Hi and Lois in the 1950s

As you know from past blogs, I've taken to reading vintage comic strips not because they're entertaining, but because they can tell you about the culture during the time they were printed. Sometimes, that culture can seem alien to the one we have today. That's why I find the stuff endlessly fascinating. Sometimes the cultural/timeline gap can kill the joke.

I've been following Mort Walker's vintage Beetle Bailey for years. I don't read the current Beetle Bailey, as I don't find it entertaining. But the vintage strips have a certain charm and a clean line of art that I do find entertaining. The strip started with Beetle in college, which I was surprised to find out. Beetle didn't join the army until we got into the Korean War. The strip made it plain that Beetle and his classmates felt it was their duty to sign up for the war effort.

I'm currently in 1956 in the vintage Beetle Bailey strips and the character hasn't seen a lick of action outside of training and putting up with day-to-day army life.

Another Mort Walker strip that I never paid any current day attention to is Hi and Lois. The strip just started running vintage reprints on DailyInk a month or so ago. I do find the vintage strip fascinating, as it reflects the typical American family in the 1950's.

Case in point:


This strip ran in August of 1955. Walt Disney's movie Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier premiered in May of 1955 and cut together three successful TV movies. So kids were gripped with Crocket fever and 'coonskin caps' at the time.

Then there's this strip from September of 1955:


This one hits closer to home than most. The offending items are books, but they could just as easily be comic books. The reference to vampires and zombies could be a nod to the super-popular Tales from the Crypt series published by EC comics and cancelled in September of 1954 due to Dr Frederick Wertham whipping parents of the day into a frenzy over what would cause juvenile delinquency.

It's hard to tell where Mort Walker stood on that issue within the context of this one strip. But then again, he could very well have been going for a laugh and that's it.

As an amatuer comics historian, I find the strip unsettling as the 'idea of past culture' I'm getting is a mother who believes her son will turn out badly because of what he reads. I'm against that notion. Very much so.

As a parent, I want to go check under my teenager's bed.

Thanks,
DCD

Judge Parker

A little while ago, one of my comic strip websites added a new vintage strip. Judge Parker. I saw the addition and sighed heavily. My brain has a strict rule that I have to add and follow all the vintage strips that they add. And I had no interest in Judge Parker. I was hoping for something more along the lines of Flash Gordon, Buzz Sawyer, the Phantom, and Mandrake the Magician. All vintage strips I follow voraciously!

But Judge Parker? What can a drama strip like that possibly hold to entertain me?

It DOES bring up an interesting point about genre's and their mediums. In television today, you get to choose between comedy, crime, drama, horror, science fiction, documentary, and (shudder) reality TV. There's even a few western's, I think. And Zombie's.... quickly becoming it's own genre.

In comics of the 1940's and 1950's, the same was true. The different genres of entertainment you can enjoy spanned the full range. Even religious comics and romance comics. Until, decade after decade, almost every other genre was squeezed out in favor of super heroes. By far the reigning subject material of comics. Some genres are making comebacks, but the audiences for comics are so few at this point that it's a struggling industry. Unless you have a seventy-five year old red 'S' on your chest.

The same is true for the comic strips. Decade after decade a wide range of genre's were offered in the newspaper comic pages. But after awhile only the humor strips seemed to have any staying power. Age-old action and drama strips are still hanging around purely because they are 'age-old'. And the few new strips featuring action and science fiction have a decidedly humorous bent.

Judge Parker falls into the drama range. When I was younger, the drama strips made no sense to me. They seemed to move so slow for such a boring story line. But as an adult reading upwards of 25 daily strips, the allure is understood. I follow the story lines so well. In Buzz Sawyer for instance, it feels like I hang on every strip and end up rooting for Buzz for those few moments every day. It's hard to believe I've been reading the strip daily for over five years.

So I buckled up, obeyed my brain, and added Judge Parker to my daily page. What did I find? No explosions or immediate revelations.

This is a character called Sam Driver. He's a lawyer.


As you can see, he's your classic hero type. Cut chin, broad shoulders, widely accepted American leading male haircut, good job.... he's the hero.

