Comic Strip History

 I’ve had a long-standing interest in the Sunday newspaper ‘magazine’ sections that gained great popularity starting in the 1890s during the Hearst-Pulitzer war. Although I understand that there were Sunday magazine sections earlier (apparently the San Francisco Chronicle started one as early as 1869), they really blossomed with the advent of color printing.

When people were buying magazines like Harper’s, McClure’s and Leslie’s on the newsstand, it occurred to the newspaper magnates that they could offer the same sort of content (fiction and light articles paired with illustration) in their Sunday newspaper editions, and perhaps convince a whole segment of the reading population to buy their wares. After all, why pay good money for a magazine when ours comes ‘free’ with the Sunday paper?

Unfortunately historical information on these magazines is very scarce — I’ve only found two histories. One was a master’s thesis by Peggy Turbett at Ohio State University, and the other was an article by Glen W. Peters in a 1971 issue of Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly. I haven’t been able to lay my paws on either of these intriguing items.

Research on the subject is very tough for several reasons. Little is written about these magazines because they inhabit a grey zone. Newspaper historians have near-zero interest in these magazines because in their eyes they were never more than a circulation stunt. Magazine histories ignore them because they were merely portions of the Sunday newspaper, and didn’t go head-to-head with ‘real’ newsstand magazines. Primary-level research — looking at the magazines themselves — is surprisingly hit-or-miss because they were often not bound into newspaper bound volumes, were often razored out for their pretty pictures if they were, and very seldom made it all the way to microfilm. The American Weekly was apparently only circulated with Hearst newspapers, so it is even more rare because few libraries would deign to collect Hearst newspapers for their archives, not being considered ‘serious’ papers.

The contents of these magazines varies considerably. Some magazines focused on fiction, others on non-fiction, while others tried to attract mainly based on catchy cover art. Some were very staid, others quite wild. Hearst’s magazine, which debuted in 1896, quickly came to a sharp focus under editor Morrill Goddard, who was an absolute genius at attracting readers. Goddard believed that readers wanted Hearst-style sensationalism continued in their magazine section, so he focused on wacky and indelicate topics, sex and the bizarre, all with a heavy dose of great eye-catching graphics.

Although I’d love to offer you a detailed history of American Weekly, I can’t do that. I just don’t have the data. What I can offer is information that I’ve gathered over the last ten years or so on an aspect of the magazine that is of special interest to me — the covers.  As many of you know from following the Stripper’s Guide blog, many newspaper Sunday magazines, primarily in the 1920s and 1930s, offered cartoon art on their covers. While many of these covers offered up only ‘one-shot’ subjects, American Weekly pioneered the concept of offering a series of covers on the same subject by the same artist. Some series were executed as purely decorative drawings on a common subject (“Famous Vamps of History”, “Scenes from the Days of King Arthur”), but my interest is in those that told a story or used continuing characters.

For many years I simply kept notes of series I would find in my newspaper microfilm research, while ignoring covers that didn’t fit the mold of my research. That was a mistake. I eventually realized that these magazines made it to microfilm so sporadically that the only way to know that I had found all the series that interested me was to note ALL the covers that I found. Until I could amass a complete index of the covers I’d never know what holes might still be left to fill.

With that realization, I began to note every American Weekly cover I came across. I chose to focus on American Weekly not because it is the only Sunday magazine of interest, but rather it was the only one of interest that had a running title. Other newspaper magazines tended to use syndicated magazine covers (often offered by Hearst) while putting together their insides from a mixture of in-house and syndicated content. These magazine covers are ridiculously hard to track because you can only tell that they share a common origin based on the often-removed syndicate stamps. Hearst had at least two additional Sunday magazine covers that were syndicated, one under the King Features banner, the other through Newspaper Feature Service. Both offer some excellent series cartoon content, but try to create a complete index for them? Close to impossible.

Although American Weekly is said to have started in 1896, it was not consistently named that for many years, perhaps not until about 1917. Originally the title American Weekly was only used — I believe — when it was distributed with one of Hearst’s newspapers titled American, like the New York American or the Boston American. It was also not necessarily weekly (my 1913-14 examples are called the “American Sunday Monthly Magazine”). The practice of offering series covers also doesn’t seem to begin until 1917. Therefore my index that will appear here over the next few posts will begin with that year.

