Saturday Leftover Day.
I have shown a lot of cartoons by Reamer Keller over the years. Keller was a prolific gag maker, working from the early forties deep into the seventies. He worked for many publications, from 1000 Jokes and Gags to Collier's, the Saturday Evening Post and the Humorama titles. You could find him anywhere, except in the top tier of best paying magazines. His loose style was funny, contagious and if necessary a little bit sexy. Like most cartoonists of his generation he tried getting into newspapers. A regular daily gig could be hard work, but also provide a steady income. In the late forties he sold a weekly gag collection Sunday page, which ran in several papers. In the fifties that pages got a new lease on life when it was bought by the New York Sunday News as one of their irregular features. From what I have seen it was one of those pages that was often dropped in the city or the country edition - or even all of them. If he produced one every week is unsure, but seems unlikely. I think he left a bunch for them to use when needed. Anyway, in the sixties they needed itt more and more and it became a semi regular.
In the fifties he also had a daily strip, which didn't run for very long. Kennesaw had a cast of rural types an dfeatured hillbilly humor. It was a poor use of Keller's talents, seeing those two unpleasant characters every day, and it didn't last that long. While looking for some other stuff, I came across a longer run of them and I clipped them to show here. I probably missed the first few months, but at least this collection goes up to the end of it.
1 comment:
Yes, this Snuffy Smith ripoff is unworthy of Keller's talents.
Kennesaw is the name of a north Georgia town that gained notoriety in the '80s for requiring gun ownership of its adult residents (with some exceptions).
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