Cynical Susie And The New, Odd Little World

As mentioned yesterday, Cynical Susie veered into Damned Odd territory at the end of the run in Comics On Parade. And it all started, appropriately enough, when she met a Hermit...

Comics On Parade changed format with issue #30. They started focusing on a single strip or creator in each issue, and the variety strips were swept away - including Cynical Susie. Her newspaper comics stopped the same year, and she never came back home from that odd little world.

page art by Bernard Dibble(?) from Comics On Parade #s 24-29 (1940)

If Only A Fish Would Fly Down From Heaven With A Job In His Bill!

Today we've got a little dalliance with three ladies from the '30s - Becky(Helen), Laverne, and Susie. Becky Sharp wrote and Laverne Harding drew a Sunday comic about Cynical Susie. (There was a daily, too, but just barely. It was soon a Sunday Only strip.) The series debuted in 1933 and ran through the end of the decade, though both creators left before that point.

One of the especially noteworthy aspects of Cynical Susie is the artist; Laverne Harding became the first female animator in Hollywood. She was already working with Walter Lantz at Universal when Susie started publication, and was promoted to Animator in 1934.

We come in at the end of Laverne's run on the strip, with Bernard Dibble taking over the art in her absence. Some may recall another strip from Dibble that appeared here previously, Looy Dot Dope. These come to us from Comics On Parade - one of those early comic books that re-packaged newspaper strips. That included L'il Abner, who pushed Susie, and everyone else, out of the book a few years later. 

Let me just say right now - "I don't know."

I only have one or two issues before we're jumping in, and the $50,000 debt was already incurred. How this happened or what the debt is supposed to cover...? 

That's one of Life's Little Mysteries for me. Just acknowledge how very special Lily Whey must be to stand as collateral on that much cash in 1930s dollars.

Before too long, Susie managed to turn things around, though things seemed to fall apart first. The Director discovered that Susie was back on the lot...

Before the end of her time in Comics On Parade, things would get damned odd and outright weird...

page art by Laverne Harding and Bernard Dibble from Comics On Parade #s 7-10, 12, & 15-18 (1938, 1939)

Retro-Modern Sunday Morning Funnies (on Sunday!)

Modern times require modern heroes. No matter how deranged the times. In a world where characters like Rambo have twisted the definition of "Hero" into "the psychopath who kills people we don't like" pretty much anything goes. But, that's not entirely new.

Let's jump back about 80 years to find someone to embody our times - Alibi Alice.
Ruth Leslie brings us a potential president with the motto "She Fibs" -

Alice had only 3 adventures, but i've never seen the first issue of Superworld, so the first one remains a mystery.

Meanwhile, also back in 1940, long before society exploded into dot com and dot net and dot this, that & the other...  Looy already staked out dot dope. (That one's out there now, isn't it?)

...and so it went. Looy was actually around for a fair bit, first appearing in comics back in 1936, usually in Comics On Parade or Tip Top Comics, but he also got his own single issue title in '38. 

Just because i have that obsession for 3s, let's toss in another strip from a few years later (1946), but moving the other way in time - Prehistoric Pete, another short-lived, migrating strip. Pete had at least a half dozen adventures, but was also reprinted several times in multiple countries, so it can be hard to track the exact number. And it's Sunday morning, so let's just get to the comic, eh?

page art by Ruth Leslie, Bernard Dibble, Joe Beck & Otto Eppers for Superworld #s 2 & 3, Comics On Parade #s 25 & 26, and Red Seal Comics # 18 (1940, 1946)