A Little Bit Extra On The Side

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Some years ago I bought a whole box full of 1957/1962 Sunday sections from a major Chicago newspaper that had Dick Tracy on the front and many strips I collect on the inside. I scanned and shared some of them with you, mainly some of the Flintstones and Yogi Bear pages, but I am still not done scanning everything. Since it takes so long and I have to do several strips from every 16 page section, I decided to try doing it another way, one strip at the time. But still, it takes longer than I expected. So here is a little teaser of what I am doing now.

In 1957 Chester Gould, the artist and writer of Dick Tracy, created a new gag strip especially for this paper, to accompany the Sundays of his famous detective. The way the Chicago paper was layed-out, they did not use the Tracy page to fill the whole from page, but rather shrunk it o=down a bit to created room for a contents list on the left of it - which in turn made room for an add-on at the bottom. Gould came up with The Gravies, a strip about a 'normal' family from the suburbs. As time flew by, they got a few weird side characters, mainly a talking crow, but you won't see him yet in the early episodes. He made the strip in his studio with his assistants, whom he let sign the strip with him.

The Gravies is a great rarity, the ultimate collectible for the Dick Tracy fan who has everything. The strip ran form late 1957 until 1962 at least. I have done a couple from 1957 and after that my collection starts with 1961. So I guess I have some holes to fill in between before I can show you the rest. Wait for it.

Gravy Train

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Chester Gould doing a funny strip?

Well, not really. It seems somewhere in the early sixties he allowed his asiistants to create a funny strip, which was added as a topper to the Sunday page in very few newspapers. He may have been involved himself as well, since they signed it all together. An amazing gesture in itself. The gag a week strip is weirdly funny, as you would expect from someone like Gould. It ran for more than a year and it reminds me of the time he used a parody of 'modern' gag strips in one of his storylines about a cartoonist who drew a strip about flees (which were drawn just as dots in the strip, samples of which were used all through that storyline).

I thought these three in my files were the first three. But I have seen mentioned that The gravies started as early as 1956. I will go back and have a look and hope to be adding more later. I guess 'Rick' is Gould's assitant and later Dick Tracey artist Rick Fletcher, but the others don't mean anything to me. Fortunately my followers have added some much needed comments already...