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CONCERNING THE HERRIMAN PRE PROONES CONTEST
I surrender and humbly bow to Allan who must have discovered some obscure secrets concerning George Herriman’s productions. In fact – apart the 1906 “Amours of Marie Anne McGee” which every blogger should know (posting of Saturday, August 11 1907), the only other “Weekday strip” (this is how I call the series which were published in weekdays, but not all days) anticipating “Proones the Plunger” I succeeded in finding is “Home, Sweet Home”, published in 1904 in Frank A. Munsey’s “New York Daily News. For the short-lived Sunday section of that newspaper, Herriman created the Sunday series “Bud Smith” and “Major Ozone”, later continued for World Color Printing; possibly he did some other weekday strip I don’t know --- also if I have a very faint remembrance of a possible first avatar of “Us Husband”, a series that Herriman recreated (or probably simply “created” in 1926). Another 1904 series I don’t know anything about is “Bubblespikers”, quoted in http://www.krazy.com/herriman.htm. May it be one of the elusive “Weekdays”?
Here are some conjectures about WHERE could Herriman have published pre – 1907 weekday strips. Before that date GH worked for the “New York World”, for the McClure Syndicate (which, for unknown reasons, continued many series begun in the NYW), for the “Philadelphia North American”, where he drew many one shots and some short lived series such as “Tattered Tim”; for the above mentioned “NY Daily News”, and for World Color Printing. To my knowledge, neither McClure Sections nor the North American published weekday strips at the time; the NYW ** did **publish them (Allan has recently indicized it, and this may be a hint), and World Color Printing tried some syndication experiment selling “packets” of strips such as “Annie McGee”.
In 1904 – 1905 Herriman authored a series of sport cartoons for Hearst’s “NY Evening Journal”: this is another place where he could have created short lived series, maybe the mystery “Us Husband” and “Bubblespikers”, if they do exist. Then he went to the “Los Angeles Times” (see posting of July 3 2007; no weeday strips there), and after a year or so he begun working again for Hearst creating political cartoons (the ones that Allan graciously offers us weekly in “Herriman Saturdays”) for the “Los Angeles Examiner”, the same newspaper that published “Proones” in 1907. Maybe Allan discovered something else in that newspaper.
Or I am completely wrong, and Herriman created his strips for another newspaper that only Allan knows. Hope that the contest ends soon, so I’ll be able to sleep again.
Best
Alfredo
Sep 13, 2007, 7:28:00 PM
Posted to Stripper's Guide Bookshelf: By George!