Start Your Day Well

 Saturday Cream Day.

Al Capp rented out his characters for Li'L Abner for various ad series. You come across them everywhere, but I never really bothered to save or scan them. Still, after seeing so many Fearless Fossdick ads for hair tonic, I just started picking them up everywhere. The same goes for Li'l Abner and Daisy May's ads for Aunt Jemiah's Cream of Wheat breakfast porridge, used in magazines and Sunday newspaper magazines. I have sample of them fom 1944 to 1956 and I am still not sure if and where they were doubled. It is save to assume Capp's involvement in these was minimal, but they do look like the real thing. The quality various from scans I amde myself to samples I got from online material. At the end I have one more with another famous newspaper character.

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Don't Try It Until You've Knocked

Sunday Monkey Business.

Gus Mager was a very funny early cartoonist, who had a style that wa svery similar to that of Harold Knerr. Most of his first strips revolved about monkey characters who all had a name ending in O. The most famous was Groucho, whose name was adopted by a young comedian. But there were others, some of which have shared earlier. One of those monkey characters was later used as the basis for Mager's Sherlock Holmes parody Sherlocko the Monk. Mager ended up doing a Sherlocko topper on Dirks' original Katzenheimer Kids (while Knerr did The Captain and the Kid). For a later revival on, Sherlocko was changed into a human. Here are some strips I have not shared, with a new monkey called Knocko. Col;lecting some more of those, I came across a Sunday as well featuring another monek. And Mager also did a seperate panel about the Animal Kingdom. 

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A Mountain of Evidence.

Friday Panel Day.

Paul Webbs Mountain Boys was a famous series of magazine gag cartoons. They even got their own books. In 1956, a daily newspaper version was started, which was drawn by Mad's own Mort Drucker. I have shown it before, but never reslized it ran for so long. 

 

The Original Biff

Sunday Clippy Day.

Biff Baker was a typical forties Sunday only adventure strip about a football player who falls from on adventure into the other. Signed "by Henry Lee" but was actually written by NEA comics editor Ernest ‘East’ Lynn and drawn by Hank Schlensker. Schlensker had been Roy Crane's assistant on Buzz Sawyer and went on to draw it again from 1947. Hwere are the first and last weeks. It seems the storyline was ended unceremoniously in the last week of january 1946 after which it was replaced by the stylistically similar but much more action oriented detective strip Vic Flint.