Smitty, December 9, 1951

2022-12-04

Smitty, December 9, 1951

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I've posted Smitty Christmas comics twice before, but those were from some of his earlier days and focused on Smitty himself. Here we see Smitty's younger brother Herby trying his best to be a Dennis the Menace, but being foiled by his own desire for Christmas presents. It's a clever way to get Herby to be good, but I wonder if they'll stay blank the whole month or not. It would kind of spoil the surprise, but it would be interesting to slowly add things to the "hidden" lists to give Herby some extra incentive. Maybe some of the things could get crossed out, too, to really make him wonder.

Penny, December 23, 1951

2022-12-03

Penny, December 23, 1951

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Penny, created by Harry Haenigsen, was a fairly long running comic strip about a teenage girl, the eponymous Penny. Haenigsen created the strip in 1943 at the suggestion of the wife of the New York Herald Tribune's publisher. It seemed she was tired of seeing so many comic strips about boys, and asked for one about a girl. Haenigsen was already drawing a comic strip about a teenage boy, called Our Bill, so he did something similar, but with a girl. Both strips are about as authentically mid-century teenager as you can get, and Haenigsen did his level best to keep them that way. To make sure the slang terms he used in the strip were current, he hung out at soda fountains and often invited groups of neighborhood kids to his house on weekends. He even invented some of his own slang terms rather than use ones that he knew were out of date. He was assisted on art duties by Bill Hoest, who took up a majority of the workload after Haenigsen sustained a serious injury in 1965. The strip unfortunately ended in 1970 after Hoest left to start his own strip, The Lockhorns.

This particular strip highlights some Haenigsen's wonderful art style. He's clearly trying to imitate the style of various Christmas cards, but it still has the dynamic look of his regular panels, so you're not quite sure what's going on until you reach the last panel. My only criticism of the strip is that Penny doesn't necessarily look like a teenage girl as much as an adult woman playing a teenage girl in a 1950's movie. Much like those movies, though, there's enough charm to it that you don't really think about it too much.

Leo the Little Leaguer, December 23, 1966

2022-12-02

Leo the Little Leaguer, December 23, 1966

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Leo the Little Leaguer, or in this case just Leo, was a single panel comic created by Walt Lardner that ran for a fairly short time, though it did get picked up by a few high profile newspapers. It was, as its name suggests, about a kid who plays Little League baseball, and generally had jokes revolving around that and other sports. From what I could find, it started in March of 1966, and most client newspapers didn't carry it past October, but at least one stuck it out until the end of the year. Lardner's art style was delightful, and the gags weren't too bad, so it's a shame that it didn't last longer than it did.

The Timid Soul, December 16, 1951

2022-12-01

The Timid Soul, December 16, 1951

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I begin my annual tradition of posting winter and Christmas themed comic strips in December with a new personal favorite, The Timid Soul. I wrote about Caspar Milquetoast earlier this year, and here he is in a situation that I could definitely empathize with. While I'm not quite as milquetoast as Caspar, I'm pretty close. I think my personal approach would be a bit different, though. I'd probably just close my eyes and root around in the drawer or closet until I found what I was looking for. Sure, there is the risk of feeling something unfamiliar and wondering if it's a gift, but it would still allow for some kind of surprise. Besides, if she's smart she'll hide it in the drawer where I put all the shirts that I don't like and never wear, so there's no chance I'll ever look in it.

Comic Strip History - Keeping Up With The Joneses

2022-01-25

Keeping up With The Joneses

Here's one that surprised even me, and one which comes with a little bit of uncertainty that I hope to clear up.

