I Only Need to Sell One

Posted on December 12, 2024 by admin

For some reason, I thought of Music Row Joe the other day. It is an ’80s comic strip even more obscure, I believe, than Eyebeam, and not nearly as good, though it was occasionally worth a chuckle. I know that because I remember reading it in the Tennessean, which I subscribed to in the mid-80s. So I hadn’t thought of it much in nearly 40 years.

But the strip is not too obscure to be mentioned somewhere on line: a site called Stripper’s Guide, which “discusses the history of the American newspaper comic strip,” founded by one Allan Holtz. After a cursory look, the site seems fairly remarkable itself, a vast repository of the Music Row Joes of the world, though most of its content is older.

Stripper’s Guide says of the comic: “Music Row Joe was a local strip produced for the Nashville Tennessean. It ran at least 1983-87 based on my few samples and may have run much longer for all I know. The creators were Jim Oliver and Ron Hellard.

That’s the sum total of my knowledge of this feature – Holtz out!

EDIT 1/19/2020: This weekly strip ran 1/31/1982 – 3/27/1988. Based on a promo article it seems as if Jim Oliver was responsible for the art, and both contributed to gags.

The ne’er-do-well character Music Row Joe hangs out at the edge of the Nashville music industry, dressed part cowboy-like, part pimp-like, hat always covering his eyes in the style of Andy Capp. I’m pretty sure he was an aspiring musician – this was Nashville, after all – but I don’t remember whether he had some actual musical talent but couldn’t catch a break, or was merely a schlub with unwarranted dreams of fame. He was also (I think) involved in harebrained, though legal, moneymaking schemes that never panned out.

I only remember one of the strips. Music Row Joe is out on a street somewhere (16th Avenue South? Let’s hope so.) holding a few helium-filled balloons. He had a sign that said something like, “Balloons, $20,000 Each.” A old woman looking at his sign said to him, “Young man, you’ll never sell any balloons at that price.” In a thought balloon, Music Row Joe said, “I only need to sell one.”

In the spirit of Music Row Joe, I have this to offer. I’m not greedy: an authenticated jpg of this image, unique in all the world, can be yours for $5,000 (all rights otherwise reserved).

Back story, no extra charge. I tidied up the small mass of DVDs and CDs in the living room a few weeks ago. Not organized, just de-scattered. In that process, I came across Ann’s DVD copy of Mama Mia! The Movie, which she is very fond of, but which had gone missing. I put it on the dining room table to take a picture of it to send to Ann to let her know, noticing at once that it caught a reflection of the light fixture above. I took that image, but ultimately sent her another one without the reflection.

The disk had not been located for a good long time, maybe a year. Now there it was, demonstrating once again a household maxim we call all live by: you can’t find a thing by looking for it.

Arkansas 7, Up To & Including the Hidden Ruins of Dogpatch USA

Posted on May 2, 2024 by admin

We bought some roses to plant the other day and they turned out to be produced in Tyler, Texas. They were found at a major retailer here in Illinois, so that means the Tyler rose industry isn’t completely gone. I already knew that from reading about it, but it was good to see the fact confirmed in the form of stems and thorns.

My idea of a good driving road.

Everything you need – hills, greenery, occasional small towns and roadside views, a winding aspect – and nothing you don’t – much traffic, especially large trucks.

I created the images when I wasn’t driving, of course, but at a wayside stop along Arkansas 7, a mostly two-lane highway crossing north-south through the state that’s scenic most of the way, and in fact an Arkansas Scenic Byway. We picked up the road where it meets I-30 at Caddo Valley on April 14, and took it into Hot Springs. The next day, we headed north along the road, through the Ouachitas and the Ozarks, parts of which are designated Ouachita National Forest and Ozark-St. Francis National Forest.

North of Russellville, which was the only place with much traffic, the lush scenery kicks into an expansive high gear. The old saw is that you can’t eat scenery, and while that’s literally true, the underlying notion that scenery is a worthless frill strikes me as an affront to one of life’s better pleasures. At least for those of us fortunate enough to live above subsistence poverty.

