Advisory: The Jim Crow and Oliver Twitter cover strip is very much a product of its time with its racial caricature, and should be seen in that context. It's a weak, contrived story but the artwork by Percy Cocking does the job.
As with all A.P. comics back then, the centre pages featured five shorter strips. Here's a couple of them. Our Wandering Boy is by Albert Pease...
Tilly Tappit the Typist is by Louis Briault...
Here's another strip using stereotypes that would be considered unacceptable today. (There was a lot of this stuff around in those days, and for decades afterwards unfortunately.) O'Doo and O'Don't - The Irish Two. I'm not sure who drew this...
Again, as with the other A.P. comics, the 8 page format featured a 50/50 division of prose stories and comic strips. Here's one of those prose stories, a complete tale called The Spurtfire's Easter Eggs!
On the back page, The Cruise of the Winklepin, drawn by H.C. Milburn...
These early British comics are mainly ignored and overlooked by most fans and the news media now but I think it's good to remind ourselves of our comic art roots. I hope you've enjoyed this brief look back. Happy Easter!
4 comments:
I've been relooking at them recently and amazed how long artists worked on one strip...also the details...
Thanks Lew for showing these gems..
What is your favourite old comic?
Or is it more the artists?
That depends on your definition of old comic. For the ones I grew up reading, it's a tie between the first series of Smash! and the first series of TV21. For comics before I was born, I don't really have a favourite, although I do like Radio Fun and the Eagle of the 1950s. I also have a soft spot for the original Chips, as that was my grandad's favourite when he read it around 1900.
thanks Lew...
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