In mid-1912 the Rocky Mountain News ran Chris and Christena’s Courtship as sort of a banner on the front page of their Sunday classified section. I have a run of the strip from July through August, but it may well have run longer.

Notice that this strip is in (limited) color, even though it ran in what is normally a black-and-white section of most papers. The papers of Denver (the Post, the Times, the Republican, the Express, the Rocky Mountain News and perhaps even others) were in a pitched battle for circulation, though, so many of the papers brightened their paper with a liberal use of color. The color extended to the news coverage as well — the Denver papers of the 1900s-1910s are some of the yellowest journals you’ll ever find. If you’re a fan of sensational newspapers like I am, you’ll find nirvana in the pages of these old Colorado papers.

I don’t know whether this strip originated at the News or if it was syndicated from elsewhere. The cartoonist Artigue has a few comic strip credits in Boston and Philadelphia in the 1906-09 period, but I lose track of him after that with this one exception from 1912. Can anyone offer more information on either Artigue or this strip?