Catch up time! Back last Summer, we were having website issues, and I stopped uploading “new” old material for awhile. Once I did return, it’s been with less frequency of posting than I had been before. One reason, is that I simply burned out on scanning, organizing, and posting Cartoons Magazine material — I thought it would be fun to do a month-by-month Centennial as each issue came out, but I hadn’t realized when I started, how predominant it would become, squeezing out material from other sources. A second reason, is that I actually end up damaging the things as I was pressing them flat against a scanner.

Well, I’m restarting our Cartoons Magazine coverage, this time hopefully without overdoing it. And I just bought a new digital camera, testing first that it can produce high enough definition images for use here on SuperITCH. This posting is the first one (from me) making use of photographed instead of scanned pages. So, on with it!…

It’s been July since we’ve done a “Focus on Cartoonists” feature, presenting pages from Cartoons Magazine that focused on the cartooning itself. I plan to run a couple of these each month, until we catch up with a truly “Centennial” schedule again. Above if the front cover of the August 1913 issue (my copy of September is coverless, so, can’t show it to you). The subject of this cover by cartoonist Fred Morgan, is Summer Heat/Humidity (perfect timing for those of us who experienced the recent “Polar Vortex”). Immediately below — also from the August issue — are two quick bios on cartoonists James H. Shonkwiler and H. Robert Manz.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read the text.

Above, an ad for bound sets of the first three volumes of Cartoons Magazine (almost certainly made from returned/unsold copies — these bound volumes typically are missing the covers and advertising pages, as it was general policy for magazine stands to tear off at least part of the cover, as proof of the copies they had failed to sell.)

Beneath, from August, a three-page article by artist James E. Murphy, accompanied with some of his cartoons (the last one created for this article).

Above & below, from the September 1913 issue, short bios of cartoonists Gaar Williams and Terry Gilkison.

Finally, below, an ad for the Landon School for cartoonists, from the rear cover of the August 1913 issue. (The September issue also had a (different) Landon School ad, but again, I don’t have that cover.)

Doug Wheeler

H.R. Manz

As previously noted, in the 60′s a trio of titles, Fantastic, Pow and Smash, which mixed black and white reprints of Marvel Comics, the Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder comic strip and indigenous original material, both humorous and adventurous. As it happens so often the weaker selling titles were merged with the better selling ones until the last one standing was Smash.

This issue from 1968 is a particularly eclectic mix. First and foremost there’s pages reprint from Fantastic Four Annual #1 and The Mighty Thor #149, as well as a sequence from the Batman comic strip guest starring Superman (!). Amongst the indigenous material were the usual humor strips as well as some fairly conventional straight up adventures serials that could have appeared in any British boys comics of the era. I’ve already discussed the decidedly oddball Brian’s Brain so the only two really worth mentioning are The Spectre, who isn’t an undead guy working the supernatural menace side of the street ala our Spectre, but rather a ”guy believed dead” kind of crimefighter Though this one doesn’t even the figleaf of a domino mask to conceal his true identity of anyone. But lastly there’s Laird of the Apes.

There is absolutely nothing in the entire history of comics, British or American, like Laird of the Apes, Nothing.

Here is another one of those oddball one-shots from the publisher Holyoke that featured a jumble of reprints from approximately one of one of their previous comics. This was how stories from Crash Comics Adventures #2…

…ended up as Holyoke One-Shot #7 with, for some reason, a random splash page from a Secret Agent Z-2 story with a white box with the word “Comis” slapped on it serving as a kind of a cover.

First up is a story featuring Strongman The Perfect Human, a Bruce Wayne type bored millionaire playboy secret identity who gained Superman 1939 type powers by years of studying a secret book of yogi, except Percy van Norton was such a languid fop he sported an honest to gosh monocle. In his brief career (Crash Comics Adventures #1-5) he pretty much specialized fighting international bad guys.

The Blue Streak was another international bad guy fighter, but one who worked without the benefit of superpowers.

For reasons that even I don’t entirely understand one of my all-time favorite Golden Age characters has to be Basil Wolverton’s Powerhouse Pepper. Some consider him to be a Popeye knock off and while I can kind of see that, seeing as how both were good hearted, super strong and nearly indestructible comic grotesques, other than that there’s really not all that similar. He had no supporting cast, though at least one pretty girl would show up in a decorative capacity, and though he started his cartoon life as a boxer like the stars of the animated shorts of the era he wandered from one slapstick comic adventure to another doing all sorts of jobs. And while both comic strips and books had their share of comic strongmen the thing that puts Powerhouse Pepper heads and shoulders above all others was of course, Basil Wolverton. If Pepper wasn’t absolutely unique his creator sure was.

Although there have been reprints and collections…

…what I really want to see is a hardcover Marvel Masterworks archive edition; if they can do one for the 50′s jungle characters, they can certainly do one for Powerhouse Pepper.

Click on the above picture, to open a larger version.

By Lawson Wood, from the British publication, The Sketch, December 1920. Scanned here via its presentation in the January 1921 issue of Cartoons Magazine.

Doug Wheeler

On Christmas morning of 1913, one hundred years ago today, those lucky enough comics enthusiasts — and followers of Buster Brown in particular — rushed to discover beneath their Christmas Tree, a copy of the latest collection of their favorite prankster, that they’d been drooling over since Summer (and hopefully not that drooled copy)! Buster Brown At Home, by artist/creator R.F. Outcault, reprinting Buster‘s Sunday Strip misadventures, was published in July 1913 by the Frederick A. Stokes Company.

Extracted beneath, are several of the stories from that collection.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the comic pages in detail, and read their balloons.

To view previously shown “Comic Book Christmas Gifts of One Hundred Years Ago”, click here.