South of the small town of Jasper is a feature called the “Arkansas Grand Canyon.” Called that by the scattering of businesses along the way who would like you to stop, anyway. Geographically, it’s the Buffalo River Canyon. Grand, maybe not, but impressive. Met my periodical quota for vistas.

Passersby left their mark. Maybe in some future time, it’ll be considered historic and thus protected.

Another roadside perch. I wasn’t sure if this counted as the “Grand Canyon,” but it hardly mattered. Scenery to flavor the drive.

Arkansas in the breeze.

We stopped at the Ozark Cafe in Jasper (pop. 547) for a latish lunch. Decent grub and idiosyncratic decor, including mountain musicians outside and a wall nearly full with characters from Li’l Abner inside. That comic never did much for me, but it’s always good to see local color.

The cafe is across the street (still Arkansas 7) from the Newton County Courthouse. Another solid legacy of the WPA.

Up the road a piece from Jasper is a site that Google Maps calls Dogpatch to this day. Intrigued, I looked into it, finding that Dogpatch USA, a Li’l Abner theme park, used to be there. It operated longer than I would have thought, from 1968 to 1993. This is all you can see of it now, from Arkansas 7.

“Dogpatch USA is a classic American roadside attraction,” wrote one Rodger Brown, who visited during the park’s last summer in ’93.

“It’s a basket of cornpone and hillbilly hokum in a beautiful Ozark mountain setting. Nearby is a waterfall, limestone caverns, and a spring that flows clear and steadily into a creek that has powered a gristmill for more than 150 years. There are rides and gift shops, and at the heart of the park is a trout farm where visitors can catch and cook rainbow trout, ‘the gamest of all inland fish.’ The decor is bumpkin kitsch. The faux-illiterate signs along Dogpatch’s macadam footpaths read like a Po’ Folks menu: ‘Onbelievablee delishus Fish Vittles Kooked fo’ Sail.’

“Dogpatch opened in 1968, but its history, in a generous sense, begins about a hundred years earlier…. in 1900, the word ‘hillbilly’ first appeared in print, toting on its wiry back a croker sack full of iconography — squirrel rifles, corn cob pipes, floppy felt hats, feuds, a degraded language, and depraved life… Out of this crashing surf where industry and the marketplace met the mountains, Li’l Abner was born.

“Li’l Abner was the first comic strip to star mountaineers as main characters, but [creator Al] Capp’s hillbilly compote was certainly not unique. His versions of hillbillies were consolidated forms drawn from a widespread tradition of mountaineer caricatures: there’s the voluptuous rag-clad ‘tater sack sexkitten; the grizzled corn-cob pipe smoking visionary crone matriarch; the lay-about ineffectual pappy; and the clodhopping oblivious proto-Jethro Li’l Abner, the all-American country boy — part Alvin York and Abe Lincoln, a little Sambo in whiteface, and Paul Bunyan with a drawl.

“Li’l Abner first appeared in 1934, two years after the publication of Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road, and within a few years the cartoon was a contender with Dick Tracy, Blondie and Little Orphan Annie as America’s number-one comic strip.”

Dogpatch USA isn’t a welcoming place these days, and it’s impossible to see the ruins without trespassing.

Those signs say construction, but there was no visible evidence of any such thing. The place needs to be stabilized for some ruin tourism, I reckon. I’d pay (a little) to see what’s left of the bumpkin kitsch and faux-illiterate signs.

April, Come She Will

Posted on April 1, 2024 by admin

For all the malaise of the Internet, it’s still like having a library – a really big library – on your desk or, for those who prefer smaller boxes, in your palm. Otherwise how could I look up some Chaucer on the subject of April, just like that?

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour

That is to say, April showers relieve March dryness and bring forth flowers, if not May flowers exactly. A fair amount of rain fell today, though in northern Illinois at least, March wasn’t particularly dry.

I’ve had little regard for April Fools Day over the years, probably a legacy of the idiotic and occasionally cruel uses schoolkids had, in my experience, for the day. The Comics Curmudgeon touches on that very thing today in reviewing Dennis the Menace and Blondie.