My index ends with the year 1951, when the editorial direction of the magazine changed. Starting in 1952 artists often did not receive credit for their cover work, and more and more the covers featured photos instead of art. I do not believe there are any ‘serial covers’ after 1951.

In this index you will see many gaps. Any information you can share to move this project toward completion would be much appreciated and of course your information will be credited to you. See you tomorrow for the start of the American Weekly cover index.

Some notes on the listings:

* when you see a “#”, that means that the cover is part of a numbered series and the number is given on the cover. Sometimes I remembered to write that down, sometimes I didn’t so its catch-as-catch-can. If a series cover explicitly states that it is the first or final installment, I sometimes note that as “(start)” or “(end)”.
* when I say “(story illo) that means that the cover is illustrating a text story in the magazine.
* I don’t make guesses about covers I haven’t seen. Therefore, even if I have one missing issue between installment 2 and 4 of a series, I resist the urge to assume what may be obvious.
* When a cover is descibed as, say, “Famous Fishes (Herring)”, that means that the cover is part of a series titled Famous Fishes, and this particular cover depicts the herring. 
* in the teens, the San Francisco Examiner and possibly other western papers usually ran the magazine a week late; I have tried to normalize the dates based on the eastern appearances

Complete index for these years, nothing missing! Don’t get used to it, though.

Some notes on the listings:

* when you see a “#”,
that means that the cover is part of a numbered series and the number is
given on the cover. Sometimes I remembered to write that down,
sometimes I didn’t so its catch-as-catch-can. If a series cover
explicitly states that it is the first or final installment and its not obvious from the surrounding dates, I sometimes
note that as “(start)” or “(end)”.
* when I say “(story illo) that means that the cover is illustrating a text story in the magazine.
*
I don’t make guesses about covers I haven’t seen. Therefore, even if I
have one missing issue between installment 2 and 4 of a series, I resist
the urge to assume what may be obvious.
* When a cover is
descibed as, say, “Famous Fishes (Herring)”, that means that the cover
is part of a series titled Famous Fishes, and this particular cover
depicts the herring.

My index gets spottier toward the end of the decade. Still better than the early 1930s, which will run here soon after we take a week off for regular Stripper’s Guide posts.

In this period, Henry Clive becomes a major contributor of pin-up covers and the fabulous Britisher Fish arrives. This period also sees a trend toward occasional wacky pseudo-science covers. This period was the heyday for Nell Brinkley and G.E. Studdy, both of whom would tail off considerably after these years.

Some notes on the listings:

* when you see a “#”,
that means that the cover is part of a numbered series and the number is
given on the cover. Sometimes I remembered to write that down,
sometimes I didn’t so its catch-as-catch-can. If a series cover
explicitly states that it is the first or final installment and its not obvious from the surrounding dates, I sometimes
note that as “(start)” or “(end)”.
* when I say “(story illo) that means that the cover is illustrating a text story in the magazine.
*
I don’t make guesses about covers I haven’t seen. Therefore, even if I
have one missing issue between installment 2 and 4 of a series, I resist
the urge to assume what may be obvious.
* When a cover is
descibed as, say, “Famous Fishes (Herring)”, that means that the cover
is part of a series titled Famous Fishes, and this particular cover
depicts the herring.

The 1930s are a bad decade for my index, but an anonymous tip to check the Milwaukee Sentinel on Google News Archive filled in a ton of gaps at the last minute.

Apparently during most of this decade, Hearst only allowed his own papers to run the American Weekly section, so the availability on microfilm is very sparse. It wasn’t a great decade for cartoon covers anyway; there was a lot of pseudo-science and pop history using up cover space.

Some notes on the listings:

* when you see a “#”,
that means that the cover is part of a numbered series and the number is
given on the cover. Sometimes I remembered to write that down,
sometimes I didn’t so its catch-as-catch-can. If a series cover
explicitly states that it is the first or final installment and its not obvious from the surrounding dates, I sometimes
note that as “(start)” or “(end)”.
* when I say “(story illo) that means that the cover is illustrating a text story in the magazine.
*
I don’t make guesses about covers I haven’t seen. Therefore, even if I
have one missing issue between installment 2 and 4 of a series, I resist
the urge to assume what may be obvious.
* When a cover is
descibed as, say, “Famous Fishes (Herring)”, that means that the cover
is part of a series titled Famous Fishes, and this particular cover
depicts the herring.

