The July 1913 collection of Focus on Cartoonists pages from Cartoons Magazine, is a repeat of last month’s situation — wherein Cartoons Magazine had just changed both its sized and format, and the pages devoted to the cartoonists themselves, find themselves (temporarily) short changed. The pages have become more text than cartoon. The page below showing two James H. Donahey cartoons, I normally would not include in a “Focus” posting, unless there was a Donahey bio page. You find it here today, solely because I wanted to give readers more visual content.

Above, our bios for July 1913, are of Charles Henry Sykes, and Socialist cartoonist Ryan Walker.

Click on the above & below pages, to enlarge them and be able to read their text.

Above & below, Mrs. Harry D. Hammer continues her article from last month, on “The Translators of Uncle Sam”, with example cartoons by Harold Heaton, Clare Briggs and Felix Mahoney.

More of Mrs. Harry D. Hammer’s article, above; beneath, random observations from cartoonist studios.

Doug Wheeler

— Doug

I’m going out to see The Wolverine tonight so I thought it was apropos (From the French, doncha know) that I present to you loyal I.T.C.H. readers a Wolverine song.

At first I was worried. How many Wolverine songs could there be? I couldn’t think of one! But with some diligent digging and rigorous research I found a whole mess of ‘em! Turns out, they’ve been writing Wolverine songs since back before Hulk #181. Before Wolverine was Japanese. Even before Wolverine was Canadian! Here’s a little Wolverine tune that dates back about 40 years before Wolverine was just a gleam in the eyes of Rascally Roy Thomas, Lovable Len Wein and Jazzy Johnny Romita. Enjoy!

Click the link below and dance your blues away.

Muggsy Spanier And His Dixieland Band - Wolverine Blues

As previously noted, Stormy Foster, The Great Defender, belonged to that select subgroup of heroes (Dyamic Man, Captain Future, Phantasmo, Master of the World, etc.) who fought evil like he was dressed for track. But I’ve been looking at this Reed Crandall cover off and on for almost forty years and have only just noticed just how true that snide comment was; he’s wearing white socks! While a lot of mystery men ran around with bare legs as far as I know he was the only one to also do it in tube socks. Plus, along with being another handsomely drawn Crandall story it could have a nice little moral about spreading rumors during wartime when Stormy’s toxic racist Chinese stereotype sidekick is accused of being Japanese. The message about how he’s just as American as anyone else unfortunately gets subverted by all of the racism.

We tend to think of The Red Bee as being a fairly obscure Golden Age character, but he’s actually pretty well known for being one of the weirdest of the early superheroes.

Someone really obscure is Ghost of Flanders, a WWI solider who supposedly died at Flanders, but fought WWII using the tomb of the Unknown Soldier as a base of operations. In spite of the fact he had no powers, dressed in gray and wore a WWI Brodie helmet he had a reasonably long running feature appearing in Hit Comics #18-25.

Still more obscure was Swordfish by Fred Guardineer, about US Navy Ensign named Jack Smith who fought WWII with his one man sub.

Today we’re graced with another of artist Thomas Onwhyn‘s small cartoon booklets involving a Victorian family’s adventures at the beach — Papa’s Visit to the Sea Side, created on February 29th, 1856. (And probably released a few months later, as I can’t imagine selling beach vacation cartoons, in February!)

Enjoy!

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

Still more Victorian Summer Comics next week!

Doug Wheeler

SummerVacation

As I have previously and repeatedly noted airplane pilots (or “airplane drivers” in the tortured argot of Milton Caniff*) were a big deal during the war years. Lots of them were in some way “special”, they had special names, outfits, airplanes, etc., but Captain Aero was just a guy, named Aero, no Christian name. According to the Public Domain Wikia he had a pal named Buster, a fan club known as the Sky Scouts, a sidekick named Chop Suey and a plane “that seemed to be able to use its propeller like a buzzsaw”.

