Original art of Ding, Lolly, and... Carl Ed's Victor Veribest? (UPDATED 2x)

by Mike Rhode (updated 11/19/21 with scans)

So a clump (gaggle? flock? murder?) of cartoonists walk into the American Visionary Art Museum's giftshop... 

Cellphone photo with caption

 

Sure, it sounds like a shaggy dog story, but this past weekend I went to the museum with a group of local cartoonists, and someone opened a flat file drawer in the gift shop, and pulled out a 'Ding' Darling panel. 

                                                              Scan, with caption cut off

There were 3 of these, which appear to tell the story of a young potato growing up into a crop. Barbara Dale said she and another friend had already bought 2 others on a previous visit. I bought this one.

 

Lolly June 21, 1970

 

The next strips I pulled out were 'Lolly' by Pete Hansen, a working woman gag strip that I read in the New York Daily News as a kid. It started in 1955, but these are from the 1970s when I was reading it.

Lolly Sept 3, 1972

Finally, there were 3 strips by Carl Ed of 'Harold Teen' fame. These 'Victor Veribest' strips seem like they might just predate 'Harold Teen' that started in 1919, or more probably, be running parallel to it as an advertising strip for an Armour Hour radio show of which I've found mentions of for 1929 and 1933-1935. I'd be glad to hear from anyone with more knowledge about them.

 

UPDATE: My friend, the crack comics historian Rodrigo Baeza, comes through "I found a sample of the Victor Veribest strip that ran in 1933: https://the-avocado.org/2018/05/10/thriftstorm-6-news-and-views-of-armour-crews/ And a few years ago Rob Stolzer was selling another original (which he believes was done in the late 1920s):https://web.archive.org/web/20180509214243/http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1326468  I was just reading a couple of days ago that Carl Ed was one of Roy Crane's teachers at Chicago's Academy of Fine Arts in 1920."

  

 

So, the strip is actually for the Armour meat company's internal newspaper. And these 3 strips more than double the amount of them that can be found on the web apparently.

 

The Spirit on the radio in DC (UPDATED)

As we've noted in the past, Pete Mullaney is going through the microfilm of the Washington Star, finding items of interest in the comics.

Pete's latest find is that the Star was planning on running the Spirit comic book insert, and advertised it with an ad for Mr. Mystic on May 27, 1940.

They followed that up on June 1, 1940 by announcing the Spirit radio show, which was apparently very rare.

Local writer Karl Schadow researched the show in 2012, after Ken Quattro asked for information about it. Thanks to Bruce Rosenberger for the links to these articles.

UPDATE: Pete found another announcement for Lady Luck from June 8th's front page.