The Fabuleous Fifties

Gagging

Monday Cartoon Day.

Buying magazines here and there I sometimes get lucky. I knew Gags from the midforties, when it was still an oversized magazine with an interesting but not very remarkable line-up of artists. A couple of weeks ago I bought a lot of later issues, from the early fifties and they were filled with all sorts of cartoons from some of my favorite cartoonists. Dave Gerard was there, as well as Henry Boltinoff and some of the other names from the Collier's/Saturday Evening Post crowd. I will be sharing some of that material at a later time, but here are the many Mort Walker cartoons I found in the Jan, Feb and March issues. Regulars of my blog will now, I have a particular fascination for the early cartoon work of Walker. He started doing cartoons at the Missouri University humor magazine, the Missouri Showme. Some of those ended up at Varsity magazine. He went on doing more for them and ended up being the best selling cartoonist of his generation in a very short time. Soon he was published in The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Liberty, This Week and many more. Including Gags, it seems. He had as many as nine cartoons in the Februari 1951 issue. In 1950 he started Beetle Bailey, but his cartoons continue turning up intl 1952 and even some in 1953. My guess is, he stopped doing them when the Sunday page was added to Beetle Bailey and some of his later appearances were published a lot later then they were bought. Late 1951 Gags changed it's name to Here! and I have five more issues of that as well, including again lots of Mort Walker material. But I am still missing all issues between March and November 1951, and anything before that. Since Walker started selling his cartoons in 1949, there may be a lot more a out there. Anyone who has a lead for me to find those missing issues, please contact me below.