I have to take their word for it, because as you’ll soon see none of those elements appear in the Captain’s very first, very pedestrian outing by Allen Ulmer and Ray Willner. It is, and I don’t believe that I am overstating this, dull, dull, dull. As well as confirming the existence of Captain Aero’s Sky Scouts the inner front cover suggests that at least publisher Holyoke thought highly of the guy and to be fair he had a pretty healthy career for a perfectly ordinary airplane driver, making it through 26 issues of his own title as well as making appearances in Blue Beetle #13 and the very strangely named Veri Best Sure Comics #1

A while ago I did a Comic Book Compulsive about Grit Grady #1, a comic that doesn’t actually exist; please to check it out:

http://superitch.com/?p=27566#

Which actually did exist was Holyoke One-Shot #1, the first in a series of ten oddball reprint comics published between 1944 and 1945 which reprinted material from Holyoke in a strange 36 page format with a semi-glossy cover. Holyoke actually had a couple of semi-well known characters, like Catman, Miss Victory and Strongman, but for some reason these one-shots focused mostly on back-up features of the two-fisted adventurer variety, like Sgt. Dick Carter of the U.S. Border Patrol, Diamond Jim. Corporal Rusty Dugan, and Alias X. What Holyoke One-Shot #1 doesn’t have is Grit Grady; the first page which did double duty as the cover was actually from Captain Fearless Comics #2.

This is the first actual Grit Grady story I’ve ever read which also appears to be the very first Grit Grady story. He appears to be just a guy named Grit Grady who wasn’t so much a standard issue two-fisted adventurer so much as just a regular guy who gets in way over his head, but he is nicknamed “Grit” so he does OK. More than OK, actually, seeing as he drives a knife into a shark’s eye, battles an honest to gosh supervillain (the not very cleverly named Captain Hood; I prefer to think of him as Mr. Red Cross Devil) with a proper secret super weapon, and launches himself out of a torpedo tube.

The comic did have a proper hero in the form of Flag Man by Allen Ulmer and Ray Willner, who was also pretty dull.

And a standard Golden Age magician, Solar, Master of Magic by Saul Rosen (apparently), who was also pretty dull. Though it does go to show you that the word “solar” wasn’t in common parlance in the 1940′s.

But the oddest, most original feature in this comic is Cap Stone, which is, well, instead of paraphrasing I’ll just go ahead and quote Public Domain Superhero Wikia; “Cap Stone was an adventurer who accidentally became a member of a vast undersea kingdom known as the city of Aquari. He battled the villainous Triton”. This was his first (and last) appearance so it’s kind of strange it opens with the plot already in progress. Even though the story seems suspiciously similar to the Crash Corrigan serial Undersea Kingdom (which of course was basically Flash Gordon underwater), it was definitely unusual enough to be interesting. Another point of interest, while King Zero and his Coral Men are dark skinned they speak more or less standard English and aren’t racist stereotypes.

*he also liked to refer to Uncle Sam as “Uncle Sugar” which may very well be a piece of period slang that I’m unfamiliar with, but seeing as how I’ve never encountered it anywhere else I’m going to go ahead and assume it was something else of Caniff’s invention he was hoping would catch on. He was to be disappointed.

This week is the 100th Anniversary of the July 22nd, 1913 Binghamton Clothing Factory Fire, in which 31 lost their lives. Not nearly as famous as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire two years earlier, it nevertheless emphasized that safety reforms, not yet passed because of resistance by factory owners that worker safety was too much of a hardship on their profits. As seen by recent clothing factory disasters in Bangladesh and elsewhere, Western clothing retailers, no longer permitted to ignore worker safety in their own countries, have merely moved operations to the Developing World, whose laborers must re-fight the struggles of collectively organizing to protect themselves and demand their rights.

Above, The Cheaper Way, by cartoonist Clive Weed — the only cartoon that Cartoons Magazine ran on the tragedy, from their September 1913 issue.

Beneath, Great Distress, from an 1850′s issue of the Illustrated London News, showing the frenzy of Western shoppers, for cheap clothing goods.

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

Above & below, two cartoons from a circa 1840s/early 1850s American scrapbook filled with images clipped from various unidentified publications.

Finally, above, from 1846 in Our Own Times, is Tremendous Sacrifice!, by legendary British cartoonist, George Cruikshank. From a scan of its November 1893 reprinting in the British periodical, Picture Magazine. Depicted is a clothing store — “Cheap Shop” — filled with customers remarking on the goods, “I cannot imagine how they can possibly be made for the price.” In the store’s backroom, we precisely how, with workers marching into a grinder, goods and profits (but not the workers) emerging from the machinery. One worker says on their way towards the end, “I understand that it is impossible to get a living at this work!” To which another worker replies, “So I have heard. Nevertheless, we must try!”