“Is there any ‘holiday’ more vile and unpleasant than April Fool’s Day, which is mostly marked by ‘pranks’ perpetrated by the least funny people alive?” Josh Fruhlinger writes. “These tricks generally take one of two very simple forms, as illustrated neatly in these two strips: making someone believe that something bad is happening when it really isn’t, or making someone believe something good is happening when it really isn’t. Does anyone enjoy either? I’m going to say no.”

Mr. Dithers, one of the pranksters, is prominent in today’s Blondie. I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated how fat he is, a lingering attribute (I assume) from the Hoover-era origins of the strip, when fat meant prosperous. That association has been decoupled in the many decades since. Chalk it up to the wide introduction of corn syrup to the American diet, so that a wider class of people can be wider themselves.

Boop!

Posted on November 28, 2023 by admin

Boop! = much fun. I know that because I remember enjoying myself during the new musical of that name, despite my uncomfortable seat there in the dress circle at the theater formerly known as the Sam Shubert, now named for a bank, in downtown Chicago. We popped in for the show on Friday evening.

Even now, only four days after the performance, whatever detail I took in about the jazzy score or entertaining lyrics or the vivacious dance moves or the intensely colorful costumes – which were sometimes monochromatic yet colorful somehow – or the peppy dialogue or the remarkable sets, is all a kinetic blur.

That’s the way it should be with a musical, I figure. A little razzle, a little dazzle, something to enjoy in the moment. Still, Boop! wasn’t just a musical, it was a staged musical cartoon with a star character nearly 100 years old, singing and dancing her way through an appropriately gossamer plot.

A young woman named Jasmine Amy Rogers brought Betty to life with astonishing vitality and, often enough, a hot red dress, once Betty leaves monochrome behind. The supporting cast, up to and including a marionette dog, likewise filled the stage with song, dance and antics. The cast was first rate in every way.

Pudgy, Betty’s dog, a more-or-less life-sized marionette, did some astonishing moves himself, as guided by Phillip Huber, who once upon a time did some puppet work in the extreme oddity that was Being John Malkovich.

I am, I confess, mostly indifferent about Betty Boop. Or was, until I married a fan. Capt. Gus on KENS-TV Channel 5 didn’t show her cartoons on weekday afternoons after school; his thing was Popeye, though maybe he screened the Betty Boop short in which Popeye made his cinematic debut. In those pre-Internet, pre-You Tube days, the cartoons simply weren’t available. Betty, for me, was stuck in the amber of the 1930s, and while pop culture of the time has considerable interest, somehow she didn’t resonate.

So I grew to adulthood without giving her much thought, though I did see her brief appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

“Work’s been kinda slow since cartoons went to color, but I’ve still got it, Eddie!”

– Betty Boop, voiced by Mae Questel (d. 1998), who managed to live long enough to do so.

In Boop!, a monochromic-ish Betty, tired of being a cartoon celebrity, manages to transport herself to the “real world” via a machine concocted by Grampy, the inventor character from the shorts who is explicitly her grandfather in this show. She figures no one will know her in the real world, but she lands at New York Comic-Con in our time, in living color, and of course everyone knows her, especially the spunky little sister of her soon-to-be love interest, a modern jazzman. He provided the story’s shout-out to Cab Calloway, and I was glad to hear it.

Luckily, the story didn’t make too much out of Betty being a fish out of water, though that provided a little amusement. To her eventual dismay, she realizes she’s famous here, too.

Grampy, realizing that Betty needs to return to the cartoon world, comes to the real world to look for her, but also manages to spend the night with a real-world woman he had a dalliance with decades earlier. (The Hays Code doesn’t apply to this show, though it’s mostly wholesome.) There’s also a sleazeball running for mayor of real-world New York and it is he, in the fullness of time, who chases Betty around a desk, only to get clocked by her with a blunt object.

The sprinkling of serious elements – most musicals have a few – mostly involve female empowerment, though there was a dig at modern-day plutocrats. Betty is known for resisting sexual harassment and, after returning to the cartoon world, tells her director that she won’t be chased around desks by lecherous men any more in her cartoons.