...and here are the hippies he's being hired to help.


The strip has started out in August of 1969. Right in the middle of what appears to be a storyline comparing the classic American heroic archetype with the hippie youth culture of the sixties.


Okay... there just might be something for me here after all.

Thanks,
DCD

Justin Bieber in 1970

I've talked before about enjoying newspaper comic strips of yesteryear. I currently subscribe to two daily newspaper strip 'services'. DailyInk and GoComics. DailyInk is a crappy, mismanaged, terrible website with many faults. But their offerings of vintage strips far exceeds their closest competitor. GoComics is an excellent, smooth running website, but their vintage content isn't all that great. They're catching up, though.

I use GoComics to read today's newspaper strip offerings, of course. But it's more important to me for their vintage content. They currently re-run Little Orphan Annie from the early 2000's, which actually was a high point for the strip's action content. They re-run Tarzan strips and are currently up to 1964. They've even begun running classic Dilbert strips, which are much less polished than contemporary Dilbert but sometimes end up being more off-the-wall funny.

GoComics is where I go to get a daily dose of Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbs, and Foxtrot as if they were being published today.

GoComics recently added another vintage strip to their offerings that I snapped up and added to my daily feed. The strip is called Emmy Lou by Marty Links and has started out with strips from 1970. The strip is a one panel, one liner strip mostly about the idiosyncrasies of teenage girls. I've quickly grown to love the strip for it's fashion and it's references. It's a perfect example of getting to know a culture through the entertainment medium of the day.

Which is why I was so jarred to find this as the daily offering on February 14th:


This is... interesting.

The strip is obviously from 1970. The girl's fashions are obviously dated. The phrase 'go steady' is even used. So... Justin Bieber? Huh? Wha??

The message boards that GoComics offers attached to this particular comic exploded in controversy. Perhaps 'exploded' is a major exaggeration, but let's say my fellow enthusiasts for the newspaper strips of yesteryear NOTICED THE CHANGE. Some were quite upset. Some took it as a personal challenge to figure out what the original teenage object of obsession was. David Cassady was my own guess, and that was offered up by several message board posters. As were Davy Jones, Bobby Sherman, Mick Jagger, and even one Jim Morrison.

An individual billing himself as "Marty's Son-in-law" popped on the boards to answer the controversy with a good nature and good humor. He explained that the original celebrity mentioned in the strip has passed away. So rather than let things get awkward, they edited the strip. Last minute decision. He offered a clue as to the original's identity; "He liked racing and eggs".

Paul Newman! 50 eggs. Cool Hand Luke. 50 eggs. I hate eggs.

Marty's Son-in-law happily acknowledged that the edit was probably a mistake and it won't happen again. Which is good. And I'm certainly not writing this to condemn him. I'm just happy to have the strip offered daily! It's quickly become one of my favorites.

But the edit has risen in me the need to point out the struggle publishers have with offerings things up from past decades. I'm always whining and moaning about 'lost art' and the entertainment offerings from our past. But anyone looking to publish the original Mandrake the Magician strips from the 1930's, as wonderful, action-packed, and gorgeously illustrated as they are, would swiftly run into trouble with a strong undercurrent of racism.

Think about that for a minute. It was common and no big deal back then. We learned our lesson and are struggling into the future. But where is our responsibility to the past?

What if I spark an interest in my son's for the comic strips of the 1930's using Alex Raymond's groundbreaking work on Flash Gordon? And loving it so much, my son starts picking up other strips from that same time period. Without the maturity and education needed in order to enjoy this material while acknowledging the time period it was created in, my son could swiftly pick up words he shouldn't or even become de-sensitized to certain situations. And racism is just the tip of the iceberg. You should see how the women are treated!

So... where is our responsibility? The VERY LAST thing I want to see is classic Flash Gordon and Mandrake the Magician fade into obscurity. But the material carries a lot of baggage with it.

The thought makes the Paul Newman versus Justin Bieber situation seem quaint.

Thanks,
DCD

Mandrake the Magician

Sometimes I consider myself to have a foot in two worlds of entertainment. Modern day and the past. This offers a unique perspective, and sometimes an appreciation, of what I'm reading.