I was, in fact, quite uncertain about this myself when I first started researching it. I have been aware for many years that there was a comic strip called Keeping Up With The Joneses, created by Arthur Momand, that first appeared sometime between 1913 and 1916. The strip revolved around the McGinis family, who were always trying to one-up their wealthy neighbors, the Joneses. The Jones family never appeared in the strip, of course. They were merely referred to by the McGinises constantly, usually in reference to how jealous they would be if they saw what one of the McGinises had purchased or done. According to Momand, this was inspired by his experiences after he moved to New York, and he and his wife's attempts to not be shown up by their wealthy neighbors. He realized how futile it was to do so, and wrote a comic strip to satirize this. The Jones name was, according to him, chosen due to how common it was and how much more interesting it sounded than "Smith." It was never meant to refer to any actual people named Jones.

This is not the story that some people believe. It's the story that they should believe, because it's true, but there are other stories that circulate regarding this phrase that are more convincing to people. I, unfortunately, have previously been one of those people.

The main problem is one of dating. As previously stated, the start date is disputed. Some sources say sometime around 1913, others say 1916. Allan Holtz, author of American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide, and the most trustworthy source I've found, puts the start date at March 31, 1913. This is the date of the earliest published Keeping Up With The Joneses strip that he could find.

This is important, because if the strip started in 1916, there's no way it could be the origin of the phrase. The phrase appears in print outside of the comic strip as early as late 1913 and early 1914. A 1916 start date would suggest the strip had taken its name from the phrase, not the other way around. This discrepancy has caused people to try to find an alternate explanation, and there is one that has become popular. There was a wealthy family who lived in New York in the mid-19th century by the name of Jones, and who had a large mansion overlooking the Hudson river. The family were so wealthy, and keeping up with their wealth would have been so impossible, that people assume the phrase must have been referring to them. This would be a fine assumption to make, if the phrase had appeared in any 19th century publications, which it doesn't.

This was the assumption that I made, however, back when I believed the erroneous sources that gave the 1916 start date. Thankfully, I now know better, and have happily added this phrase to the list of phrases that originated in comic strips.

For more information:

Don Markstein's Toonopedia, about the strip (just don't trust that "First Appeared" date)

The Stripper's Guide, about Arthur Momand

Word Histories, about the phrase

Unexpected Comic Strip Creators - Mickey Spillane

2022-01-19

Mike Hammer

Detective stories and comics have gone hand in hand ever since the early days of the medium. One of the most famous comic heroes, Batman, first appeared in the pages of Detective Comics, which has become one of the longest running comic books in history, as well as lending its name to one of the two biggest comic companies, DC Comics. Even before Batman's debut, Dick Tracy and others were solving crimes and mysteries on the newspaper page. Those kinds of stories have always been popular with readers, but I imagine they were also popular with writers and newspapermen, given that mysteries and intrigue gave readers a big reason to pick up the next day's paper to find out what happens next. In order to create a popular detective strip, it seems logical that a newspaper syndicate would look for someone already skilled in writing that kind of narrative. In 1934, King Features had done it with Dashiell Hammett, who I've written about previously, and in 1953 a much smaller syndicate, Phoenix Features, would get their own detective comic strip written by another star of hard-boiled detective fiction, Mickey Spillane.

While Spillane is certainly not someone you would expect to write a comic strip, the detective character in most of Spillane's books, Mike Hammer, is also not someone you would expect to appear in one. Spillane's books were known for their extreme violence, and Hammer was the type of character to literally take no prisoners and shoot first and ask questions later. While justice in other detective stories usually involved the culprits being taken to jail, perpetrators in Mike Hammer stories tended to end up dead, and usually by Hammer's hand. Spillane would receive quite a bit of criticism for this over the course of his career. The books proved extremely popular, however, and even though his first book was published in 1947, by 1953 Hammer began appearing in several other forms of media. That year saw the release of the movie based on the first book, I, the Jury, as well as a Mike Hammer radio show. Spillane was not involved in the writing or production of either of those, but that was not so for the comic strip that would appear that same year.

