vintage original artwork, send for info. Li'l Abner and Popeye piqued our interest. Someone named Don Brown offered original daily strips ca 1935 for, if I recall, $35 each -- even then, ridiculous bargains.

The "list" was minimal; no reproductions or specific dates; and the seller was a Don Brown, no phone number listed, at a PO Box number in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I sent a check for all the available cash I had and trusted to fate (there was the feeling that Don Brown was cover, perhaps for someone who knew, or preferred to hide from, Al Capp, whose studio was in Cambridge).

Vintage Popeyes primarily floated my boat. None arrived, but a few Abners did... but short of my blind order. Then followed months of inquiries, complaints, networking with other collectors. Since I knew Al, I threatened to make inquiries... at which point "Don Brown" sent a stack of Li'l Abner Sunday tabloid tearsheets from the mid-1930s. Fine, but nothing rare or special, nor desired by me, not negotiated by the mysterious Brown.

I wrote to Al about the whole affair -- never undertaken with any hint of his involvement: quite the opposite -- and received the note from his secretary. In essence, they frequently cleaned the office, and disposed of such treasures (um, not her characterization of 1930s Segar and Capp originals). A few months later I appeared with Al at a conference... asked him directly about a Don Brown and stacks of Abner and Popeye originals. He was supremely uninterested, and didn't even remember why he had multiple Segar originals.

If "Don Brown" is still alive and out of jail, he might be the only person, even among many swindled collectors of the 1970s, who has more regrets than we do. Those original drawings have increased in value a little bit since the Good Old Days...