Monday, August 26, 2019

Ladies, Please!

Monday Surprise Me Day.

Dorothy Bond was a female cartoonist working in the late forties. She had a daily panel cartoon called The Ladies. I am currently clipping an old bound newspaper book that has two months of this strip (July and August). As soon as I am done I am going to sell them on eBay under my seller name geapelde. I will also add a couple of them here.

Looking around at a new microfiche site, I came across these two Sunday versions of the same series, which was by then called Chlorine. I am not sure if the panel cartoon had changed it's name as well, maybe not. But Chlorine was the breakout star and got the Sunday. Not knowing much about Dorothy Bond, I look to Lambiek's Comiclopedia for more information.

"Dorothy Bond was the comic artist of the newspaper strip 'Chlorine', about an office secretary, which appeared in the late 1940s. The strip was based on Bond's own secretary, Dee Mulvey, and grew out of another strip called 'The Ladies'. 'Chlorine, Champion of the Working Girl' was a very witty comic, full of sarcastic wise-cracks, usually at the expense of men and employers. Earlier, in 1945, Dorthy Bond self-published a booklet 'The Government Clerk', about the everyday life of the wartime "government girl" - with all its ups & downs - as well as the mind-numbing habits of the government bureaucracy."

"Dorothy Bond was a very free-spirited woman, preferring to work dressed in little more than her slip and high heels. She also had a fondness for drink - as Mulvey remembers: "She made a deal with God, that she would never take a drink in the office, and when the ideas were totally vacant, she would storm into my office and grab the bottle and run out into the hall in her slip and high heels, with, I assume, a clear conscience."

6 comments:

comicstripfan said...

Is it my imagination, or do I see something of Jim Holdaway's "Romeo Brown" in the few samples presented? Looks interesting.

Ger Apeldoorn said...

What I mostly see is some very good basic drawing not particulary well served by the inking/execution. Maybe some sort of art training?

comicstripfan said...

Agreed - it was my imagination!

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Di you know Mazure's Romeo Brown?

comicstripfan said...

I only know Mazure from Smurfswacker’s entries - agree with S. that Mazure really knew how to draw the female face - would like to see more of his RB; and “Jane, Daughter of Jane” looks very good - Holdaway’s different style is also fine. RB by Mazure and Holdaway is one of those strips deserving of reprinting.

richardmoderate said...

Steve Jenner has been posting Romeo Brown on Classic Comics on a regular basis-he is my favorite poster and my connection to UK comic strips-he turned me on to Frank Bellamy's wonderful strip GARTH