Sunday, August 09, 2020

Clarity

Sunday Surprise. Just a single new page today, but it took me a while to clean it properly. Clare Briggs is best known for his last comic strip creation, Mr. and Mrs., a staple of the New Yiork Herald Tribune. Or at least so I thought. After his untimely death at the age of 55 in 1930, it seems to have been continued by several artists, inlcuding Clarence's Frank Fogerty and Kin Platt (who was finally allowd to sign his name). I've seen Briggs' name on several early newspaper ads as well, whic is confirmed by an image at the Lambiek Comiclopedia (although they add a note that he had a dauhter also called Clare, who also did comics - I'd love to see her signature, as Dwiggs' own is pretty identifyable). The second one was the only color one I could find online, scan done by the unimitable Cole Johson, one of the attributors to the excellent Stripper's Guide and a scolar of early comic strip art. Furthermore on the net, there are quite a few black and white pages collected at the Comicbook Plus site (https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1958) and there is a collection available through Amazon. I'd be wary about the last one, though. I have bought a Polly and Her Pals collection from the company and it was just collected microfiche material, sometimes in such low resolution that the pixels were visible. My guess is their Danny Dreamer repackages the freeely available material from Comic Book Plus. About Danny Dreamer himself very little can be found. Alhough I do remember him popping up in an article somewhere, probably either Hogan's Alley or the old Nemo magazine.

 

1 comment:

rnigma said...

Clare Briggs had a pipe tobacco named for him, with his signature on the can and the slogan "When a feller needs a friend" (from one of his comics).