Now Read This!

Classic Screwball Strips: THE EARLY YEARS OF MUTT & JEFF

By Bud Fisher – edited by Jeffrey Lindenblatt (NBM)
ISBN 13: 978-1-56163-502-3

This is a welcome addition to a growing pool of classic strips that are finally being collected into accessible forms for posterity and enjoyment. Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff is arguably the world’s first comic strip to employ day to day continuity rather than individual escapades on a per diem basis.

Harry Conway “Bud” Fisher began the strip A. Mutt in 1907 as a topper to the racing pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. His cartoon wastrel’s gimmick was to bet on the runners and riders of that day’s paper, with the results – good or bad – making the bones of the next day’s strip. When his career took off – first at the more cosmopolitan San Francisco Examiner and then into national syndication, such a limited, local mcguffin was impossible for a strip running across a continent.

Thus a vaudeville style comedy partner and more general topics became the norm. The premise of two ordinary, average – if dumb – Joes remained the strip’s basis until it eventually closed in 1983.

Although of undoubted historical value, the slapstick roots of these everyman characters meant that gags were the currency, and the sensibilities employed – and appealed to – were often harsh, sexist, and very often quite racist by today’s standards. Or were they?

Undoubtedly the physical depiction of Negro, Mexican British, French, Turkish and the other non-W.A.S.P. Americans never deviated from the graphically stereotypical. Certainly young women were always sexy and older women were grim battleaxes whilst rich people were always fat. But I suspect that that was as much comic shorthand as wilful malice aforethought.

Certainly for every gag that portrayed stupid, slow or cowardly black people there was another when the stereotype outwitted the protagonist. For every dim blonde or dumb Hausfrau there was a female sharpie who made the boys into the goats. Could it be Fisher was just a child of his time, knew his audience and was just going for the laugh wherever it was with no thought of political or social relevance?

Perhaps Fisher or his innumerable and often anonymous ‘ghosts’ (among whom Ed Mack and latterly Al Smith were the most prominent) weren’t as evolved as us.

Fisher was a notoriously “absentee” creator who regularly missed deadlines and had a string of substitutes to produce the strip for him once he became comics’ first millionaire. Occasionally he would even suspend the strip entirely. Yet the feature was never discarded by client newspapers. It was that popular.

This volume collecting strips from 1909-1913 is not without flaws. Often the heroes are pretty unlikable when they aren’t being winningly daft or actually funny. There are moments of genuine racism and sexism but also uncharacteristic challenges to that historical status quo of broad stereotypes. On a technical note there is bad editing as some strips are repeated. Was the designer asleep? Weren’t there enough good ones to fill the pages?

I know that last charge isn’t true. Despite the implications of the somewhat apologist introduction from historian Allen Holtz, Mutt and Jeff was a huge multimedia hit for nearly eighty years and they are still household names today. Moreover, read in context and on their own terms, they are still brilliantly hilarious slapstick gag strips. If you’re prepared to read with an open mind you might be pleasantly surprised.

No © invoked. Any helpful suggestions?

By Robert C Harvey (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-782-7

It’s nice to see a biography that has something nice rather than something scurrilous or scandalous to say about its subject, and this wonderful, colossal tome (just shy of a thousand pages – if you’re planning to give this as a Christmas gift best use a festive steel woollen stocking and bolt it to the fireplace) is both erudite and recondite in covering the life, times and career of arguably the most influential cartoonist in the history of the medium.

Combining education with sheer charm, the text describes the history and philosophy of making comics. With a broad, deep understanding of the comic business, Harvey traces Caniff’s life and career and uses it to tell the story of the medium in the 20th century, and in many ways of the ‘American Century’ itself.

By way of his childhood fascinations, developing work ethic and early struggles, we see Caniff become the man who produced a daily and Sunday comic strip for fifty-five years. From early successes such as Dickie Dare, through the Depression and War years of Terry and the Pirates, (never neglecting his patriotic pick-me-up Male Call and its immortal star ‘Miss Lace’) through to the post-war icon Steve Canyon who was in many ways his most successful creation – though not without some regret as the character’s abiding integrity grew increasingly out of step with the America of Viet Nam and Watergate. The strip ran from 1947 to Caniff’s death in 1988. Steve Canyon died with him.

As an accomplished cartoonist himself, Harvey is able to clearly explain technique and creative rationale as he critiques the many illustrations throughout the book, both in terms of artistic virtuosity and narrative brilliance, and the chance of seeing, even vicariously, through the eyes of the artform’s greatest journeyman is a great blessing for any serious fan or historian. Harvey worked for twenty-five years on this book, and had unlimited access to not just records but to Milton Caniff himself. The result is a complete feeling of having known the “Rembrandt of the Comics” personally.

If you love comics and can stand the thought of missing someone you’ve never met, you’ll want this wonderful book.

© 2007 Robert C Harvey. All Rights Reserved.

By David Collier (Drawn & Quarterly Publications)
ISBN: 1-896597-25-4

Just The Facts is a compilation of strips produced over a number of years by David Collier, compellingly crafted in the manners of Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar. The subjects range from autobiography through cultural and popular history to just, plain “cool stuff you should know”.

With deceptive wit and subtle skill Collier acts as teacher and philosopher on a hugely diverse range of topics divided into the categories The Military, Music, Comics, Sports, Newspapers, Travel and Nostalgia. Particularly memorable are such epics as ‘Harry Smith and the Precursory Seattle Scene’, ‘Amazing Heroes’, ‘The Critic’, ‘The United Colors of the Impending Apocalypse!’ and ‘The Great Paperback Book Glut!’.

Collier is that type of wonderful creator who would still work, still produce to the best of his ability even if he were the only person left alive. His dedication, ability to engross and willingness to attempt new styles for every tale mark this lost gem as a book well worth pursuing for every grown-up who’s fed-up with mainstream packages.

© 1986, 1989-1991, 1993-1997, 1998 David Collier. All Rights Reserved.