Sunday Funnies - Library of Congress - 1 of 3!

Back in 1995, The Library of Congress hosted an exhibit celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the American newspaper comic strip.  I never got to see the thing as I live on the other coast, but I did make sure to grab this nifty little commemorative booklet.

There's a lot of great reproductions, informed (if brief) articles and nice history in this little 24 pager, so I'll post it in parts over the next 3 Sundays to give you kids plenty of time to drink it ALL up.  This week we've an introduction by Mort Walker and then snippets focusing on "The Birth of 'The Yellow Kid'" and family strips like "Blondie", "For Better or For Worse", "Gasoline Alley", "Snookums" and "Li'l Abner".

Enjoy your Sunday, eat a BIG bowl of cereal and feed your eyes and head with some classic 4 color art.

Talk to you soon.

Sunday Funnies - a Retrospective! part 1 of 5

Never fear, "Li'l Abner" lovers!  My weekly postings of the good folks of Dogpatch will return now that I've resumed full-time blogging again, but I wanted to post this handy dandy nifty keen cool thingy first.

This is something I've been toting around with me since my mom bought it for me wayyyyyyyyy back in 1978 or 9.  It's not a book, but rather a box with 6 over-sized (actually newspaper sized) 8 sheet wonders inside, each unfolding into a retrospective of the great newspaper comic strips of the first 5 decades of The Twentieth Century.  The sixth being an editorial of the collection which is all put together by the great Richard Marshall and Bill Blackbeard of "Nemo: the Classic Comics Library" fame.

I thought it would be a nice way of getting up and going again with this-hyar blog and besides, I finally found a way to scan these monstrosities.

This week alone we have the fabulous works of Richard Felton Outcault ("The Yellow Kid, "Buster Brown"), Frederick Burr Opper ("Happy Hooligan", "And Her Name Was Maude"), Lyonel Feininger ("Wee Willie Winkie's World"), James Swinnerton ("Little Tigers"), Rudolph Dirks ("The Katzenjammer Kids"), George Herriman ("Major Ozone, the Fresh Air Fiend"), Ed Carey ("Simon Simple"), F.M. Howarth ("Lulu and Leander") and the master of them all, Winsor McCay ("Little Nemo in Slumberland")!

It's an item I've treasured for 34 years and I have always wanted to share it.  I hope you dig it too.

Next Sunday:  The 1910's and all their four-color glory.

Talk to you soon.

Craig Yoe Comic Strip Sirocco - Unca Jeffy's Toy Box!

Continuing from last weeks peek at the nifty Craig Yoe Studios sirocco figurines of classic comic strip characters that were distibuted by the smart folks at Dark Horse Comics and continuing pimping the new "All Color Sunday Funnies" right here inside my head, here's a look at a few more!

From George Herriman's "Krazy Kat", everyone knows Krazy loves Ignatz Mouse who does NOT love her back, but Offica Pup does. Here he's got his standard "Move along mouse, and stay out of Kelly's Brick Yard look. See 'em every Sunday right here.


"Hully Gee!" Here's he very first newspaper comic strip star ever, Richard Felton Outcault's Mickey Dugan from right outen Hogan's Alley, "The Yellow Kid"!


Everyone what has any sense already knows, my blogger buddy Thomas Haller Buchanan celebrates the wonderfully talented Walt Kelly regularly in his blog "Whirled of Kelly" which covers all of Kelly's work, including the land of Pogo Possum in the Okefenokee Swamp. Here's Pogo's pal, "Albert Alligator"!

The king of fantasy art in the comics, master of design and perspetive, innovator in animation Winsor McCay is represented on my library shelf with "Little Nemo in Slumberland"! You can check out all of his adventures in high-res scans at this h'yar web page "The Comic Strip Library"!

And finally for today's batch. Everyone knows my love for the epic work of Harold Gray and his famous little redhead, "Little Orphan Annie".

More next week.

Talk to you soon.

The Golden age, Origins and Early Masters of the Comic Strip

As reviewed by the Whitney Museum of Art for their exhibition back in the 1980's. For part 1 of this booklet, see here.

Enjoy!

More next Sunday!

Talk to you soon.

From the Yeller Kid to Yellow Journalism

Getting back to "Sunday Funnies" and wondering what to tackle first now that I've posted all the "Nemo: the Classic Comics Library" I have on hand, I'm going through a stack of magazines and scanning all I've got until inspiration strikes me.

Here's an issue of "Civilization", a magazine published by The Library of Congress, from 1995 discussing the advent of "Yellow Journalism" and the origin of it's name.

This was always a favorite subject of mine in school as it was actually a time when my teachers would talk about comic strips. :)

I hope you enjoy.

Talk to you soon.

Richard Felton Outcault: The American Comic Strip is Born!

Born this day in 1863, today is the 147th anniversary of Richard Felton Outcault -- the Great-Grandaddy of ALL American Comic Strips!

Outcault was a spot illustrator for Joseph Pulitzer on his New York World when Pulitzer acquired one of the first color printing presses. Outcault did full page drawings of New York slum life with lots and lots of activity in them, in the foreground was a small Irish boy in a nightshirt named Mickey Dugan. On this nightshirt would be Dugan's commentary on the scene in question. Pulitzer's printing press colored that shirt bright yellow. And so the American comic strip was born as a color Sunday feature on May 5, 1895 with the color debut of "Hogan's Alley"!

The strip is responsible for another infamous first, when Outcault was offered more money by Pulitzer competitor William Randolph Hearst and went to work for the New York Journal instead. Pulitzer kept running the strip in The World done by other cartoonists and a copyright battle ensued. It ended up in both papers..."Hogan's Alley" by whoever in The World, "The Yellow Kid" by Outcault in The Journal...and the term "Yellow Journalism" got it's name.

Here's a couple of samples of the strip from later years after it took on page panels, word balloons and other conventions of the modern comic strip...and shows an example of another innovation...the "Spin-Off". Turns out Mickey Dugan's cousin is a well-to-do little boy named Buster Brown.

That's right. Outcault also pioneered in franchising his characters. The Buster Brown above is the very one that we all know as the character used by the shoe manufacturer in marketing their kids shoes. Mary Jane was Buster's sister.

The Yellow Kid appeared in novels:

Sheet music of a popular song written around him:

Picture puzzles:

Pin-back buttons:

And even periodicals like this one, a fore-runner of the comic book:

Here's Buster Brown

He lives in a shoe

Here's his dog Tige

He lives in there too:

Not only is this probably the first example of a product using a cartoon character to market itself, it may be one of the most successful. You can still buy Buster brown shoes over a century after most folks even remember that it was a comic strip first!

Buster was a mischievous boy, who after every cataclysm, would make a resolution...usually with his fingers crossed and a wink to the audience.

Being bad is so much more fun than being good!

These are both a couple of early masterpieces of the comic strip. And ones that laid a path for over 100 years of fun on Sunday mornings!

Thanks Richard, for paving the way!