The Missink Link

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.

Funny as H.

Friday Satire Day. 

 Last year I published an article in the fanzine Hogan's Alley about the influence of cartoonist Harry Haenigsen on Dik Browne's advertising work. I had been working on that subject longer and had discovered that Haenigson had his own daily panel in the thirties which bore even a greater similarity to Browne's work than the many advertising pieces I had gather for the article. I am showing everything I got from 1936 and 1937 - but since clipping thise I discoverd that Haenigsen's daily satirical panels started way before that, so this is certainly not the of what I will be showing. Remarkably, altough Haenigsen's advertising work for Johnstone and Cushing in the late thirties and early forties (before he had to pull out for his newspaper strips Our Bill and Penny) could be couple one on one to Browne's advertising work for the same company after the war, these earlier multi-panel gags often seem to connect directly to Browne later style in Hägar the Horrible (especially all the incidental figures in that strip). After that I have a sprecil surprise: thee advertising panels in the Haenigson style signed Dik... but dating from a Canadian newspaper in 1934! Dik Brown would not yet have been 16 at that point, but the coïncidence is fascinating. I may have shown some of this before, but I am taking this opportunity to put them all together (and throw them of my computer to make room for other stuff).