Sunday Funnies - A Retrospective, 3 of 5

Happy Sunday, kiddoes!  Welcome to week 3 of Richard Marshall and Bill Blackbeard's 1078 treasure-trove, The Sunday Funnies, this week spotlighting the decade that America got plugged in and began feeling it's oats.

Electricity was a common thing and seeping into rural areas.  Phone service and network radio (1925) and the rough pubescent age of the cinema all served to open communication and make us all more sophisticated.  Whether we liked it or not.  Paved roads outside our cities and Route 66 traipsing across this country bringing us all together.  Just a few decades out of the cowboy era, and our frontier was all pioneered out.  Our world was smaller thanks to communication and transportation, and with the Jazz Age it was louder and sexier, too.

At least the physical nature of it.  The possibilities of the humor, adventure, continuity and story-telling in the comic strip was just being tapped into.  And a wellspring was struck.

This week we get to bask in the talents of George McManus ("Bringing Up Father"), Billy DeBeck ("Barney Google"), John Held Jr. ("Joe Prep", "Merely Margie"), Harold Gray ("Little Orphan Annie"), Cliff Sterrett ("Sweet-Heart's and Wives", "Polly & Her Pals"), Martin Branner ("Winnie Winkle"), C.W. Kahles ("Hairbreadth Harry") and Frank Willard ("Moon Mullins").

The comics were growing up a little, and se were we, America.

Dig in!

Next Sunday: The Dirty Thirties!

Talk to you soon.

Sunday Funnies - Nemo issue 22 - part 1 of 2

"Nemo: the Classic Comics Library" did it again with grand glimpses into the art of the past with issue 22...in fact, I don't believe there was a single issue published which I didn't read cover to cover.

Here's a nice glimpse into the treasures I'll be sharing this week and next...

A retrospective editorial by Richard Marschall, our tour guide through each and ever issue, and I think one all of us comic strip lovers can relate to.

The Art Deco movement of the 1920's is instantly recognizable. I think I appreciate it much more in architecture than I do as a comics of cartoon style, but one thing is sure, when it's done right it sure is easy to get instantly lost in. Such clean and easy to read graphics as exampled here with John Held's "Merely Margie" and "Joe Prep" strips.

And who doesn't love flappers?

Ham Fisher and his strip "Joe Palooka" are sometimes relegated to footnote status for comics fans as the place where Al Capp learned his chops and the lawsuit Fisher filed against Capp for supposedly lifting "Li'l Abner" from "Big Leviticuss". The honest truth though is that "Palooka" was a great strip itself. There's a reason that "Palooka" and Fisher were revered...it's good solid story telling. Inspiring a film in 1934, a series of 9 shorts for Vitaphone from 1936-37, an 11 film series from 1946-1951, a CBS radio serial, a syndicated television series and even a mountain in Pennsylvania named after the character, here's a nice little sequence of the strip that started it all from 1933.

From 1886, 100 years before this issue of "Nemo", Richard Marschall spotlights the political cartoons that helped shape the era. For further scholership tutelage on Politics from Prof. Marschall, check out the article he did here on the cartoons of 1884.

Next week I'll post the rest of this issue which includes, more "Sam's Strip" and an in-depth examination of Jimmy Swinerton.

Talk to you soon.