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This week — and for the next several weeks — I’m engaged in an activity which makes many book/comics collectors cringe, and question their sanity in having accumulated such a quantity of stuff (weighing one down, like the chains gathered by the ghost of Jacob Marley in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”). I.e., I am packing up my stuff, and moving.

So for the next couple months, my posts will involve extracts from cartoon & caricature books devoted to those who are constantly on the move — theatrical people! (Okay, the real reason is I can’t scan images from my collection while the stuff is packed & sealed in boxes, and I happen to have already scanned a bunch of theatrical cartoons. The “people on the move” theme, is an afterthought.)

For this week’s entry, we feature extracts from the 1926 Hearst Era comic book (“Platinum Age”, for you Overstreet fans), The High-Kicking Kellys, by Jack Ward. This book collects 44 High-Kicking Kellys strips, reprinted from the series’ run in the theatrical publication, Vaudeville News. While neither the first booklet concentrated on Vaudeville cartoons, nor the first to feature sequential comics about travelling actors (we’ll showcase both, later), it is a subject comics series were rarely built around. Enjoy!

Doug Wheeler

TheatricalCartoons