I believe we saw the only the fourth performance of Boop! Not the fourth of this particular run, but the fourth ever in the history of the theater. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any big production that soon after its premiere. It was a fluke of marketing, and my experience with the character, that made that happen: a few weeks ago, a theater ticket website that sends me email once a week suggested Boop! I figured Yuriko, who has a longstanding fondness for Betty, would like it, so I got some tickets for something to do on the day after Thanksgiving. She did like it. Ann did too. We all did. Boop! is a crowd pleaser, and we were happy to be in the crowd.

Apparently the show has been in the works a long time and eventually was brought to fruition by director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell, who is very much a known quantity in the American theater. Its run at the Shubert serves essentially the same shakedown-cruise function as pre-Broadway runs in New England towns used to do – may still do, for all I know, but I expect Chicago offers a much larger pool of potential theatergoers.

Eventually, probably soon, Boop! will be on Broadway. As a crowd pleaser, I’ll bet it will do well there.

Along the Rock River, Janesville

Posted on July 24, 2023 by admin

On the first two days of July, we spent some time in southern Wisconsin, staying the night at a hotel near the Rock River in Janesville, a burg of about 65,000 and seat of Rock County.

Late on the afternoon of the 1st, I took a stroll along the river in downtown Janesville. As urban riversides go, it’s drab, an echo of a time when cities generally ignored their rivers, except for purposes of commerce.

Even Rockford, Illinois, downriver from Janesville on the Rock, has a more pleasant downtown riverside, so small industrial-decline Midwestern cities can refurbish their riverwalks. So can the likes of Waco, Texas. The Rock, incidentally, is a direct tributary of the Mississippi, meeting that river at Rock Island, Illinois.

Still, the riverside isn’t completely without its interests. A fairly new pedestrian-bicycle bridge crosses near an equally newish riverside plaza, or at least an open space.

The bridge sports a boulder, too. It’s hard to see, but there’s an inscription on it: The Mick & Jane Blain Gilbertson Family Heritage Bridge.

Jane Blain Gilbertson is CEO of Blain’s Farm & Fleet, a big box chain with 44 stores in the upper Midwest and headquartered in Janesville. The stores carry, among many other things, agricultural supplies and equipment. I remember visiting the one in Montgomery, Illinois, years ago to see what there was to see inside.

Downtown Janesville was eerily empty that late Saturday afternoon. There were a few kids – and I mean junior high or high school kids – hanging out near the bridge, making giggly noises. A small party of adults was having a cookout in the yard of one of the apartment buildings near the river. A few cars passed through the area, but not many. Then there was me.

Every town has one of these. Oddly, it was tucked away in a cul-de-sac.

Why visit Janesville? Why stay there? I’d passed by many times, but not spent any time in the town. I guess when it comes to Wisconsin, I’m something of a completist.

Janesville has some handsome older buildings within a few blocks of the river, most still occupied, but some not, such as a one-time First National Bank.

The McVicar Bros. and Helms buildings. Part of a larger block.

Other buildings.

Evidence of a more robust downtown life in the past: an old Kresge building. Kresge, of course, was the ancestor of Kmart, and a mighty retail chain. Once upon a time.

I had to check: As of more than a year ago, there were only three U.S. Kmarts still open.

That means that this 1987 reference in Calvin & Hobbes will be lost to time. Is already lost to time. I’m sure if I mentioned “blue light special” to either of my daughters, it wouldn’t register.

Calvin: Dad, how do people make babies?

Calvin’s Dad: Most people just go to Sears, buy the kit, and follow the assembly instructions.

Calvin: I came from Sears??

Calvin’s Dad: No, you were a blue light special at Kmart. Almost as good, and a lot cheaper.

I never went to Kmart much, but I did go occasionally, and I remember being in one once, probably in Nashville in the mid-80s, during a blue light special. I heard “Attention, Kmart shoppers!” They did say that. I didn’t buy whatever it was.

That’s the kind of thing that came to mind wandering the empty streets of Janesville.

Milwaukee Hipster Doughnuts &c.

Posted on September 29, 2022 by admin

Time for an autumnal break. Back to posting around October 16, when the tree colors will be bold and the winds (probably) brisk, at least around here. Expect photos.

Out last stop in Milwaukee on Sunday afternoon, as a light rain fell, was Chubby’s Donuts, spotted by chance and visited on a whim.

The place has a mascot atop. Hard to tell just how chubby he is.

