This Day in Arf History: Martin Branner’s Birthday
Born on this day in 1888, Martin Branner is the creator of the unique comic strip, “Winnie Winkle the Breadwinner.” The protagonist of this strip was a little girl who grew up to be a career woman. In time, she was married, had a baby, and was eventually widowed during WWII. The strip continued long after Branner’s death until its end in 1996.
Now, do you want to see a pic by Branner of Winnie Winkle playing strip poker, nekid as the day she was born?! You know you do! That art is in my new book “Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings”. Order it now!
(click here to order Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings)
— C. Yoe (in the funny papers)
Did you know Winn ie’s little brother Perry spawned more than 75 years worth of comics here in Holland? Brenner’s sunday page was a great succes here in Holland under the name Sjors. A kid’s magazine was built around him in 1930 and a dutch cartoonist provided new adventures. After the war a black friend was introduced and they continued to have many long adventures as Sjors and Sjimmie. For a long time Sjors kept the appearance of Perry, but slowly he was modernized. In the seventies Sjors was merged with another kid’s weekly into the magazine Eppo and a fourth major artist was assigned to the stories, which now morphed from album length adventures to four page gag stories. These were so popular, that the magazine was renamed Sjors and Sjimmie and later Sjosji. It finally collapsed a couple of years ago when weekly comic magazines fell out of favor. The history of Perry/Sjors can be read at the Lambiek website. This link is fro the dutch version, there may also be an english language text around… http://lambiek.net/aanvang/1950sjors.htm
Wow! I always learn something from reading the Arf blog.