And don't worry about my cutting off prematurely like I did with Comic Art in America That was a library book I had to return before I had the chance to scan everything. This book I own.
There is more to sex than sex. Sex is with us, all around us, and cannot be ignored, no matter how strong the forces of censorship. Since it operates at both conscious and unconscious levels, its manifestations are always unpredictable, and its expressions unavoidable, even by prudes. Sigmund Freud devoted his lifetime to study of the sex urge (which he called “libido” —it sounds more fashionable that way) in all its incarnations, and in 1909 he came to these shores to preach the new gospel to the natives. His teachings have since born ample fruit, as thousands of his American disciples who derive a (lucrative) livelihood from his theories can readily attest.
The turn of the century today is viewed through the eyes of nostalgia as an age of sexual innocence, Freud notwithstanding. If such had been the case, however, America would be as underpopulated a continent in this good year of 1985 as when the Pilgrims found it. While art and literature (the only forms of expression ever studied by sobersided scholars and academics) only skirted the issue of sex, the more rigorous forms of American vaudeville and burlesque in openly raucous blackouts and bawdy routines. Then as now there were plenty of critics ready to indict the age for its immorality, among them the redoubtable Carrie Nation, who fulminated, “The times are lewd, besotted, and licentious!” Despite the outcries of the righteous, the show went on pretty much as before. The American newspapers greatly added to the tenor of the times, as Ms. Nation saw them, with their sensational headlines and libelous reporting, not to mention their latest attraction, the gaudily colorful comics section.
In Europe, by contrast, comics were almost exclusively designed for kids, and they accordingly addressed themselves to childish concerns—at least until the sixties, when European cartoonists struck back with a vengeance. On this side of the Atlantic, too, the explicit depiction of sexual situations was a product of the sexual revolution of the sixties. But while the subject has come into the open only in recent times, sex in the comics was not born yesterday, as we shall see.
The thread was in fact already apparent in the earliest comics, from Buster Brown, who displayed the manner of boy-of-the-world with all the girls he met, to Happy Hooligan, who turned out to be a fool at everything except the pursuit of the fair Suzanne, whom he wooed under the very nose of her disapproving father. With the establishment of the daily strip, whose public was overwhelmingly adult (in contrast to the Sunday pages, which were read by a great number of children), a somewhat more roguish version of the relationship between man and woman began to assert itself. Clare Briggs' scheming A. Piker Clerk and Bud Fisher's hustling Mutt (of Mutt and Jeff) were both inveterate horseplayers, but they both kept an eye on the ladies between races and even managed to score a few wins in that field when their occasional winnings from the ponies permitted.
The early cartoonists enjoyed greater latitude than when they were dealing with other than recognizably human characters. With Mr. Skygack, from Mars, A. D. Condo (yes, that was his real name) presented a denizen of the red planet who had come to Earth, and specifically to the good old USA, to observe (and satirize) local customs, somewhat after the fashion of the thinly veiled social and political fictions so favored by the eighteenth-century novelists (not the first or last instance of a comic-strip author revealing some hoary literary device). Skygack regularly appeared equally nonplussed by the humans' pursuit of the opposite sex, both rituals striking him, not unreasonably, as an excessive expenditure of energy compared to the results usually achieved.
Other segments had spinsters dreaming they were pursued by hordes of panting males or eligible bachelors fighting over their favors. Some dreams were explicitly sexual, with male and female protagonists performing strange rituals in bed or carrying on ambiguous conversations while stark naked in bed. At a time—the first decade of this century—when Victorian morals and values still held sway in this country, these were bold and revolutionary statements (let's not forget that Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams was still banned in many parts of the United States during that period.
With Bringing Up Father, which turned out to be a hit, McManus set the model for the comic-strip depiction of marriage as an institution bereft not only of any hint of sex but even of the slightest glimmer of affection. That The American public preferred the jaundiced view of married life expressed in Bringing Up Father to the rosy picture presented by the selfsame McManus in The Newlyweds is in itself a social comment of no small importance.
If Barney Google embodies American comedy, Moon Mullins can be viewed (with some license) as American tragedy. The boardinghouse run by the scrawny, spinsterish Emma Schmaltz is inhabited by enough of life's failures to stock several road companies of Death of a Salesman, a grim (if hilarious) cross section of losers as long on color as they are short on funds and morals. These include the title character, a shady fast-talking hustler and unsuccessful promoter; his kid brother, Kayo, a miniature version of Moon, complete with derby hat and foul mouth; and the rundown English aristocrat Lord Plushbottom (“Plushie”), whom Emmy finally dragged to the altar in 1934; and Mamie, the elephantine cook and washer-woman, wife to Moon's ne'er-do-well Uncle Willie.
Riches and sex are the twin—and never fullfilled—ideals of this small band of outsiders and misfits. Under his rough veneer, writes Stephen Becker, “Moon himself is a romantic: he likes pretty girls and money, and his pursuit of both is reckless and devoted.” Plushbottom, when not putting on airs, is on the prowl for every shapely young lady in sight, in the great tradition of comic-strip husbands. Among these less than shining female lights the carnival dancer Little Egypt (Emmy's niece) twinkles bright, a creature of beauty and glamour; indeed, every man in the boardinghouse lusts after her. Their efforts are of course doomed: success unacheived and sex unobtained are two sides of the same debased coin. With the death of Moon's creator, Frank Willard in 1958, the strip unfortunately went downhill, and it is now only a pale imitation of its former self.
Little Annie Rooney was a different case altogether. She displayed a Lolita-like sexuality as well as a coquettishness with men, who almost invariably Found her irresistible. Not so the women, however, and none was as rough on the angel as Mrs. Meany, the ugly, cruel head of the orphan asylum from which Annie was forced to flee again and again. In the course of her peregrinations she would often rely on the kindness of strangers (usually men) who offered her temporary refuge. It was this dual, ambiguous outlook that caused French critic Jean-Claude Romer to call Little Annie Rooney a cross between the Comtesse de Ségur (a cloying, sweet children's author) and the Marquis de Sade. As with so many other comic strips of the period, there was more to Annie Rooney than met the eye.
The early American comic strip is now nostalgically recalled as an embodiment of innocence, but this is a recent view. It was certainly not considered so innocent by legions of turn-of-the-century critics, who assailed it for, among other sins, bad taste and vulgarity. Had these self-proclaimed guardians of culture had gone through the trouble of actually reading the newspaper strips they were attacking (as the comic-book detractors later did with so much zeal), they might have added indignant prudery to their crusade. Let us be grateful that the early censors—as is often the case with censors everywhere—couldn't see the forest for the trees.