The doughnuts, which are really round dough-rings each about the size of an onion ring, come in bags, and are dusted liberally with cinnamon and sugar. Pretty good, but I’m not running up to Milwaukee just for them.

On Monday evening, we went to west suburban Westmont to visit my old friend Kevin, and participate in a trivia contest at a local restaurant. That was a first for me, unless you count the contest at one of my former companies, at a company event ca. 1999, that netted me some movie tickets.

I don’t remember all the various categories now, but as usual, some were easier than others, and our team (Kevin, Jay and I) came in second, partly on the strength of us knowing all eight of the comic strips in the visual part of the contest. Everyone got a piece of paper with eight single panels illustrating each comic, but without any captions, and you had to name the strip for each.

They were The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, Nancy, Garfield, The Family Circus, Bloom County, The Adventures of Tintin and Beetle Bailey.

I thought they were easy. Maybe it’s a generational question: who among the younger set is going to know that many of them, much less all?

Then again, I remember a high school English teacher of mine expressing wonder that any adult — including a highly educated friend of his — would spend time reading the funnies, so perhaps he wouldn’t have done very well at naming them either, despite being of the generation who grew up with Terry and the Pirates (for example).

Another category was songs with the word “love” in their titles, which of course includes a lot of possibilities. Name the artist, given the song title. We didn’t do that well — flummoxed mostly on the newer songs — but God help me, I knew that the Captain & Tennille had a big hit with “Muskrat Love” (1976).

What I didn’t know, until I happened to hear about it on the radio a few years ago, was that the Captain & Tennille’s version of “Muskrat Love” was a cover, and that the band America had done an earlier one. It was written and first recorded by Willis Alan Ramsey, of all people. In any case, it’s one of those songs not that you’ll always remember, but which you’ll never forget.

Along the West Branch of the DuPage River

Posted on June 28, 2022 by admin

Naperville, the second-largest Chicago suburb by population at nearly 148,000, has much to recommend a casual visitor, either in warm months or colder ones. (Way-far west Aurora, surprisingly, is number one at nearly 200,000 souls.)

Sunday was warm, but not hot enough to keep us from a stroll along West Branch of the DuPage River, which passes through downtown Naperville, and is in fact one of the village’s main amenities. The river is broad at that point.

But not that deep. A foot or two at most, yet deep enough for ducks and kayaks.

The walkways along the river are fairly narrow.

Both banks are connected by wooden foot bridges.

With small parks and other features on either side.

Including some artwork. Such as “Wall of Faces,” whose plaque says that it was “created by Naperville school children and molded by local artists to represent the casualties of September 11, 2001.”

And a bronze Dick Tracy. I don’t think I’d noticed that before.

It’s been there since 2010, so I just wasn’t paying attention. But why Naperville? I associate the comic policeman with Woodstock, Illinois, home of creator Chester Gould. The plaque explained that Dick Locher (1929-2017), who was one of Gould’s successors in writing and drawing the comic, lived in Naperville. In fact he was a multi-talented fellow, creating this statue as well.

Thursday Dust in the Wind

Posted on January 14, 2021 by admin

Much work these days. Lots going on. Will post again on January 19. The more holidays the better, and I’ll bet — considering the inclinations of the incoming administration — Juneteenth will be a federal holiday before long. Or at least the closest Monday.

Ice crystals on our deck. They didn’t last long. Later came snow, which mostly melted.
To follow Sink the Bismarck!, a taut 1960 British war movie, for contrast I recently watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, 2019), an engaging French love story set just before the Revolution. I haven’t seen many movies as painterly Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

A few weeks ago, before the violent national scrum, we started watching the short series The People vs. OJ Simpson. Top-quality historical fiction. Doesn’t feel historic, just like a good while ago. An increasingly long time ago, more in feeling than strict chronology. When the trial was actually happening, I remember thinking, do I have to hear about that again? Enough time has now passed for the subject to be of some interest.

That said, do I ever feel nostalgic for the ’90s? No. The underappreciated ’70s is more my flavor, and for the exact same uninteresting reason as most people. Nostalgia for one’s youth.