Unlike Hammett, writing a comic strip was a job that Spillane was quite well equipped to do. In fact, if Spillane had had his way, this is how Mike Hammer would have begun. Spillane got his start writing for comic books, working for a company called Funnies, Inc. who provided comics publishers with scripts for their comics. Spillane's scripts appeared in books published by Timely Comics, the company that would eventually become Marvel, as well as some published by Fawcett Comics, the company who published Captain Marvel (better known these days as Shazam), among others. It was during this time that he began developing the character that would become Mike Hammer. In 1942, he wrote a comic script for a story about a private eye named Mike Lancer, which appeared in an issue of Green Hornet. His name would later be changed to Mike Danger, and a cover was drawn, but the comic was never published. Spillane would finally settle on calling him Mike Hammer, but abandoned the idea of his character being in a comic book and instead wrote the first Mike Hammer novel. Still, he always envisioned Hammer as a comic book character, and wrote his novels as if he was scripting a comic book.

Also unlike the King Features situation with Hammett, it wasn't the syndicate that approached Spillane about a Mike Hammer comic strip, but it was Spillane who approached them. Jerry Iger, who had founded Phoenix Features years earlier with Will Eisner, had worked with Spillane when he was at Funnies, Inc. Spillane wanted Hammer to be shown the way he had always envisioned him, and pitched the idea to Iger. Iger agreed to sell the strip, and hired comics writer Joe Gill, who had also worked with the two of them at Funnies, Inc, as well as artist Ed Robbins. When the strip began, Gill wrote the daily strips, and Spillane wrote the Sunday strips, which were a different continuity. Even though Gill write the scripts for the dailies, Spillane was still in charge of plotting. Gill was not able to keep up with deadlines, so Spillane and Robbins ended up stepping in to assist on scripting the dailies as well. Notably, the strip is not an adaptation of any of the books. The stories in the strip were written specifically for it. This may have been by necessity, as if it had been an adaptation it's unlikely that any newspaper would run it.

Predictably, despite not being an adaptation, many newspapers were hesitant to run the strip for fear that it would contain the kind of violence and sex that Spillane's novels had. Spillane was able to keep things sufficiently toned down for the newspaper market, so while circulation wasn't as wide as Phoenix Features would have hoped, it was wide enough to keep it going for at least a few months. It seems it would have kept going, too, if Spillane had been able to continue the toned-down approach. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The cliffhanger panel in a particular strip from January of 1954 depicted a woman in a, shall we say, compromising position that I think, according to descriptions, would still be quite racy even by today's comic book standards. The strip was dropped from nearly all the papers it was in, and it ended less than a year after it began. Ed Robbins took responsibility for the offending panel, but given Spillane's penchant for being very descriptive and specific in his scripts, I don't think Robbins is really to blame for the strip's demise. After that, clearly realizing that the newspaper page was not the correct medium for his work, Spillane decided to stick to writing novels, as well as being somewhat involved in the movie adaptations (including playing Mike Hammer in one of them).

For more information:

TwoMorrows Publishing, for an interview with Spillane about his time at Funnies, Inc.

The Thrilling Detective, for more info on the character Mike Hammer

Hermes Press, for the collected Mike Hammer comic strips. Also includes an introduction by Max Allan Collins with lots of great background information.

Comic Strip History - Milquetoast

2022-01-10

The Timid Soul, 1940

Milquetoast was a word that I first encountered in a comic strip, though not the one this blog post is focused on. In Berkeley Breathed's strip Bloom County, and its sequel strip Outland, there was a character named Milquetoast, who was apparently a cockroach, though he didn't look much like one. I remember being ignorant of how to pronounce his name, though I didn't really give it much thought as I figured it was just a weird name Breathed had come up with.

It was certainly a strange joke word created by a cartoonist, but not one coined by Breathed.

