cartoons I don't get #41

Playboy, July 1963

Cavalcade, July 1942

Is there more to this?
For Laughing Out Loud, March 1960

I guess this is based on the “hung like a horse” cliché but I've never heard “hung like a centaur”
Sex to Sexty, mid 70s

He's not wearing a suit.
Hello Buddies, May 1955

I get that it's comparing the Wall Street bull to the golden calf, but are these supposed to be real people?
Life February 16, 1905

Helen Hokinson
New Yorker December 19, 1925

Playboy, March 1970

Howard Shoemaker
The Realist, June 1961

Frederick Opper
Puck June 16, 1880

The host of the British version of This Is Your Life, I guess.
Punch, April 1984

He's saying soldiers are fighting the Germans and it's taking away his movie business but how would they be able to see the battles without seeing them in newsreels, unless he's saying he's not getting enough business anymore because there are fewer civilians now. Which one is it?
Punch September 26, 1915

Punch February 4, 1920

Cartoons I don't get 33

Dale McFeatters
Hello Buddies, circa 1951

Why is a child working for the company? Is it that his mother or father work there and they're off-camera?

Gilbert Wilkinson
The New Yorker May 16, 1925

This Is It, 1960s

Is the circus family his family, and if so, why would he have to beg in the street unless the circus doesn't pay anything? Or is the joke that the way he's sitting in front of the poster it looks like they're growing out of his head?

Erich Sokol
Playboy, October 1962

Another creepy cartoon nobody would publish today. I wonder if I should even be posting it in the context of "can you believe people thought this would be funny once?". If it's any consolation, I think after the cartoon he immediately put his clothes back on and brought her back home before anything could happen, never saw her again for at least a few more years, and went into counseling. He'd be in his seventies or eighties now.

For Laughing Out Loud, February 1960

Bill Ward
Fun House, February 1979

I think the joke has something to do with his bald head and her breasts, but like most other Humorama titles, they came up with captions for the same drawings over and over (this looks like at least a third-generation printing), and it looks like they didn't think the joke through this time.

Judge October 9, 1909

You just had to be there.

Eugene “Zim” Zimmerman
same issue of Judge

Life January 5, 1905

Frederick Opper
Puck June 15, 1880

Ship-Bored

Punch January 28, 1920

Punch November 9, 1927

Comic Art in America

Now I'm scanning pages from a book called Comic Art in America, a survey of the comic strip medium as it was up until the time it was published in 1959.

Strangely, though animation is covered, it doesn't mention all aspects of the medium. Comic books are notably absent, probably because although they were popular, they still had the stigma of only being for children, and over all we have to admit as a whole they were cruder. There are plenty of “respectable” books solely about comic books, so that makes up for it.

I'm only scanning the strips but not the text from Stephen Becker, and only the strips that are whole and not just excerpts and not pictures that are animation stills. The main problem with the book is the eyestrain and bad reproduction from some of the earlier strips, so I apologize in advance for that. Also being a black and white book, it sucks that color strips included can't be in color. Well, it's like that saying about a gift horse or something.

These are all taken from the first chapter, Comics:The First Draft

The caption for this cartoon is

The cartoonist's daily labors, depicted by an old master, Chip Bellew, in Harper's Weekly of January 17, 1891.

A full page of James Swinnerton's Tigers, about 1897, in the New York Journal

Again, I apologize for the book's bad reproduction.

Back to the book's captions:

One of the first Yellow Kids by Richard Felton Outcalt, from the World of February 16, 1896. “The Great Dog Show in M'googin Avenue”.

A tumultuous Yellow Kid, September 20, 1896, when Outcalt was still with the World

A rare Sunday page, from The New York American of May 25, 1902. Here on the page were Happy Hooligan, Gloomy Gus, Alphonse and Gaston (Opper), Tumble Tom (Swinnerton); Foxy Grandpa and his two young friends (Bunny Schulze); and the Katzenjammer Kids with Mama (Dirks) –each character drawn by the creator.

A Billy Mariner Sunday page, May 7, 1905. Wags was a regular feature. ©1905 by C.J. Hirt. (I'm not sure if the copyright reverted to the creator or not)

Ed Carey's version of the Charlie Chaplin Sunday page. It was also titled Pa's Imported Son-In-Law, From the Philadelphia Press of June 18, 1916.

Rube Goldberg strikes a blow for Franco-American solidarity. He drew this in Paris in 1919.

These are from the second chapter, The Beginnings of a Big Business

The first Mutt and Jeff by Bud Fisher, from the San Francisco Chronicle of November 5, 1907. A landmark: the first appearance of a successful daily strip.

Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff in 1921. Little Cicero has already joined the cast.

Mutt and Jeff in 1925, demonstrating the gap between appearance and reality

Mutt and Jeff in 1958, by Al Smith. The same old Jeff, obviously.

World Encyclopedia of Cartoons

When I can't find any links to the artists I feature, I consult this book. It was written in 1980 but that's okay because the artist either died before the book was published or didn't do much since then. I've had it since I was a teenager. It's 676 pages. The editor, Maurice Horn, did all kinds of cartoon and comics history books like The World Encyclopedia of Comics, Sex in the Comics, 100 Years of Newspaper Comics, etc. Most of the art in this book is excerpts and stills from animated films, or in my copy, poor reproductions. However, there are lots of complete cartoons worthy of showing. Here are some which I'll be showing off each Saturday.


This first cartoon, from introductory chapter Caricature and Cartoon is by John T. McCutcheon for the Chicago Tribune in 1920.


By Yvan Le Louarn a/k/a Chaval for Paris-Match


This is one of the few cartoons to not have a caption identifying the author or date.


The syndicated daily panel Citizen Smith by Dave Gerard.


Political cartoon from 1906 by Frederick Opper of Happy Hooligan fame.


Richard Doyle in Punch


The man who brought down the Tweed Ring in New York, and who current political cartoonists would like think they have the impact of, Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly


Art Young in the leftist magazine, The Masses.


Black humor by Siné


Still from Au Fou!(which, according to Babelfish, means “With the insane one!” in French), a 1967 animated cartoon from Japan directed by Yōji Kuri


(NSFW)


The Cow That Watched Trains Go By, a cartoon from 1875 by Caran D'Ache



The Duel with the Fashionable Pointed Shoes by Adolf Oberländer, from 1885



Love Story ca. 1885, by Alexandre Steinlen