The Way Back Machine

 Sunday Surprise Day.

In the early forties the Chicago Sun created it's own 'comic' book Sunday insert, te be folded from their regular pages. Like The Spirit, although it was folded in a different way to form a small three tier oblong booklet. In it were several regular series, but also a whole lot of material that was especially created to be more action/pulp oriented, suchs as Streamer Kelly and the spy series Mister X (by Bert Whitman and Bernard Baily). I got a lot of those for the western story that came along a bit later: Vesta West, originated by Fred Maegher but continued by Ray Bailey. You will find all of my samples if you follow the links. Once I got them my other favorite was a charming comedy strip by Milt Caniff's letterer, Frank Engli called Rocky. Not as sarcastic as the later B.C. bu a similar set-up, about a young boy and his family in Neanderthal times. 

In his profile at The Stripper's Guide (https://strippersguide.blogspot.com/search?q=engli) you can read more about him and see some more color samples of Rocky. It also mentions Looking back, which I had never seen. I always assumed Milt Caniff misremembered the title of Rocky when he mentioned it. It also says that Looking Back ran from December 30, 1945 to May 25, 1947.

But when I saw it recently, I flipped. Looking Back not a regular comic strip, but a half page cluttered drwing in the style of Sergio Aragonés in the later Mad and Caran d'Arche in France. Harvey Kurtzman and Mort Walker had also done a couple of these in Varsity, but it was not something you saw a lot. And here Frank Engli was doing it every week.

I went back to find the strip started on December 30, 1945 indeed and floowed it up to May 26, 1946, when the last half page gag apeared. After that it returned to a nine panel half page - very similar to what Rocky used to be. In fact I have to go back and check to see if they didn't use the same cast.

The last installment I found was April 6, so I have to go and check where the others are as well. Once I have them all I will do another post.

So here it is, the full run of Frank Engli's charming and unique half page gags of Looking Back.

 Saturday Leftover Day.

Before hitting the big time with The Small Society Mprrie Brickman had a long running small feature calles Tric Pix, a small panel similar to Al Jaffee's Mad favorite Fold-In in which the reader had to fold the cartoon twice to see a special effect. I have shown several before (see the name link) and had one left over from a much later date. After it folded (pun intended) he did anotehr single panel feature called Do It Yourself and another one after that called Cross-Cut. Only after that he was an 'overnight' succes.

How To Survive An Atomic War

 Sunday Surprise Day.

Hamilton Greene was an American illustrator, who works in pulps and man's magazines most of his life. There is a nice overview of his career here: https://www.pulpartists.com/Greene.html. I am slowly selling all of my magazines from the forties and fifties on Ebay and in one of the issues of Argosy I came across this wonderful piece about how to survive a nucleair attack. I guess you had to have been there (or not).

Greene also worked a lot for LIberty and The American Legion. I have many issues of both publications (rich in cartoons and illustrations) whoch I still have to index and put on Ebay. If you like that sort of stuff, drop by once in a while. My bay name is geapelde.

Saturday Leftover Day. This used to be credited to Jack Cole on the Grand Comics Database, but the credit has been changed to Paul Gustavson because it was identified as his father's by him. I am not sure. I have seen a lot of Gustavson's work and a lot of Jack Cole and I see a lot of the latter and nothing of the former (though both are great in ther own way).

A Plinth Of Sundays

Sunday Surprise Day. If I was ever able to work with of even from the Billy Ireland Museum at Ohio State University, I would take advantage of their huge collection of The New York Herald Tribune to write the definitive series of posts (or even a book) about their syndicate and their unusual appraoch to fillers. They are seen as a failed syndicate, because many of the strips they launched did not reach the broader audience. But If I had lived in New York between 1945 and 1955 their comics page would have been the first thing I looked for every morning. Not only did they have an outstanding roster of talent in various strips, they also bought a huge selection of one tier filler strips for their Sunday paper. Some made it into a regular strip, such as Irv Spector's Coogy and Gill Fox's Jeanie. Jeanie even went daily for a while. Some reached fame among connaisseurs and collectors, such as Harvey Kurtzman's Silver Linings. But there were many, many more. Here are a few I came across, when finally sold my Sundays on Ebay this year.

Second Hand Laughs

Saturday Leftover Day. These are truely leftover. For the last few months I have been sharing samples of the daily gag panel distributed by King Features from late 1948 onwards. I missed a few here and there so I went back and tried to fill as many as I could. For you it's probably just a lad of funny (or sometimes not so funny) gags, but for me it helps to have them online.