Sidelined

Saturday Leftover Day. 

The New York Herald Tribune had a lot of filler strips in their Sunday sections in the late forties. Various cartoonists (include some who also had their own strips in that same paper) did one tier 'specials' that rarely ran longer than a year. Some were expanded into actual Sunday only half page features, like Irv Spector's Coogy or Gill Fox and Selma Diamond's Jeanie. But most came and went (as interesting as they may have been, like Harvey Kurtzman's Silver Linings). By the fifties this practice stopped, but at that point the (tabloid sized) New York News picked it up. All through the fifties and sixties various fillers were used, but this time each was a half page. They included Cindy Wood by Mel Casson, Bibs an' Tucker and later This Man's Army by Henry Arnold, a full cartoon page by Reamer Keller and my personal favorite Bumper To Bumper by Gill Fox. Each arrtist left a stack of these things at the office, which were then used to fill out the issue in case there were less advertisements or in one or two of the editions (there were three, two in the city and one rural) if an advertiser only wanted to be in the other one.

Anyway, that is all a long preamble to show you another homegrown strip, which appeared as a filler in the Seattle Daily Times in the later years of WWII. The artist was the paper's sports artist, who apparently wanted to try and see if he could get something going alongside that. Cute as it was, Picklepuss stayed a filler for a year or so and disappeared without a trace.

A Plinth Of Sundays

Sunday Surprise Day. If I was ever able to work with of even from the Billy Ireland Museum at Ohio State University, I would take advantage of their huge collection of The New York Herald Tribune to write the definitive series of posts (or even a book) about their syndicate and their unusual appraoch to fillers. They are seen as a failed syndicate, because many of the strips they launched did not reach the broader audience. But If I had lived in New York between 1945 and 1955 their comics page would have been the first thing I looked for every morning. Not only did they have an outstanding roster of talent in various strips, they also bought a huge selection of one tier filler strips for their Sunday paper. Some made it into a regular strip, such as Irv Spector's Coogy and Gill Fox's Jeanie. Jeanie even went daily for a while. Some reached fame among connaisseurs and collectors, such as Harvey Kurtzman's Silver Linings. But there were many, many more. Here are a few I came across, when finally sold my Sundays on Ebay this year.

The Shadow Lurks

Saturday Leftover Day.

The New York Sunday News is known for the fact that for many years they had various 'filler' strips, unique strips that were used by the editors to fill out the paper depending on the amount of ads sold and/or what they didn't like in the line-up that week. Some of these strips were created especially for them others seem to be leftovers from failed strip proposals. This practice seems to have started in the mid fifties and I have shared many of them. They were usually left at the office in batches, so that the editors could use whatever they needed at whatever time. My absolute favorite is Gill Fox' Bumper to Bumper, which I have shown here many times. My friend Michael Vassallo, who is scanning all strips from all issues of the New York Sunday News from as far back as he can get them, is showcasing them on the albums page of his Facebook The New York Sunday News Comics History Group and I recommend you have a look there.

But the The New York Sunday News wasn't the only paper using fillers and probably not the first either. The New York Herald Tribune started using fillers in the late forties, with Harvey Kurtzman's Silver Linings one of the best known among collectors. Most of these filers were one tier gag strips - but longer than a daily strip and always in clor. Some of these strips even developed into full Sunday only strips, like my favorites Coogy by Irv Spector and Jeanie by Selma Diamond and Gill Fox. Like the fillers, they were never distributed to another paper.

One of the weirder fillers is this strip I am showing here, about a shadowy silhouet figure doing normal things. Using characters like that must have been in the atmosphere, because around the same time cartoonist Ponce de Léon was doing a 'naughty shadow' type gag series for The American Legion. Of course, years later, Sergio Aragones did his own 'the shadow knows' version for Mad. I have more of The Imp, which I will show later (after I have cleaned them).

Out Of The Way!

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

The first time I saw Jay Irving's funny little policeman he was called Potsy. It was one of the not syndicated Sunday only strips that were done especially for the New York News. A charming half page strip with hentle jokes about a pudgy policeman. I liked it, but it was never scanworthy. Next to some of the other Sunday ony strips for that paper (like Gill Fox' Bumper To Bumper, which is why I bought those sections) it was a bit tame and oldfashioned. Recently I came across an earlier version of the strip, which was done in the late forties as another Sunday only not syndicated strip for the New York Herald Tribune. The Tribune at that time was a little more ambitious than the News was a decade later. Not a tabloid, it gave a full half page to such noteworthy strips as Irv Spector's Coogy, Gill Fox and Selma Diamond's Jeanie, the superb Harvey Kurtzman one tiers Silver Linings and Jay Irving's Willie Doodle. Willie Doodle was a precursor to Potsy and himself a continuation of the policeman cartoons Irving had been doing for Clliers ever since the thirties.

