BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: COMICS & COMIC STRIPS

for T.Campbell

BANNED IN BOSTON FOR SMOKING A CIGAR!

In 1940, (DALE) Messick created a new heroine—a "girl bandit" named Brenda Starr—whose looks were modeled on the film star Rita Hayworth, and named after a popular debutante, Brenda Frazier.[5] She submitted the new strip to the Chicago Tribune-New York News syndicate, but the syndicate chief, Joseph Medill Patterson, "had tried a woman cartoonist once... and wanted no more of them." Patterson's assistant, Mollie Slott—later the vice president of the syndicate—saw the discarded samples, and encouraged Messick to make Brenda a reporter. Patterson accepted the strip, but ran it in the Chicago Tribune's Sunday comic book supplement, rather than the daily paper. He refused to run it in his other paper, the New York Daily News, which finally carried Brenda Starr in 1948, two years after Patterson's death.[3] After the strip was established, other instances of resistance were reported. "Whenever Ms. Messick drew in cleavage or a navel, the syndicate would erase it. She was once banned in Boston after showing Brenda smoking a polka dot cigar."[6]


From WIKIPEDIA – BRENDA STARR

**

 WHAT THE CARTOONIST KNOWS

"The cartoonist knows what we are up to. He sees
through the surface of the status and fancy manner;
and through the illusion and fakery of the facade
we build up and observes what is really going on.
That, for example, the married couple with their arms
around each other, lighting each other's cigarettes,
are really out to kill each other. When he shows us this
truth, we laugh. Nothing is quite so funny as the truth."

John Bailey. Great Cartoons  of the World (New York:
Crown Publishers, 1970)
**


OF COMICS & THE BIBLE

“In 1941 , he (Max Gaines)  produced Picture Stories from
the Bible, a fifty-cent, 232-page collection that as a contemporary put it, ‘strictly in the comic-book technique,
yet with sensationalism left out.” Although the title first
met a rocky reception, religious leaders, including Norman Vincent Peale, eventually endorsed it. Eight hundred thousand copies of the book were sold in two years, and it was read in over two thousand Sunday schools. Gaines may not have been as saintly as the figures his book portrayed (“I don’t care how long it took Moses to cross the desert, “I want it in three panels.”

Jeremy Dauber. American Comics : A History (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2022)
**

TARZAN BATTLES NAZIS

The Ape-Man has also been involved in international political chaos that includes fighting in World War I….
   “ The Ape-Man battled the Axis in another time, as Tarzan in another media – motion pictures. In the 1943 film Tarzan Triumphs, Nazis invade the jungle and Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan, after uttering that immortal line, ‘ Now, Tarzan make war!’ goes out and thrashes them.”

from Tarzan, Jungle King of Popular Culture by David Lemmo | 2016
**

SATIRISTS IN AFRICA

"...all over Africa, where satirists are often the boldest commentators on politics and vice. 'Cartoonists use visual imagery as a kind of mask, to conceal in order to reveal,' says Ganiyu Jimoh, a Nigerian cartoonist and scholar. He compares the wit and allusions in cartoons to the traditional masquerades in Yoruba culture, in which masked performers would ridicule the powerful. As an adage has it, 'Oba kii mu onkorin': the king does not arrest a satirist."

Political Cartoons in Africa: the king does not arrest a satirist." in The Economist (June 17th-23rd 2023)

**
THE COMIC STRIP THAT EXPLAINS THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN PARENTING

"What eight decades of Goofus and Gallant illustrate about society’s changing expectations of children"
By Julie Beck


" For more than 75 years, the boys have been boxed in. Since 1948, Goofus and Gallant, the stars of their eponymous comic strip in Highlights for Children magazine, have taught generations of kids the dos and don’ts of how to be. The premise is as simple as it is effective: two panels, side by side, depicting two approaches to the same situation. On the left, Goofus does the wrong thing. On the right, Gallant does the correct thing. If Goofus is rude, Gallant is polite. If Goofus lies, Gallant tells the truth."

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/06/goofus-and-gallant-american-parenting-highlights/674536/


HOW ORPHAN ANNIE’S DOG GREETED
THE COMPOSER OF CARMINA BURANA

Arf, 
Orff.

**
DICK TRACY TAKES MOMENTARY
REFUGE UNDER THE TREE OF
KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL

“The entire run of Dick Tracy is a parade of changing,
 brooding, threatening, underlying moods.”
	Richard Marschade

Crime does not pay.  Who said that?
What a miserable liar he was.  Look!
The world is wet with suspense,
Sleet battles a 1000lb Gorilla &
This is Sam Catchem’s first appearance.
Perhaps later Dick Tracy will track down 
Counterfeiters who live in a sewer.

So much of humanity going out
“Via the hot lead route.”
Our world has more villains
Than we know what to do with,
Snakes who place their tails
In their own mouths:
The Nazi known as The Brow.
Mumbles who dies by drowning.
Pruneface & 88 Keys who, in 1943,
Murdered the millionaire A.B. Helmut.

We have been told more than once
That if we are alive,
We are waiting for something to happen.
Am I waiting for Dick Tracy, Ace Detective,
To tackle Madonna as Breathless Mahoney?
Surely there must be other events to live for.

1946: Dick Tracy vs. Cueball
Is playing at the Rialto
(Jack Lambert is the actor cast as Cueball).
Next year it will be 
Dick Tracy’s Dilemma.
Well, what about my dilemma & 
Your dilemma & our dilemmas?

The world is once again at war.
Dropping bombs with impunity,
& I, like so many others, 
In spite of clever inventions,
i.e a television wrist watch,
Am afraid & ashamed.
Evil is not always naked.


Louis Phillips