Reynolds - Comic Strip Artists in American Newspapers, 1945-1980

Preface and Acknowledgments

The focus of this book is on cartoonists who produced successful comic strips that appeared in American newspapers from 1945 to 1980. With a few exceptions, an entry implies that the individual is truly the creator of the strip, both drawing and writing it. This in no way denigrates the importance of assistants and ghosts, who are indispensable to the cartoonist.

I wish to express my thanks to the staffs of Peter White Public Library and of Superiorland Library Cooperative for their assistance. Joanne Whitley of the latter continues to locate all sorts of difficult-to-find materialand comics seem to fit that category.

I am deeply indebted to two books, both out of print; I have found The Encyclopedia of American Comics, edited by Ron Goulart (1990), and 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics, edited by Maurice Horn (1996), most helpful.

Moira Davison Reynolds

Marquette, Michigan

Introduction

Skeezix, Pogo, Charlie Brown and Calvin with his Hobbes are part of Americas culture, thanks to their appearances in comic strips.

The Columbia Encyclopedia definesa comic strip as a collection of cartoons with a story line laid out in a series of pictorial panels across a page and concerning a continuous character or set of characters,whose thoughts and dialogues are indicated by balloons containing written speech.

The same source defines cartoon (Italian cartone = paper) as: In the fine arts, a full-sized preliminary drawing for a work to be afterwards executed in fresco, oil, mosaic, stained glass or tapestry. It has been pointed out that in the Aeneid,Virgil described a tapestry that depicted the events of the Trojan Wara cartoon derivative, according to the definition given above.

With the advent of printing and increased numbers of people who could read, the association of words with drawings became important.

In 1843, Britains Punch parodied cartoons dealing with decoration of the new Houses of Parliament. Thus, in journalistic parlance, cartoon came to mean any single humorous or satirical drawing that employed distortion for emphasis,often accompanied by a caption or a legend.How- ever, the word comic is misleading, because not every strip is humorous.

Comics appeared in the United States late in the 19th century. One of the countrys earliest cartoonists was Robert Outcault. A former draftsman for Electric World, Outcault submitted cartoons to weekly humor magazines. When Morrill Goddard, the Sunday editor of the New York World, was looking for a comic artist, he picked Outcault. The World owned a new four-color press, and color was selling well.

The Worlds Sunday supplement of February 17, 1895, reprinted one of Outcaults magazine cartoons; it presented a slum child, shoeless and in a nightshirt. The manager of the papers art department made the night dress yellow because that color showed up so wellso well that the wearer became known as the Yellow Kid (His name was Mickey Dugin, and he was Irish, not Oriental.). This character was repeated in some 30 Outcault cartoons and drew the attention of Californian William Randolph Hearst (86395). Hearst had purchased the New York MorningJournal and made it the rival of the New York World, published by Hungarian immigrant Joseph Pulitzer (8479). The importance of the newspaper in pre-radio,pre-television and pre-computer days should not be discounted; Hearsts Journal had a circulation of 00,000 and sold for one cent.

In the 950s a well-trained psychiatrist named Frederic Wertham led an anticomic book crusade. He believed that comic books contained too much violence and sex for children. He had many followers, but his campaign eventually waned; there was no research to show that young readers were adversely aected.

Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey,has pointed out that the comic strip has become the prime chronicler of the common people, mirroring contemporary events and social customs. At the beginning of the 20th century,the life of an immigrant was depicted and the balloons contained dialect; then, women went to work and there were boarding houses, orphans, hillbillies and boxers; and then came the rise of the automobile and the airplane. Walker is of the opinion that all the significant movements of the past century could be seen in the comics. He has also noted the current tendency of comics to concentrate on the family.