The word first appeared in 1924, in a comic strip called The Timid Soul by H.T. Webster. Webster had been doing single panel gag strips for the New York Tribune since 1912. His panels appeared under a number of different recurring titles, which would change depending on the subject matter of the gag, but none of them had any recurring characters. In 1924, he moved to the New York World, and while he did continue his other panels under their various other titles, he began a new one, The Timid Soul, and with it created a character by the name of Caspar Milquetoast. Caspar was, as the title of the strip suggests, the most meek and timid man you would ever meet, and his meekness would always land him in strange predicaments. Many of them involve him strictly following signs, such as when he decides to buy a new hat rather than retrieve one that has blown off his head and landed next to a "Keep Off The Grass" sign, or when he goes to the river for a dip and lights a cigar, but drops it when a discarded "No Smoking" sign floats by, or when he is completely immobilized by a "Watch This Space" sign. Many others involve him doing his best to avoid confrontations, whether it be not talking to someone about how he thinks the Dodgers are going to do this year, or not contradicting his neighbor when the neighbor holds him responsible for a hurricane blowing a tree onto his fence, or stopping by the side of the road to change his tie so he wouldn't have to tell his wife he hates the one she got him for Christmas.

Webster's The Timid Soul strips became his most popular, and Caspar Milquetoast literally became a household name. Comparisons of various people to Caspar in the wider media began quite early, but the reference was always to the comic strip character. Someone might be called "a Caspar Milquetoast," or "a Mr. Milquetoast," or even "a Milquetoast," but it was always a proper noun. Sometime around the early to mid-1930s it dropped the capital "M," and also began its life as an adjective, which is the form in which it's most likely to be found these days. In 1988 Berkeley Breathed created a cockroach character with that name, which I now realize was meant to be ironic.

The word itself is confusing to many people due to their ignorance of its origins. Part of it looks vaguely French, so one might assume it came from French or Latin somehow, though that wouldn't explain the "toast" at the end, which is very English looking. It wouldn't occur to most people that a funny looking word with no discernible linguistic origin may have been invented for a comic strip. The word does have a clear etymology outside of just being a comic strip character's name, however: Webster was obviously referencing "milk toast," a dish reserved for those with weak stomachs, and possibly thinking of the term "milksop," which references a similar dish, and has been used for a few centuries to refer to weak, timid men. In fact, it's possible he may have gotten the two dishes confused when concocting his comic character, though that's just speculation on my part.

For more information:

Hairy Green Eyeball has a nice collection of The Timid Soul strips

WordOrigins.org for more on the origin of the word

Atlas Obscura for more on the character and its creator

Neglected Books for more on H.T. Webster

Comic Strip History - The Worry Wart

2022-01-03

The Worry Wart, March 6, 1929

Most times I've done research for posts about words that originated in comic strips, I've been able to find fairly consistent information about where and when they first appeared. The information I was able to find may not have been very plentiful, but at least it told a consistent story. Not so with "worry wart." It seems pretty clear that the phrase originated in a comic strip, but no one seems to agree on when. I think I've found the correct answer, though.

What all the sources I found do agree on is that there was a character called "The Worry Wart" in the comic strip Out Our Way, created by J.R. Williams. Out Our Way was what you might call a nostalgia comic. It centered around people who appear to live in the late 19th century in rural surroundings. Most of the characters are unnamed, though many of them reappear from time to time. The jokes generally revolve around relatable situations that the reader would probably remember from their childhood, or possibly remember hearing about from their grandparents when they were young adults in the old days. The strip started in 1922 and had a fairly long run, ending in 1957.

All those sources also agree that the way the term was used in the strip wasn't exactly the same way we usually think of it. Normally when we use the phrase, we mean someone who worries incessantly, possibly to the point of growing warts. In the comic strip, The Worry Wart was a small boy who, due to his actions, caused endless amounts of worry to his family, and especially his mother. While the meaning wasn't the same, it's still fair to say that the comic strip is the origin of the phrase, as the term had never been used to refer to a person before, if it had ever been used at all. Etymologists are free to quibble, but it seems pretty clear cut to me.

