Tuesday, January 30, 2018

As Wilbur As They Get

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Another completely unknown strip. All through the forties there was this 'other' way of drawing you saw in many strips, like Invisible Scarlet and Sparky Watts. Boody Rogers is one of the surviving names of that stilted style. Evans Krehbiel is not.
I only know him from Speed Berry, a shortlived strip in the Chicago Tribune comic book insert (which he did before Wilbur Wackey). A strip so dull I never scanned it. Thankfully The Stripper's Guide has done a bio of his life, which you can find here: http://strippersguide.blogspot.nl/search?q=wilbur+wackey. You will also find samples of Speed berry, but not this gem.



1 comment:

comicstripfan said...

Perhaps the most important characteristic of these strips is their impression of incorporating American slang known as "jive", a language associated with jazz music from the 1930's and 1940's and popularized by the famous jazz musician Cab Calloway who published numerous editions of his "dictionary". I say "impression" because I am no expert on American slang and am not sure whether the writing accurately reflects a proper use of jive "talk". And I assume Evans Krehbiel was not African American - a picture on Pinterest of his mother, the painter Dulah Marie Evans Krehbiel circa 1908, would appear to confirm this.