I didn’t know until I read about it a little while ago, but The Great Gatsby is in the public domain now. I could publish 100 words from that book, in order, or maybe reverse order, until I’d gone through the entire book, with the time needed to put the text in my only real cost. I don’t think I’ll do that, but it’s nice to know I could.

The immortal Ella.

A much later version. Recent, in fact, by the highly talented Hot Sardines.

The Hot Sardines’ singing is top notch, but I’m really taken with the animation in the video.

Another recent version by the Speakeasy Three.

Fine harmonies. The video is so stylized that it approaches parody, but doesn’t quite get there. Somehow, that works. Also, am I right in thinking there are celebrity lookalikes in this video? Recent celebrities, not swing-era ones. I don’t care enough about celebrities to find out, but I get that sense.

A site that visit every few months: The Comics Curmudgeon. On Jan 13, he mocks the comic strip Crock, which isn’t hard, but it is hard to be funny while doing it. The writer of the site, Joshua Fruhlinger, pulls it off.

One the characters says to another one, “I can’t wait to meet the blind date you got me. When can I call her?”

“Anytime but the weekends,” the other character says. “That’s the busiest time for blacksmiths.”

Fruhlinger comments: “I was going to go all in on ‘Why is it funny that this woman is a blacksmith,’ but we all know the reason why it’s supposed to be funny: blacksmithery is not a traditional feminine job so can you even imagine going on a date with a woman who would engage in it? What would you even call her? A blacksmithrix? Haw haw! Anyway, that’s stupid, so instead I’m going to focus on something actually puzzling: the assertion that weekends are ‘the busiest time for blacksmiths.’ I guess that’s when most Renn Faires are? Are we dealing with a universe where blacksmiths are a vital part of the everyday economy, making horseshoes and tools and such, or are we in a more modern environment where mass manufactured goods are omnipresent and easy to get, and the only people who go to blacksmiths are weirdos who are obsessed with swords? This is the Crock worldbuilding background that I have a million times more in interest in than I do in Poulet’s love life.”

I’ve started reading American Slavery, American Freedom, subtitled “The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia,” by Edmund S. Morgan (1975). I’m not far along, but enough to know he’s a good writer. The first chapter is unexpectedly about of Sir Francis Drake in Panama in 1572, but I think I can see where he seems to be going with the narrative, which will get to colonial Virginia before long.

A Cartoon History of United States Foreign Policy Since World War I

Posted on February 12, 2020 by admin

Not long ago I looked up the Foreign Policy Association. Turns out the organization has a mission statement.

“The mission of the Foreign Policy Association today, as it has been for over 100 years, is to serve as a catalyst for developing awareness, understanding, and informed opinion on U.S. foreign policy and global issues. Through its balanced, nonpartisan programs and publications, the FPA encourages citizens to participate in the foreign policy process.”

By gar, that’s positively Wilsonian in its optimism that citizens can influence foreign policy, and that in fact U.S. foreign policy can be a force for good in this wicked world. Maybe it can. It’s certainly pretty to think so.

Another of the books I liberated from my mother’s house in recent years is A Cartoon History of United States Foreign Policy Since World War I — by the Editors of the Foreign Policy Association, the cover says, published in 1967. In the book’s acknowledgement, one Norman Jacobs is given as the editor of the association, but he thanks half a dozen people who participated. A group effort book, then.

The book includes about 250 editorial cartoons in 19 chapters. Actually, two examples are comic strips that editorialize, but they are exceptions, with most of the content one-panel cartoons. (Remarkably, included is a B.C. strip: two ants are watching two larger animals fight, and one ant says, “If we had ‘the bomb,’ we could intervene.”)

The editors provide a few lines of context for most of the cartoons, usually going out of their way to be nonpartisan and mostly nonjudgmental, at least as far as U.S. policy was concerned. For instance, before the U.S. entry into WWII, there are cartoons for and against intervention in European affairs and then the war itself.

The chapters, and the cartoons, are more-or-less chronological, beginning with the argument about U.S. participation in the League of Nations, continuing through the prewar years and the rise of fascism and then the U.S. in WWII. After that, as you’d expect, comes the Cold War and all its complications and players, which was ongoing as the book was published.