Reading Aquaman comics of today is a world of difference than how the character was presented in the 1950's. That's just one small example. Almost every character I can think of has changed drastically with each decade. Superman and Batman being the best examples.

Except the Peanuts strips. The Peanuts strips of the 1950's have very minor differences with later decades. Except for some reason they come off as more charming.



One of the more terribly painful examples of this concept is Mandrake the Magician.
Mandrake the Magician is a newspaper comic strip started in 1934 by Lee Falk, who also created the Phantom. Like the Phantom, Mandrake turned out to be enormously popular in the 1930's and 1940's and was even featured in movie serials. The character was a common household name in the days when an adventure strip could run successfully in the newspapers. Unlike today.

Unfortunately, Mandrake is still being published today. You might be surprised to find out how negative I am about that. The problem being how far the strip, and indeed the very medium of adventure strips in the newspapers, have fallen.

I subscribe to a website called DailyInk. The website is crappy and mismanaged and doesn't work consistently at all. The strips themselves won't pull up from my work computer, so I load them on my iPad for my morning reading before going to work. However, I don't belong to the website for how well it runs. It's the content I crave. They offer several modern day strips from popular cartoon syndicates. But, more importantly to me, they offer several vintage comic strips from days gone by.
Tragically, they offer both vintage Mandrake and modern day Mandrake. Enabling the reader to compare how far the medium and the magician have fallen since their heydays.


All the modern day adventure strips move at a frustrating snails pace and have very poor art. The Spider-Man strip in particular is extremely ridiculous. Mandrake is the worst of them all, though. With overly-simplistic story lines sometimes lasting for months on end, and even single confrontations stretching out over weeks. The art is messy, muddy, and a direct slap in the face to the clean, crisp lines of the Mandrake strips of the past. It's a rare case where I would rather see the strip fade away than be dragged through the mud as it is today.








But what makes this so painful is seeing what the strip used to be! Every day to be treated to the beautiful artwork, thrilling stories, and interesting characters that used to make the strip so popular. Storytelling was quick and exciting. And it's through this comparison that I know what the format of daily, three panel comic strips are capable of doing!


The only way in that the modern strip is better than the former strip is the treatment of Mandrake's right-hand man, Lothar. His depiction in older strips is a painful stereotype, but a record of our cultural thinking from those decades.


Ironically, one of the recent adventure strips that DID move along and tell a good story was Little Orphan Annie. My buddy Scott and I used to rave about how good the modern day strip was. Little Orphan Annie was finally cancelled in 2010. After running for 86 years. When it was cancelled, it was running in less than 20 newspapers. The New York Daily News carried the strip for it's entire run.

Two strips that are doing fairly are Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant. They are still a far cry from there 1930's heyday, but both strips still run on Sunday's, both are action packed and fast paced, both have good artwork, and both are offered through DailyInk. However, I don't consider either character to be a household name like they used to be.

One strip that bounced back from this degradation of the decades is Dick Tracy. Dick Tracy is another strip of immense popularity in it's first several decades. However the strip had fallen on hard times, terrible art, and achingly slow stories in recent years. I bailed on it, unable to continue reading it. However, in 2011 the strip was taken over by a new writer and by former DC Comics artist Joe Staton. Story and art improved by light years almost immediately. It's a must-read for me today.

It feels like I'm announcing the death of the daily comic strip format in this blog entry. However, I just don't feel that way. The truth is, the newspaper syndicates did their best to ignore the internet, changing trends, and the future for quite a long time. They are the ones responsible for the deaths of these strips. The habit of reading a daily comic strip is still very much alive, only now it's webcomics. Artists who were treated terribly or turned down by giant monolithic dinosaur comic newspaper syndicates turned to the web and found bigger audiences than they ever could in the freaking newspaper. So much so, that websites like DailyInk and GoComics that provide syndicated strips online were proved to have a place in the world. It's the webcomic creators that saved this particular medium.

That won't help poor Mandrake the Magician, though.


Thanks,
DCD