The 1930’s are a bad decade for completeness in my index, but this second half of the decade is a lot better than the first half. Still a lot of pseudo-science and pop history content, but this is pretty much the last of that stuff.

Some highlights of the late 1930s are the Salvador Dali covers, which attract a lot of art collector interest on eBay when they rarely show up. There’s also the only American Weekly cover series by famed pin-up artist Zoe Mozert. A series on regional cooking by the great James Montgomery Flagg is a criminal waste of his great talent.

In late 1939 we get some prime Stripper’s Guide fodder, Flossy Frills by Russell Patterson. She’ll appear in several series into the early 1940s.

Some notes on the listings:

* when you see a “#”,
that means that the cover is part of a numbered series and the number is
given on the cover. Sometimes I remembered to write that down,
sometimes I didn’t so its catch-as-catch-can. If a series cover
explicitly states that it is the first or final installment and its not obvious from the surrounding dates, I sometimes
note that as “(start)” or “(end)”.
* when I say “(story illo) that means that the cover is illustrating a text story in the magazine.
*
I don’t make guesses about covers I haven’t seen. Therefore, even if I
have one missing issue between installment 2 and 4 of a series, I resist
the urge to assume what may be obvious.
* When a cover is
descibed as, say, “Famous Fishes (Herring)”, that means that the cover
is part of a series titled Famous Fishes, and this particular cover
depicts the herring.
 

These years are the last hurrah for covers I consider to be eligible for Stripper’s Guide. Russell Patterson’s Flossy Frills covers and the last Fish series close us out. The final period that I indexed, 1941 through 1951, concentrates mostly on pin-up covers. Henry Clive, Willy Pogany and David Wright become by far the most often seen contributors.

A big change to the section comes with 1944. The American Weekly changes from broadsheet to tabloid format.

Some notes on the listings:
* when you see a “#”, that means that the cover is part of a numbered series and the number is given on the cover. Sometimes I remembered to write that down, sometimes I didn’t so its catch-as-catch-can. If a series cover explicitly states that it is the first or final installment and its not obvious from the surrounding dates, I sometimes note that as “(start)” or “(end)”.

* when I say “(story illo) that means that the cover is illustrating a text story in the magazine.

* I don’t make guesses about covers I haven’t seen. Therefore, even if I have one missing issue between installment 2 and 4 of a series, I resist the urge to assume what may be obvious.

* When a cover is descibed as, say, “Famous Fishes (Herring)”, that means that the cover is part of a series titled Famous Fishes, and this particular cover depicts the herring.

This is the final installment of the American Weekly index. In 1951 a new editorial direction took hold and covers were never in series anymore, and the art was often uncredited. Soon after, photo covers would start to become common.

In this final period the pin-up style covers continue, with Henry Clive, Willy Pogany and David Wright the favored artists. Oddly enough, the pin-up covers begin to be interspersed with Bible scenes, a rather pinball-like editorial direction.

One interesting trend has Henry Clive painting famous actresses as characters from history. A special highlight of these years are the occasional J.C. Leyendecker covers, which usually commemorate holidays like Christmas and Easter.

Some notes on the listings:
* when you see a “#”, that means
that the cover is part of a numbered series and the number is given on
the cover. Sometimes I remembered to write that down, sometimes I didn’t
so its catch-as-catch-can. If a series cover explicitly states that it
is the first or final installment and its not obvious from the
surrounding dates, I sometimes note that as “(start)” or “(end)”.

* when I say “(story illo) that means that the cover is illustrating a text story in the magazine.

*
I don’t make guesses about covers I haven’t seen. Therefore, even if I
have one missing issue between installment 2 and 4 of a series, I resist
the urge to assume what may be obvious.

* When a cover
is descibed as, say, “Famous Fishes (Herring)”, that means that the
cover is part of a series titled Famous Fishes, and this particular
cover depicts the herring.