The issue of when the term first appeared seems to be a bit thornier, and there is a lot of misinformation about it on the Internet, even from otherwise reputable sources. Now, if we all agree that the origin of the phrase is the comic strip, then it stands to reason that all we would need to do is find which strip the term first appeared in, and we have our answer. This does pose a problem for some, however, as they may not have access to an archive of the strip, and they may not feel inclined to look through every single one to find it. After all, it was a daily comic strip that ran for 35 years. That's a lot of strips. This means that most places you look are most likely relying on information from other sources that they trust to have the right information. Unfortunately, most of them do not.

Many places put the first appearance of the phrase in 1956, most likely owing to the fact that this is what the Oxford English Dictionary says. This is odd, given that Out Our Way only ended a year after that and had been running for quite a while by that point. One would think that they must be using a different source for the origin of the phrase, but they don't. They still credit Out Our Way, and some places even call it "a 50's comic strip" (which is also odd, as by that point its popularity was waning). The mistake seems to come from someone confusing the publication date of the comic strip with the publication date of a reprint comic book. Dell Comics did publish a reprint comic in 1956 called "Out Our Way With The Worry Wart," which was part of a series of comic books that reprinted various newspaper strips. I could only find one Out Our Way issue, and I doubt a popular phrase would have spawned from a single issue of a comic book. Incidentally, there is another comic book with a character by that name who appeared over a decade earlier. All-Flash, issue 15, from 1944, included a character named Ebenezer Jones. Jones suffered from crippling anxiety, which was discovered to be caused by some kind of virus. An evil scientist decided to make it contagious in order to infect others with the anxiety (that's Golden Age superhero comics for you), earning Jones the nickname "Worry Wart." Even if Out Our Way wasn't the origin of the phrase, that issue of All-Flash confirms that the term was in use long before 1956.

Other places I searched are much more reasonable. Most of them are fairly vague, stating that the term first appeared sometime in the 1930s. Merriam-Webster is more specific, putting the first appearance in 1936, though it does contain the caveat that this was the first time it was used as it's currently defined in said dictionary, not necessarily how it was used when the term first appeared. That's fair, though as I said, it's unlikely that it would be used at all if it hadn't been popularized as a phrase earlier than that.

Finally, we have sources that appear to actually correctly date the first appearance of the phrase, which I will link below. I know that these are correct, because although others may not have enough patience or access to resources to find this out, I certainly do. I searched through every Out Our Way strip, beginning in 1936, and worked backward. The earliest one I could find is from March 6, 1929 (pictured above). There are strips from earlier years that feature a similar character, but he's never called The Worry Wart in those strips. To be honest, because of that fact, I stopped searching in around the middle of 1927. It's possible that the term was used earlier, but unlikely.

For more (good) information take a look here:

Columbia Journalism Review

World Wide Words

Pogo, January 1, 1967

2022-01-01

Pogo, January 1, 1967

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Not a lot to say about this. Just want to wish everyone a happy new year, and to submit this new calendar for consideration.

Trudy, December 31, 1966

2021-12-31

Trudy, December 31, 1966

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Jerry Marcus, creator of Trudy, had worked for many years as a magazine cartoonist before starting the strip. His work had appeared in places like The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post, and Trudy bears quite a resemblance to the things you might see in those publications. For most of its life it was a single panel, though on Sundays newspapers would do what they often do with panels and reprint several of them in one section. For a period of a year and a half in 1968 and 1969, Marcus decided to make it into a multiple panel strip, with some success, but returned to the single panel format in 1970, where it would remain until it ended in 2005.

I thought this particular panel would be appropriate today, as we approach the new year. Back in 1966 it may have seemed a bit odd for someone to say something like this, but these days there are several websites dedicated to tracking the new year as it goes across the world. It's crazy to think that, if you wanted, you could potentially speak to someone today that's living in an entirely different year than you are. Maybe those who have already celebrated the new year can let those of us still in the old year know whether it's an improvement or not.