Merry Christmas!

Doug Wheeler

Richard Felton Outcault Christmas Gift

Continuing our series of comic books that could have been given as Christmas Gifts 100 years ago, we have extracts from the remnants of one such gift — Mr. Twee-Deedle by Johnny Gruelle, published in 1913 by Cupples & Leon, and reprinting the Sunday newspaper strip by the same name.

(Guess which picture — the above or the below — was the work of artist Johnny Gruelle, and which was the work of the budding artist recipient of the book, drawn on the backsides of the pages! Let us hope that they made it in the art world. Or, some other career.)

The Gruelle page — if you’ve guessed which one it is — has lost its companion second half (each Sunday strip presented over two pages), but it still enough of a story to stand on its own. All of the other examples beneath, are (surviving) paired pages.

Enjoy!

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read the balloons.

Doug Wheeler

— Doug

Here’s an early issue of Wow Comics from the days when it’s publisher Fawcett was apparently of the opinion that Batman and Robin analogs Mr. Scarlet and Pinky were going to be the comics break out stars, as evidenced by the fact the first couple of issues had three stories featuring the characters.

Unlike some other second tier Fawcett heroes I’ve never had a problem with Mr. Scarlet; he was a perfectly adequate Batman clone, During the early part of his career he fought an assortment of memorable villains, and in the later half (when his hood turned blue and his cape two-toned) he became one of the few Golden Age characters to have serious money problems. But I actually prefer the original version of his costume, the all red number with the yellow cape and whatever the hell you call that cock’s comb thing on the top of his food. Seriously, what is that supposed to be? A plume, a reservoir tip, what?

Although there were three stories I chose this one, “Mr Scarlet and the Moon Torchman” drawn (maybe) by Jack Binder which had a particularly WTF “supervillain” who uses a diabolical flashlight that uses concentrated moon rays to make people (and animals) wacky. For no particular reason it mentally reduces Mr. Scarlet to a baby.

Then we have an understandably little known Fawcett hero, The Hunchback, secretly wealthy playboy Alan Lanier who (somehow) was inspired to fight crime dressed in what he apparently thinks Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame dressed like; a green jumpsuit with a yellow belt. Below is what he looked like in Wow Comics #2.

When it comes to inexplicably choosing a literary character to base a crime fighting career around the only one who had The Hunchback beat was The Mad Hatter. Happily later The Hunchback ditched the hat with the yellow feather and the totally unnecessary and inexplicable chest insignia and was, as you can read in this nicely drawn story, a fairly effective crime fighter. It’s just a pity he’s really a handsome rich guy playing dress up instead of, you know, an actual hunchback; as a chunky ugly guy with bad posture there was something about him that I could really relate to.

Though I wish he had a better crimefighting name. I mean, he doesn’t even got the definitive article; he’s not even The Hunchback, just a hunchback.

While not actually interesting enough to post here I do have mention this issue featured an adventure of Jim Dolan, which may well be the first and only comic book detective who’s day job was that of an magazine editor.

And finally here’s another oddball character that I’ve always been curious about, Atom Blake the Boy Wizard. But he’s not actually a teen-ager magician; ‘wizard’ is meant in the ‘mechanical wizard’ sense of the word, i.e., an genius inventor. But he wasn’t just a standard Golden Age comic book boy inventor either, he was more of a mental and physical marvel type who had incredible, ill-defined abilities which he initially used to fight crime on earth. Until he decided to literally take a walk across the universe to try and find his missing parents which he did in the previous issue. Along with being fairly original this story is also plenty of odd.

This being the last Friday the 13th in a year ending 13 that we’ll see for a century (or in other words, that no one reading this right now, will see), we present artist W.A. Ireland‘s cartoon on the subject, from one hundred years ago. Found in the August 1913 issue of Cartoons Magazine.

Doug Wheeler

Billy Ireland

Next in our run of 1913-published cartoon books that could have been received as Christmas gifts by comics fans one hundred years ago, is a rather scarce collection of which we know every copy was given away as Christmas presents. Cartoonist Robert Satterfield’s self-published 50 Cartoons by Satterfield, collecting a selection of Satterfield’s editorial cartoons from 1913, was limited to a run of 150 signed and numbered copies, the entire run of which he distributed for Christmas. As far as I’ve been able to determine, 1913 was the only year Satterfield did this, but the possibility that Satterfield printed such collections in other years, can’t be ruled out. The low print run from the start, means few enough surviving copies have surfaced (plus did so when I was looking), for me to definitively state that only the 1913 edition exists.

Who the gift recipients were, is unknown. But as a purely speculative guess, I would think that Satterfield would have kept numbered edition #1 for himself (I would), plus given a few copies to family and friends, after which the majority of the run was likely distributed to editors of newspapers that published Satterfield’s cartoons.

Some of the cartoons found in the book are also found within the 1913 run of Cartoons Magazine. Nearly all of them involve topics which have been the focus of postings here on Super I.T.C.H. Beneath are a few extracted examples.

Enjoy!

Click on the below pictures, to enlarge them.

Above, Satterfield on British Suffragette Emeline Pankhurst, about whose visit to the U.S. we just recently posted (click here to see).

Beneath, Satterfield’s view on then traditional Women’s work.

Above & below, a pair of cartoons that would fit into our annual Back-to-School and College Graduation themes.

Above, Teddy Roosevelt during his hunting trip in South America.

Below, a baseball-themed cartoon from Satterfield, on the 1913 World Series between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics.

Finally, we close our extracts, with the Christmas-themed cartoon that Satterfield used to conclude his book.

Doug Wheeler

Women’s History T.R. Christmas Comics CollegeComics

— Doug