Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- The Gumps was the first comic strip to tell a running story. Like a serial the strip continued on a daily basis from 1917 through 1957. The story was particularly compelling; readers grew addicted to it, like a soap opera. In 1923, the Board of Trade in Minneapolis suspended operations so that the brokers could get the afternoon paper to find out whether the Gumps’ billionaire Uncle Bim had been trapped in marriage. When Mary Gold died in 1929, it was the first time a cartoon character died in a strip, and the Chicago Tribune was swamped with mail and phone calls with people threatening to cancel their subscriptions to the paper if she wasn’t brought back.

An Editor of the Chicago Tribune, Joseph Patterson, came up with the idea of having a strip that reflected the stories of “real” people. He didn’t want a daily gag with this strip and hired Sidney Smith to develop such a strip. Patterson came up with the title, “The Gumps” and brought some story ideas to Smith to develop.

It was the first strip to make its creator, Sidney Smith, a millionaire. It was that popular, and they promoted the contract. He drew the strip until his death in 1935. Smith had just signed a new three year contract and went out to celebrate. He died in a car crash.

The strip went on to a couple of assistants who worked with Smith, Stanley Link and Blair Walliser. However, for reasons hard to understand now, it was Gus Edson, a staff artist for the New York News, who continued the strip into the 50′s. (Edson was later one of the creators of the strip, Dondi, also created with an appealing, continuous story.)

The story being everything, I thought I’d introduce the strip here with a number of panels to give you a taste, and then I’ll follow with more chunks of the story. Believe me it’s a compelling story, well told, and even the drawing style becomes pleasant as you get into it. So here are the first strips.

{Click any image to enlarge to be able to read it.)

Comic strips were more of an art form back then, when The Gumps was enormously popular. First off, they were large enough to be able to read them. Because there was no television and newspapers were vitally important to people’s lives, comic strips took on another role that has been eliminated today.

Comics had a large enough popularity that they were able to grab a regular and large readership. This allowed them to be daring enough to try to grab a larger audience through whatever means necessary.

The Gumps was clever in many ways and provided the goods with an exceptional story line that had a very large audience.

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- I recently posted a number of comic strips panels and story threads from The Gumps by Sidney Smith. This was an example of one of the great story strips that reigned in the 1920-30′s. It was certainly not the only example of these.

Gasoline Alley has always been one of my favorite strips. I fell in love with it when I was a kid just about the time that Dick Moores took over the strip from Frank King. Probably as a result of this, I have been more a fan of Moores’ work than I have been of King’s. There’s something about his open drawings that really sing to me.

Moores had been a long time assistant to King prior to taking over the strip, so he knew it well. Only recently, thanks to the work of Bill Blackbeard and Chris Ware have we been able to really appreciate this strip. It’s being published in chronological order via Drawn & Quarterly Books.

Walt found Skeezix, a baby, on his doorstep on Feb. 14th, 1921. For an unmarried garage mechanic to raise a child in the 20′s there were obvious problems to face. The strip faces these problems as we watch Skeezix grow up over the years and Walt grow older. Life goes on in this strip, and it’s wonderful.
Here are a few strips from the 1921 and 1922.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Within the first year you can already see the attachment between Walt and Skeezix, and you can see that Skeezix is growing up in front of your eyes. It’s just great.

A while back I posted a piece about the illustrated novel by Frank King “Nina and Skeezix.” It was published in 1941, 20 years after Skeezix was born. You can read that post here.

- It’s election day. Lots of local issues and representatives have their fates in your hands. How more appropriate than to post my continued appreciation of The Gumps. Here are more of the collected strips.

This is the start of a story about Andy Gump running for Congress. The writing in the strip starts to catch fire, and the characters have really developed their personalities.

(Click any of the strips to enlarge them.)

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This comes from an excellent book that was edited in 1974 by Herb Gallewitz and
published by Scribners called Sidney Smith’s The Gumps.
It’s still available and worth the price.

- Here’s the third cache of comic strips featuring The Gumps.
This is from an excellent book that was edited in 1974 by Herb Gallewitz and published by Scribners called Sidney Smith’s The Gumps.

As I mentioned in the last two posts, The drawing is funky, but the story is brilliant. I’m posting these so that you can get an idea of the rhythm of the strip and the characters. In the next couple of batches I post we’ll start getting into some serious story material.

___(Click on any image to enlarge.)

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- The Gumps debuted in a peculiar way. Old Doc Yak was the comic strip that Sidney Smith drew at the Chicago Tribune. Joseph Patterson, an editor at the paper, came up with the idea of The Gumps and asked Smith to move onto it. Old Doc Yak, a talking animal strip, had run its course and Smith agreed to move onto a strip about ordinary people in their lives.

In the last strip, Old Doc Yak and his family were evicted from their house by the landlord. The last panel of the last strip showed that empty house standing there. The next day’s strip showed the Gump family moving in and taking over the strip occupied by the Yak family.

Comic strips were more of an art form back then. First off, they were large enough to be able to read them. They also had a large enough popularity that they were able to grab a regular and large readership. This allowed them to be daring enough to try to grab a larger audience through whatever means necessary.

The Gumps was clever in many ways and provided the goods with an exceptional story line that had a very large audience.
(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here’s part 2 of the Early Years of The Gumps.

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- The Gumps was the first comic strip to tell a running story. Like a serial the strip continued on a daily basis from 1917 through 1957. The story was particularly compelling; readers grew addicted to it, like a soap opera. In 1923, the Board of Trade in Minneapolis suspended operations so that the brokers could get the afternoon paper to find out whether the Gumps’ billionaire Uncle Bim had been trapped in marriage. When Mary Gold died in 1929, it was the first time a cartoon character died in a strip, and the Chicago Tribune was swamped with mail and phone calls with people threatening to cancel their subscriptions to the paper if she wasn’t brought back.

An Editor of the Chicago Tribune, Joseph Patterson, came up with the idea of having a strip that reflected the stories of “real” people. He didn’t want a daily gag with this strip and hired Sidney Smith to develop such a strip. Patterson came up with the title, “The Gumps” and brought some story ideas to Smith to develop.

It was the first strip to make its creator, Sidney Smith, a millionaire. It was that popular, and they promoted the contract. He drew the strip until his death in 1935. Smith had just signed a new three year contract and went out to celebrate. He died in a car crash.

The strip went on to a couple of assistants who worked with Smith, Stanley Link and Blair Walliser. However, for reasons hard to understand now, it was Gus Edson, a staff artist for the New York News, who continued the strip into the 50′s. (Edson was later one of the creators of the strip, Dondi, also created with an appealing, continuous story.)

The story being everything, I thought I’d introduce the strip here with a number of panels to give you a taste, and then I’ll follow through once a week with more chunks of the story for those interested. Believe me it’s a compelling story, well told, and even the drawing style becomes pleasant as you get into it. So here are the first strips.

{Click any image to enlarge to be able to read it.)