The Gumps is another one of those once incredibly well known, loved and influential comic strips that have almost completely vanished from living memory. Joseph Patterson, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribute, the guy who (or so the story goes) turned Little Orphan Otto into Little Orphan Annie, had an idea for a comic strip soap opera about “regular people” whom he called “gumps”. Cartoonist Sidney Smith came up with the characters including Dick Tracy villain ugly Andy Gump; we toss about the term “comic grotesque” pretty casually, but Andy Gump was supposedly inspired by a real person who due to an infection lost his entire lower jaw. According to Wikipedia when he met Smith the cartoonist thought him “an ideal comic character”. Boy, times were different back then.

The strip itself was in fact a low level soap opera which followed Andy, his wife, sons and rich Uncle Bim, who shared Andy’s unique profile (so, happily, it appears to be some sort of a genetic defect and not the result of some sort of industrial accident). If the strip is remembered at all it’s because it was the first comic strip to feature the death of a major character; you can see for yourself in IDW’s Library of American Comics, The Saga of Mary Gold (1928-29). But me being me, I’m more interested in the Sundays which had more kid appeal thanks to some adventure strip style plots.

Smith died in 1935, and the strip was taken over by Gus Edison who wrote and drew the strip for 24 years (in the 50′s his assistant was actor Martin Landau) and he later went on to create Dondi with Irwin Hansen. In 1947 the Lafayette Street Corporation published five issues of a Gumps comic; I’ve been able to find one which features this long adventure by Edison featuring Canadian dinosaurs; you read right, Canadian dinosaurs. I wish I could find the other four issues because this is wonderful stuff.