Brother, Oh Brother

Fred McCarthy was a Franciscan Friar whose single panel cartoon in the Dennis the Menace style, Brother Juniper, ran from 1958 to 1987.

His middle name was Francis and it's as Fred Francis that he tried a spin-off about Sister Suzie. Interestingly the same year he got copyright for a Sister Suzie pocket, he also registered a Brother Rufus for his own pocket. Another spin-off or the title of an unknown Juniper book? Wikipedia gives these eight titles for the books that are known:

*McCarthy, Fred. ''Brother Juniper''. (1957). Garden City:Hanover House.
*McCarthy, Fred. ''Brother Juniper Strikes Again''. (1959). Garden City:Hanover House.
*McCarthy, Fred. ''Brother Juniper at Work and Play''. (1960). Garden City:Hanover House.
*McCarthy, Fred. ''More Brother Juniper''. (1960). New York:Pocket Books.
*McCarthy, Fred. ''Inside Brother Juniper''. (1963). New York:Pocket Books.
*McCarthy, Fred. ''Well Done, Brother Juniper''. (1963). Garden City:Doubleday.
*McCarthy, Fred. ''The Whimsical World of Brother Juniper''. (1963). New York:Pocket Books.
*McCarthy, Fred. ''The Ecumenical Brother Juniper''. (1965). Garden City:Doubleday.

The Brother Rufus book (like the Sister Suzie book) would have been from the same publisher:

Brother, Oh Brother!

Monday Cartoon Day.

Even thought it was drawn very well and the gags are nice (and sometimes even funny), the very element that was it's unique selling point makes it absolete now; the clerical subject. Still, he got a nice run and a couple of pockets out of it.

Brother, Oh Brother

Monday Cartoon Day.

One of the first cartoon pockets I had was an oversized pocket of Brother Junier cartoons. I liked these a lot and was struck by the likeness of this style to that of Hank Ketcham (which I knew about, although I didn't have any pockets of those). After that I never seemed to run into this charming little panel anymore. Only when I started vsiting and clipping scans from NewspaperArchive, I found it ran from the late fifties tot the late eighties, more than thirty years in fact. There is not much information about this strip and it's creator online, but I can at least recommend this excellent write-up about the origin of the strips and it's creator: http://www.toonopedia.com/juniper.htm

The samples I am showing here are from december 1962.