This time I was impressed. Taking into account that no strip has ever suffered from being seen in three tiers, I find this incarnation has all the charm and gentle humor of the ater version, but the drawing also impresses with great style and especially rythm. The gags are better when they are built up this way and the whole thing is just gorgeous.

The March 1947 gag is especially interesting to comic collectors. Stan Lee used the exact same gag for a short story in one of his horror quickies in Astonishing #17, drawn by George Roussos. I am not suggesting Stan Lee took the gag from Irving. They could both have thught of it independently if 'What do you think you are doing? Holding up the building?" is an actual New York saying. Or they could oth have gotting it from the same gag book.

Behind Every Cloud

Friday Kurtzman Newsflash

In 1948 Harvey Kurtzman drew a short run Sunday only one tier gag strip called Silver Linings for The New York Herald Tribune. I have shown all known samples in a previous post. The gags were published irregularily between March and July of that year. Among Kurtzman fans there has always been speculation about the question if there might be other unpublished tiers from the weeks it did not appear in the Herald. All gags were also labeled with a notice from the Herald Tribune syndicate, so in theory it was possible that they were done every week, but only used as a filler if and when there was room for them. Maybe there were other papers running them and maybe they had another selection. Since nothing could be found, it was assumed that this was not the case. The other solution would be, that they were produced in a batch and published as there was room, without skipping over any gags in the weeks there was none.

This week I ran across an appearance of one of the gags in another paper - only two years later! In the Milwaukee Journal (which can be found on the now discontinued Google Newspaper site, which is no longer searchable, but you can find it if you have kept the adress (which I have) I came across only one tier from March 26, 1950.

Unfortunately Google News doesn't have the Sundays for April and May, but I don't think you'll find any others there. I also found single samples of two other Herald Tribune single tier fillers and I think the paper was using some sort of free set of samples without buying any of them. Still, if anyone has access to these papers and would care to have a look, I'd love to be proven wrong.

Hurray For Harvey Kurtz!

Tuesday Extra.

Today I recieved a stack of sunday pages which had one I had been looking forward too. It was a single page of the New York Herald Tribune, which had the only Silver Linings gag by Harvey Kurtzman I had never seen before.

In 1948 comic genius and later Mad creator Harvey Kurtzman drew a shortlived series of one tier gags for The Sunday Herald Tribune. The Trib did this sort of thing regulary, publishing Sunday only versions of ne cartoon series by some of New Yorks finest cartoon and animation talent who had a ittle time on their hands. Sometimes, this functioned as a try-out such as in the cas of Gil Fox and Selam Diamond's Jeannie, which I showed at the start of this blog and Irv Spector's Coogie. Both were transformed from a weekly one tier into a fullfledges comic strip with the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate. In Jeannie's case, he strip even made it into a daily version, which didn't help the series as such.

Kurtzman drew ilver Linings over a period of four months. He used the humor and style of absurdist humor series Hey Look in the Timel/Atlas teen humor and romance books. The style and the humor of this series was devised for the funny animal line and wasn't really suited for the books they ended up in, but it was too good to discontinue. The complee series was reprinted in Black and White by Denis Kitchen a couple of years ago. If you can lay your hands on this bo, it is still the greatest collection of Kurtzman work ever.

Silver Linings was just as good and maybe even a little more adult. Sadly, there were only nine installments and although some people have wondered if it was ever syndicated and might have appeared outside of the dates known for the Herald Tribune, that seems to have been it.

Early in the nineties I was in Washington and visited the Library of Congress to score some copies. There I found not all, but most of these. After that, Denis Kitchen used six of them for his 2000 book Comic Strip Century. Copies from those pages have appeared at several places on the web, most notably at www.comicrazys.com. Still, having recieved this last one makes it possibly for me to present to you for the first time the complete Silver Linings. Some are from microfiche ane is a scan from te Kitchen book, one a scan fom my copy from the Library of Congress and one a scan from the Sunday page I recieved today. If you want to see color versions of the five I copies from microfiche, go to comicrazys. I just wanted to present a different set. I also put the in the order of oublication. Since I have left my Kirtzman Index by Glen Bray in my office upstairs, I will have to add the dates later.

Kurtzman Linings

Saturday Leftover Day.

So here I was on the yearly Dutch comic book convention, getting compliments from everyone for keeping up the daily uploads. And they only thing I could think was, I was missing jmy regular saturday post. So, a day later here is a quick extra. When any artist first encounters Harvey Kurtman's Hey Look, they want to try ir for them selves. These two samples by dutch cartoonist Peter de Wit are from the mid eighties (so they must be from the Dutch weekly Eppo). He also did a four page story which is even more completely and succesully in Kurtzman's style. I'll try to find and show it some day. If you follow the tag, you should find some of Peter's regular work these days (in English too).

If you are an artist and tried something like this yourself, I would like to show it. I think I'll start with Bill Wray.