To find prior postings in the Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons series, click here.

Doug Wheeler

financial reforms

Now that the Lone Ranger is behind us (perhaps not far enough behind us) and we’ve spotlighted Man of Steel, Iron Man 3 and all the other hot topics of the day, we can catch up on old business.

A while back (January 3rd, 2012 to be exact) we featured a cover version of “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron” and I promised to share the original one day. That day has finally come and it’s today! So without further ado (and with no adon’t neither) here’s the classic original recording by The Royal Guardsmen. As I’ve mentioned, their LP was the second one I ever bought and it holds a special place in my record-collecting/comic-collecting heart. As El Capitan pointed out a while back, you can visit the Royal Guardsmen’s Facebook page and I encourage you to do so by clicking here.

Click the link below and forget your troubles.

Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron - The Royal Guardsmen

Up for your enjoyment today, Mama at the Sea Side, created or published on April 30th, 1857. This is one of a series of short cartoon booklets about the adventures of a Victorian Age family at the beach — remarkably the same family, as these appeared over several years from the mid-1850s to early 1860s. Creator Thomas Onwhyn was an illustrator of novels (some of them unauthorized printings of works by Dickens), and the son of a publisher of tourist guides. The younger Onwhyn created numerous small cartoon booklets, and, it has just struck me while posting this series, that approximately half of Onwhyn’s comic booklets (maybe more) are related to tourism!

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

Next week, Papa’s arrival!

To view our prior postings of 100+ year old Summer Vacation cartoons and comics, click here

Doug Wheeler

SummerVacation

We have a winner! The debate in the blogosphere about whether it’s Man of Steel or The Lone Ranger that does a better job of trashing childhood memories and destroying beloved characters has finally been decided. While it’s true, Man of Steel was a dark story with a cynical point of view, twisting the original super-hero into a murderous thug, perverting the meaning of hero, and delighting in the wanton destruction of a city, at least it was a well-made film. The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, seems to have no socially-redeeming qualities at all (as they used to say about pornography). Although I, DJ David B., have not seen the new movie, I’ve read enough reviews to know it’s not for me. This isn’t a case of critics saying “I give it one star” or even “I want those 149 minutes of my life back.” Some of the people who’ve endured it come out of the theater feeling suicidal. It’s a film that doesn’t just put an ugly twist on a classic character. It sets out to ruin everything we believe in about goodness and decency and justice. At least that’s what I’ve heard. What’s more interesting is why.

I blame both Hollywood and the times in which we live.

We’re living in a cold, scary, cynical world. Films are a reflection of our feelings and beliefs. You can’t ask a contemporary audience to accept that a man wears a powder blue jumpsuit and a mask, riding around meting out justice for no reward, just because it’s the right thing to do. Poppycock! (Pardon my French.) Audiences just won’t buy that kind of pure hero. Because they don’t understand the motivation. They will buy the idea of cannibalism, though. That they understand. “Hey, the guy was hungry. So he ate a man’s heart, big deal.” It makes me sick to think that humanity has been reduced to this.

The only thing worse than the state of humankind in 2013 is the current culture of Hollywood. Whatever cynicism and corruption exists in America, Hollywood reflects it bigger and bolder and more twisted, like a giant funhouse mirror of society. Hollywood doesn’t do anything small. If America is sick, movies have to be sicker! Give the people what they want!

The makers of The Lone Ranger deserve plenty of blame themselves. It’s the way the Hollywood system works. If you can’t create – destroy! If you don’t have a new idea, take an old idea and tear it apart. If you can’t come up with a new character, sully an existing character so it ruins everyone else’s good time. The only good news to come out of this adaptation of the Lone Ranger is that there won’t be a sequel. One figure I heard was $19 million in box office for a picture that cost $225 million to make. Maybe this catastrophic loss will make Disney reconsider before they destroy another character from my childhood. Let’s hope. (Or as Man of Steel would say, “Let’s S.”)

