Friday, January 30, 2009

Everybody's strip cartoons

Back in 1939, Everybody's magazine ran a full page of cartoon strips featuring two regular characters; the third was a random humour strip by various artists. Dealing with the latter first, two of the strips below are signed 'Moore' and a third with an unrecognisable scrawl. I suspect these are originals to Everybody's. The second feature, so to speak, was "Abel the Seaman", a three panel pantomime gag strip about which I've been able to find nothing.

The main attraction on the page was "Skippy" by Percy L. Crosby, a Brooklyn-born artist who created the character of Skippy in 1923 for Life magazine. A daily strip was syndicated by King Features Syndicate between 1926-45. Skippy Inc. was incorporated in 1932 and issued licenses for dozens of items, ranging from children's clothing to ice cream. The astonishing story of Percy Crosby is told in full at www.skippy.com/. How he lost control of Skippy and was detained in a mental hospital for the last 16 years of his life and how his heirs have subsequently tried to regain control over the Skippy trademark makes for a harrowing (and, it has to be said, one-sided) story. But well worth reading.

(* Skippy comic strip © Skippy Inc./Percy Crosby Estate; others possibly © IPC Media.)

1 comment:

  1. I'm loving seeing these early comic strips..able seaman is funny..liked the first one a lot.like the drawing style..

    keep the old magazine posts coming...very interesting..

    ReplyDelete

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