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In the comic strip room, visitors were treated to a vast array of
significant pieces representing many of the giant talents in the field. Entering
the room from the east, the first piece was a specialty drawing of Burma
from Terry and the Pirates by Milton Caniff. This color drawing was
actually sent by the great cartoonist to a 12-year-old Dan Howard in response
to his mail request for an autograph, and it launched the recipient on a
lifelong love of original comic art.
Caniff was followed by three examples of Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie. In a 1956 daily, Gray's deceptively simple style manages to convey an incredible aura of menace in a street scene with Daddy Warbucks' bodyguard, The Asp. Next up was a delightful large charcoal-and wash Peter Arno cartoon from the New Yorker, followed by a Willard Mullin sports cartoon from The Sporting News. A 1969 Pogo Sunday strip by the great Walt Kelly followed. The blue-pencil underdrawing provided an interesting revelation about Kelly's work: the backgrounds were confidently sketched, but the main figures were apparently worked and re-worked several times! The last piece in this corner was a Far Side panel by Gary Larson. Very few Far Side originals have been offered for sale, so acquiring this example was a rare coup. Moving across the south entrance (left in the photo above), the visitor found a Gus Mager Grafto the Monk strip, circa 1907. Mager's strip is widely credited with inspiring the sobriquets Groucho, Chico and Harpo for Julius, Leonard and Adolph Marx. The next work was an unexpected tour-de-force, a large Puck magazine cartoon by Herbert M. Wilder from 1910. Entitled "The Day the Circus Train Wrecked at Wormwood Junction," it's a rambunctious riot of animals running wild, hilarious antics packing every square inch, and all rendered in a flawless and robust style. Four of the early masters of comic art completed the south wall: an editorial illustration by Winsor McKay, creator of Little Nemo In Slumberland and the seminal animated cartoon, Gertie the Dinosaur; a gag cartoon by Frederick Burr Opper, best known for Happy Hooligan; a Sunday page by Thomas A. "TAD" Dorgan entitled (ironically for modern comic strip fans) For Better or Worse; and a Sunday Bringing Up Father page by George McManus featuring the conflicts of Maggie and Jiggs. The west wall began with daily and Sunday strips by Sidney Smith featuring The Gumps. Chinless Andy Gump was once a household name. Prof. Howard noted that The Gumps may have featured the highest words-to-picture ratio in the history of comics, the script nearly crowding out the artwork in many panels. Red-highlighted on the west wall were three of the exhibit's jewels: a Sunday strip, a daily strip, and a hilarious handcolored specialty drawing of Krazy Kat by the surreal genius George Herriman!
Herriman's work was truly inimitable, and one of the great comic strips in the medium's history ended when he ceased producing it. In contrast, the Herriman examples were followed by a Thimble Theatre daily featuring Popeye by Bela Zaboly. Zaboly, longtime assistant to the strip's creator Elzie Crisler Segar, drew the feature for many years before "passing the torch" to his own assistant, Bud Sagendorf. This section of the display finished up with cartoon by H.T. Webster showing a family gathered around their console radio -- mass-media entertainment in the days before television! Rounding the corner, visitors were presented with a Sunday Bungle Family Sunday strip by Harry Tuthill, with Little Brother as a topper. ("Toppers," or secondary strips by the same artist accompanying the main feature, were commonplace in the glory days of large-format, four-color Sunday newspaper sections. Newspaper circulations rose and fell with the popularity of their Sunday funnies.) The rest of the northwest corner was taken up with examples of Dick Tracy by Chester Gould. Two dailies from the ninth week of the strip's run showed a Tracy very different from the classic, stylized version -- leaner and more angular. These were followed by a 1934 specialty drawing and daily and Sunday strips from the late-'30s heyday of the great detective strip. Across the north doorway, which led into the comic book room, Stanley Link's Tiny Tim was represented by a specialty drawing and a Sunday page.
The Buck Rogers comic strip can be seen as one of the formative forces in the popularity of speculative fiction. A large 1946 Sunday page by the strip's creator, Dick Calkins, and assistant Rick Yager illustrated the rocket-ship derring-do of the futuristic hero. Flash Gordon was presented in a lavish original Sunday page credited to series creator Alex Raymond and Austin Briggs. It showed all the skillful drawing and masterful brushwork that were hallmarks of the strip. Raymond is known to have been ill during the time this sequence was created, and Briggs (a well-respected illustrator in his own right) is believed to have largely drawn the strip -- with touch-ups by Raymond -- during this period in 1938. Raymond's solo art was then showcased in a Rip Kirby daily strip from 1956, the year of the artist's untimely death in an automobile accident. Another Milton Caniff Terry and the Pirates strip followed, this one hand-tinted in a blue wash. A circuit of the room was then completed by several examples of the Wash Tubbs and Capt. Easy strips by the influential Roy Crane. Most of the pieces were fairly early examples, with clean, fun storytelling in a breezy style. In later years, Crane would add Craftint shading to his repertoire to give his work an uncanny sense of depth and detail. A trip through this exhibit was a genuine thrill for any lover of the comic medium, and a rare chance to see the unretouched original work exactly as it left its creator's drawing board!
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Several
more examples of Caniff's genius followed, including another specialty piece,
a Terry Sunday page, and a Steve Canyon daily strip that displays
Caniff's absolute mastery of pen-and-ink chiaruscuro effects.
Few
of Herriman's handcolored originals are known to exist, and they were almost
always done to be given to friends and fans. This particular example was
done for a dentist friend of the artist, attested by the fact that the
ever-malleable background landscape of Kokonino Kounty has manifested itself
as a giant mesa in the shape of an abcessed molar!
The
1930s' two great science-fiction strips were up next: Flash Gordon and
Buck Rogers!