The better news is that they can’t destroy The Lone Ranger. Ha! Nice try, Hollywood. The Lone Ranger is bigger than that. You can make a dirty, ugly movie but you can’t kill a symbol of law and order that’s been entertaining kids on the radio, in movies, on TV and yes (you knew it was coming) in comic books for 80 years – even before Superman. Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear and relive the excitement. Cue the William Tell Overture. Hi-yo Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!

Click the link below and feel the joy.

The Lone Ranger

In 1877, medical journals and newspapers were filled with efforts to debunk what was being called “Blue Glass Mania” (or, Chromo-Therapy), in which fraudulent healers were claiming they could cure illnesses by bathing people in light passed through color glass. The practice was made popular by Augustus Pleasonton, who experimented with panes of colored glass in his greenhouse, publishing his claims in 1876, in The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and of the Blue Colour of the Sky.

This blue glass mania obviously inspired comic artist Livingston Hopkins to bring back his recurring comic strip character, Professor Tigwissel, for that character’s eleventh adventure. “Professor Tigwissel’s Experiment with Blue Glass” (above), appeared on the front page of the February 22nd, 1877 edition of the (New York) Daily Graphic.

Click on the above comic strip, to view it in detail, and read the captions beneath each panel.

With it having been a year since I last posted a Tigwissel strip, below follows a review of all of the Professor’s appearances I’ve shown so far (there are more yet to come).

August 6th, 1873, The Baseless Fabric of a Vision, presents the 1st appearance of Hopkins’ Tigwissel prototype, Professor Simple. Simple strongly resembles the eventual look of Tigwissel.

Click on any picture below, to be taken to the individual posting explaining that episode.

July 8th, 1974, Tales of the Comet, Professor Simple’s 2nd appearance. Also found in this strip, is another character — “Mr. Tigwissel”.

February 22nd, 1875, a character who in appearance looks like the “Mr. Tigwissel” of the above strip, engaged in the scientific pursuit of Phrenology — and on our own artist, Livingston Hopkins, no less!

May 28th, 1875, Professor Tigwissel’s Life-Saving Apparatus. For Professor Tigwissel’s 1st appearance, Livingston Hopkins has now largely taken the look of Professor Simple, but (permanently, with this appearance), swapped in the name “Tigwissel”, from its previous use.

Professor Tigwissel’s 2nd appearance, July 3rd, 1875, The Day We Celebrate. In it, Tigwissel gets into a tussle with a Dr. Jingo, whom Hopkins will later give a second strip appearance of his own.

July 28th, 1875, the Professor’s 3rd appearance, in Professor Tigwissel’s Arctic Experience.

Tigwissel’s 4th appearance, consist of a few panels buried within the August 7th, 1875 strip, Midsummer Musings by our Cynical Artist.

Tigwissel’s 5th appearance (and for several decades incorrectly heralded as his debut appearance, by authors swiping from each other, none of them bothering to research the matter on their own) — September 11th, 1875, Professor Tigwissel’s Burglar Alarm.

September 25th, 1875, the Professor’s 6th appearance consists of a couple cameo panels, in The Calendar of Fashion — Calling in the White Hats.

Professor Tigwissel went rogue on his 7th appearance (you’ll have to click on the picture, and read the posting, to find out what I’m referring to), in the December 11th, 1875 episode, Professor Tigwissel’s Trip Up the Nile.

In his 8th appearance, January 10th, 1876, we learn of Professor Tigwissel’s Experiences with New Forces in Nature.

On January 15th, 1876, we got Tigwissel’s 9th appearance — Professor Tigwissel’s Journalistic Venture.

Professor Tigwissel reached his 10th appearance on March 18th, 1876, with a parody on a rather bizarre true life incident, in That Kentucky Meat Shower.

On May 1st, 1876, in A May Melange, Livingston Hopkins included in his piece, a drawing of a man who looks somewhat like Tigwissel, but is not named as such. I make note of it here, but I’m not officially counting this as a Tigwissel appearance.

In addition to the above appearances, as I’ve shown in other postings, in the 1880′s Livingston Hopkins swiped/re-used his own comic pieces — including ones involving Tigwissel — for his new Australian audience, in the Sydney Bulletin. In these rewrites, Professor Tigwissel’s name was dropped or changed.

To view all prior Tigwissel Tuesdays postings (which include other comic strip takes on scientists and science experiments), click here.

Doug Wheeler

ProfTigwissel NYDailyGraphic