April 1st
To open April Fools’ Month, we present two pages from the 1925 collection, Cartoons from Life, in which artist Ellison Hoover uses contemporary comic strip characters to communicate editorial opinions (above), and to “improve” famous paintings (below). Comic strips involved in these parodies include: Polly and Her Pals; Bringing Up Father; Captain and the Kids [...]
Our Congress
From the 1925 collection, Cartoons from Life, by Ellison Hoover, we have a view of “Our Next Congress”. Which, actually, looks more like our current and several past Congresses to me. Click on the above cartoon, to view it in greater detail. Congress has perennially been the target of cartoonists, depicting them as inept, combative, [...]
Santa and His Flying Machines: Tigwissel Tuesdays #45
For our second week in the March of Progress in Santa Science, we have more excerpts from my (unpublished) project collecting Victorian Age through WW I Christmas cartoons & comics. In more modern times, (particularly during the Space Race / Apollo Program), one can find such cartoons as Santa straddling space rockets, or, of him [...]
Santa by Auto: Tigwissel Tuesdays #44
Today, the March of Progress in Santa Transportation Technology, using cartoons from one page of a Victorian/Pre-Depression I Christmas Comics book I put together, for which the publishing deal fell through. As we can see by these cartoons, Santa is constantly looking to improve on his methods of Christmas Toy Delivery. By replacing his apparently [...]
Wall Street Panics & Collapses: Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons #107
Using mostly cartoons shown over the course of our Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons run, plus a scattering of a few new ones, we have a brief review in pictures, of Wall Street Crashes & Panics, from mid-19th Century, up through Great Depression I. The upcoming election pits one candidate who is a millionaire [...]
Tainted Food: Tigwissel Tuesdays # 37
In this week’s Tigwissel Tuesdays, we look at the dangers of consuming food, pre-F.D.A., as numerous Republican candidates have proudly declared that they would like to dismantle the Food & Drug Administration. As Mitt Romney might inelegantly phrase it when amongst his friends, Americans are too lazy to take responsibility for their own lives and [...]
Fourth of July Fireworks: Cartoons Magazine Centennial, August 1912, Part 0.1 + Others
Appropriate for the day, a few cartoons focused on fireworks and their danger. Above, from the Election of 1884, and the July 2nd, 1884 rear cover of Puck magazine, artist Frederick Burr Opper depicts G.O.P. Presidential candidate James G. Blaine as a flashy, rising firework, in He Goes Up Like a Rocket, and He Will [...]
Ellison Hoover’s Flag Day
Above & below, from cartoonist Ellison Hoover‘s 1925 collection, Cartoons from Life — (reprinted, naturally, from Life magazine) — we have two cartoons appropriate for Flag Day. From Ellison’s cartoon series, Intimate Glimpses of American Generals of Industry, above, the founder/namesake of the Hoover Vacuum Company, “justifies the claims of his newest five-star supersuction sweeper”. [...]
Women of the Future, as predicted in the Past…
For today’s Women’s History Month posting, our selected cartoons all purport to show the future results should women be granted equal rights. Such cartoons — drawn by men — were often used to express anti-suffrage viewpoints. The above cartoon posits that gaining the same rights as men had, would result in women sinking — in [...]
Daughters of the Revolution: Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons, Part 74
With current Republican Presidential candidates calling for the elimination of all regulations on industry, including laws against child labor, we look at a couple cartoons created to shine light on the evils which the Republican Party wants to return us to. The title of Daughters of the Revolution, above, originally published in Life magazine, carries [...]