Lots of famous things are touched on — Munich, isolationism, Pearl Harbor, the atomic bomb, the founding of NATO, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, sputnik, the Berlin blockade and wall, and the Cuban missile crisis. Other less-remembered events were the subject of cartoons as well: the Washington disarmament conference, the sinking of the Panay, riots in Poznan, Poland, American marines landing in Lebanon in 1958, and so on.

I probably first read the book in junior high. I learned a great deal from it — maybe as much as in some of my classes — about the history referenced, but also a notion of how things considered settled now were once contentious.

One good example is the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO. Few would consider those mistakes now, or even 50 years ago, but in the late ’40s not everyone was on board, as illustrated by a cartoon that shows a man — labeled Our Global Meddlers — happily offering a diving board to a character called U.S. Senate. The board is labeled Atlantic Pact and it’s leading to shark-infested waters (labeled War Dangers).

I read through the book enough times over the years that many of the images are still familiar when I look them now. A Cartoon History of United States Foreign Policy Since World War I was also an introduction to some first-rate, or at least then-famous editorial cartoonists, and the art of such cartoons, which has been slipping away from us in recent decades.

The index is instructive. You can tell which cartoonists appeared the most in the book, such as John Fischetti (1916-80), Herblock (1909-2001), Bill Mauldin (1921-2003), Edmund Valtman (1914-2005) and Ralph Yardley (1878-1961). Other cartoonists rated a few examples, and many more only one. One editorial cartoonist not represented: Theodor Geisel, who had a lot to say.

Looking at it now, I’m interested to see the many ways the cartoonists used Uncle Sam. A quick glace has Uncle Sam as the bridegroom of Foreign Entanglements, surrounded by lions, one of the Wise Men, looking on as Europe burns, someone who’s tied cans to the tail of Hitler’s dog (it makes sense in context), as Gulliver tied down, a robbed man with empty pockets, a soldier in Korea, and many more.

Curiously enough, depictions of Uncle Sam seem to slack off in the late ’50s and early ’60s. More often presidents — Eisenhower, JFK and LBJ — stand in for their administrations in those years, though Wilson, FDR and Truman appeared often enough before then. Yet Uncle Sam isn’t completely gone, even in 1967: the second-to-last cartoon has Uncle Sam as a knight, riding (barely holding on to) a horse called U.S. Power. “Of course I’m in charge — I think,” he says (Bob Bastian, San Francisco Chronicle).

Plenty of non-American characters also appear, such as Hitler and Stalin, many times, but also Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain (but not, oddly, Churchill), Chiang Kai-Shek, Khrushchev (many times, but not Brezhnev — too new, I guess), Nasser, Mao, Charles de Gaulle and Fidel Castro, among others.

A few panels are outstanding examples of the editorial cartoon. One is “High Noon” by Bill Crawford (1913-82), which is exceptionally simple and effective. It depicts a top slice of a globe. Toward the bottom of the panel is an arrow on a rocket launcher, ready to fly; a world away, at the edge of the globe almost out of sight, is another arrow, the exact same one on an exact same launcher. The arrows are pointing at each other. This of course illustrates the height of the Cuban missile crisis.

One by C. D. Batchelor (1888-1977) from 1948 shows two figures heading up a luminous (golden) staircase, into heavenly clouds. They are holding hands. One figure is Czech Liberty. The other is Jan Masaryk.

An August 1945 cartoon by Daniel Fitzpatrick, “Journey’s End,” is also simple and effective. Small figures, looking much like the flagraisers on Iwo Jima, are on top of a globe raising a banner that says, VICTORY.

Finally, the two I consider the best in the book, and which were by the same cartoonist: Sir David Low (1891-1963), also known as the creator of Colonel Blimp. I believe both of the cartoons are also better known than the others in the book, and for good reason. Interestingly, neither are directly about U.S. foreign policy, just events that concerned the nation very much.

One is 1939’s “Rendezvous,” which has Hitler and Stalin politely bowing to each other over the body of Poland, whom they just murdered.

Hitler: “The scum of the Earth, I believe?”
Stalin: “The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?”

The next year, after the fall of France, Low drew a tommy on a beach, invading airplanes overhead, waves crashing around. He holds a fist high. “Very well, alone” is the caption.

