Saturday Visit.
Bill and Penny creator Harry Haenigsen had a whole seperate career (and a different style) as a daily saterist before he settled down as one of the stylistically dullest cartoonists of his generation. I showed some of his cartoons from the thirtees earlier, which were published under the title New and Views. Ever day was a new cartoon, with a different (mostly satyrical) subject. Some of the ways he saterizes them can be considered precursers to later Mad parodies. In my experience, this body of work even represents even the most Mad-like 'articles' I have ever seen anywhere. Everyone always mentions the comedy magazines of the thirties (like Hoohah) as an inspiration for Mad, but other then a large amount of ad parodies using photo's I never found format that directly predates either Kurtzman or Feldstein's choices. Haenigsen on the other hand, used a lot of 'statement and samples' gags, did stuff like 'what does the wallet of so and so look like' and more. A missing link to the Mad type of humor, in my opinion.
Well, looking back at this series, I found that he was doing them longer than I would have though, most of which ws before he started using the title News and Views. Here are some of the earliest I could find, from the Milwaukee Journal in 1925! They are harder to find, because there is no title and they are not on a set page, so it means going to papers page by page. But the humor and the style are all there, as well.
Now I have to go and clip all twelve year. You can follow the link for more of News and Views.
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