Both of these Low cartoons are here, along with a lot of other good ones he did.

The Comics Curmudgeon

Posted on January 23, 2020 by admin

During my free moments recently, scant free moments on some days, I’ve been reading the Comics Curmudgeon. It’s a standard blog of long-standing. A fellow named Joshua Fruhlinger posts a selection of daily newspaper comics — to use the quaint old term — and adds commentary. Generally mocking commentary, but unlike so much writing in that vein, he writes well. Some of it is very funny, or at least highly amusing, and often enough thoughtful too.

The range of targeted comics is broad, including what could be called funnies, except they aren’t funny all that much, such as B.C., Beetle Bailey, Crankshaft, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Lockhorns, Marvin, Pluggers, Shoe, Six Chix (one of the few I’d never heard of) and many others. But not, I see from the archives, Broom-Hilda. I guess some things are so bad, yet have so much inexplicable longevity, that mocking them is pointless.

Also lampooned are the few soap-opera or adventure comics that are still around, such as Mary Worth, Mark Trail, The Phantom and Rex Morgan M.D. From the blog I learned that Apartment 3-G expired a few years ago, an event that had completely escaped my notice. Say, whatever happened to Dondi?

Some samples:

Crock, Jan. 3, 2019, has one of the men talking to the fort’s cook: “Psst… the men are planning a coup for Crock.” As the soldier walks away in the second panel, the cook says, “Will they need any snacks or finger food?” (Shouldn’t that be a coup against Crock? Never mind.)

Comics Curmudgeon says: “Crock’s Foreign Legion detachment is based in an isolated fort surrounded by a hostile, barely subjugated colonial population, and so it probably relies on supplies from the metropole to avoid starvation. A violent overthrow of the fort’s commanding officer, no matter how cruel and incompetent he might be, will certainly be seen as an act of rebellion against the French Republic, and so our heroes are likely to be cut off from any outside support, at least until they can successfully negotiate an amnesty. Thus, the coup plotters need to ensure that the fort’s cook and his staff are on their side and prepared for the hardship to come! But they’re being kind of half-assed about it, in my opinion.”

Beetle Bailey, Oct. 10, 2016, has two panels. First, Sarge (in the lead) and Beetle are climbing a steep slope. “Keep going, Beetle! We’re almost to the top!” Sarge says. Beetle simply says, “Groan!”

Next, at a cliff’s edge, Sarge says, “Wow, Beetle! We made it! Congrats!” and slaps Beetle on the back. Beetle is shown flying off the cliff.

CC says: “Welp, looks like Sarge finally just straight-up murdered Beetle! I guess this strip is over now. Looking forward to seeing what new comic they replace it with, or maybe just enjoying the soothing blank space left over when they don’t bother!”

A single panel Heathcliff, July 15, 2013, shows the cat hitting a baseball, using a fish as a bat. The caption says, “He switched to a lighter flounder.”

CC says: “Today’s panel provides something more in line with the profound weirdness bubbling below the surface of this feature’s modern iteration. Cats like fish, and I suppose cats like “playing with their food,” when their food is alive, but instead here the tenuous conceptual cat-fish connection produced a scenario where Heathcliff has a collection of fish of varying densities that he uses as athletic equipment. How dead are these fish, anyway? Are they still floppy? Do they hit the ball with a meaty smack, or have they started to rot, with contact with any projectile producing a cloud of scattered fish-flesh?

On July 22, 2007, he astutely compared Shoe and Get Fuzzy on politics.

“… while usually I go on about just about everything at great length, the most important thing I can say here is that Get Fuzzy is funny, while Shoe isn’t. Shoe falls into the typical toothless trap of just saying “THE POLITICS AREN’T THEY ANNOYING?”, literally allowing the discussion to be replaced by meaningless placeholder syllables. Get Fuzzy works with established character traits — Bucky and Satchel’s party affiliations have been frequently noted, whereas I don’t believe Shoe and the Perfesser had political beliefs until they became necessary for this cartoon. Plus Get Fuzzy contains actual political jokes that are funny. I love the third-party punchline, but I love “Well, with the proper funding…” even more.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: comics