These Are Your Grandfather’s Comics: My Link to the Platinum Age

These Are Your Grandfather’s Comics

My Link to the Platinum Age

by

Stu McIntire

In the summer of 1981 I was visiting my grandparents. My grandfather was an antique collector at heart. I shared with him how I’d recently purchased The Latest Adventures of Foxy Grandpa (1905) at an antique store in New Market, Maryland.

I was more than a little surprised at his excited reaction. It turns out that as a young boy growing up in the in the Midwest, he was an enormous fan of Foxy Grandpa as well as other early U.S. newspaper comic strips, including The Yellow Kid and Happy Hooligan. In fact, he meticulously maintained a scrapbook of The Yellow Kid.

The Yellow Kid full newspaper page

Now it was my turn to get excited. “Do you still have it?” I asked. Sadly, the answer was no. His mother had burned it. She had no way to foresee a future interest much less the collectability of these newspaper “funnies” or their progeny. It wasn’t an act of malicious intent. It was just…inevitable. It’s what was done with such relics. Alas. But my grandfather would soon gift me with a (non-Yellow Kid) goodie from his youth. More on this later.

Over the years I’ve purchased or have been gifted other Foxy Grandpa collectibles. You see, it turns out Foxy was quite popular “back in the day”. A handful of (very) short Foxy Grandpa films were produced…more books…toys…sheet music…you name it. These are the Foxy Grandpa items I own:

post card (1906) 

post card (1906) 

 Up to Date card game (Selchow & Righter) (1903)

Hubley (repro) cast iron bank 

comic book (1905)

The Adventures of Lovely Lilly

The happy result of this bonding moment with my grandfather was that he gifted me a…handkerchief. Yes, a handkerchief. Not just any old scrap of fabric, this one has a backstory. You see, this handkerchief has faint pictures imprinted on it. My grandfather apologized that the pictures were not clearer. He explained that they are meant to be well-defined. When it was brand new the material showed no pictures. One was meant to take a hot iron and press the fabric until the images “magically” appeared. The pictures on this were not faded. They were just never fully exposed because the iron my grandfather used was not yet sufficiently hot to do the job it was meant to do.

It would be some time before I identified the artwork and writing on my handkerchief. I even tried enlisting the aid of Maggie Thompson (Comics Buyers Guide) at a comic convention in Philadelphia in the early 90s. I had no luck but I never gave up. Finally I made an inroad (the Internet can be a wonderful thing). Last year I found a match to the handkerchief on Pinterest (shown below). Text accompanying the photos identified the character as Lilly, from The Adventures of Lovely Lilly.

handkerchief (front view) 

handkerchief (back view)

NOW I was making some headway. Further research revealed that The Adventures of Lovely Lilly was a short-lived newspaper strip that ran in the Sunday New York Herald at the dawn of the 20th century. Written by Carolyn Wells and illustrated by G.F. (George Frederick) Kaber, Lovely Lilly featured an intrepid young lady who faced down fearsome beasts and dispatched them with alacrity. The text featured on the handkerchief reads as follows:

Lovely Lilly met a tiger walking in the wood.
Angrily he snapped and snarled as any tiger would.
By his throat she firmly grabbed him til he held his breath.
With her chubby hands she squeezed him til he choked to death.

Wow. Lilly was certainly no pushover!

A photo of Carolyn Wells and a few examples of Kaber’s non-Lilly art follow:

photo of Carolyn Wells

artwork by G.F. Kaber 

G.F. Kaber signature

artwork by G.F. Kaber 

Here are a few more samples of Lilly’s adventures:



Lovely Lilly in her travels met a buffalo.
Fierce and furious, the creature rushed at Lilly – so!
Naughty! Naughty! Lilly cried with disapproving frown.
Then she stuffed him in her box and shut the cover down.



Lovely Lilly idly watched an elephant draw nigh.
When he glared at her, she looked him squarely in the eye.
When he trumpeted loud and thought he’s rouse her fear,
Lilly only laughed at him, and soundly boxed his ears.



Lovely Lilly out a walking saw a crocodile.
Lovely Lilly said “Good morning” with a pleasant snile.
Nearer came the beast and nearer. Wide he stretched his maw.
Lovely Lilly with a quiet wrench broke the creature’s paw.

While hardly the stuff of sweet childhood dreams, Lilly was not unique when it comes to examples of grisly detail in children’s literature (the Brothers Grimm being one obvious prior example). Without question these were different times and the comic art preceding the First World War and later, the Great Depression were received by a reading public of a different sensibility.

I can only imagine my grandfather as a pre-teen youngster, eagerly devouring the stories of Lilly, Foxy, Yellow Kid, and Happy Hooligan. Perhaps too, the likes of The Katzenjammer Kids, Alphonse and Gaston, Buster Brown, Little Nemo in Slumberland, Mutt & Jeff, or Toonerville Trolley. What an exciting time to be a kid!

New book: Biographical Sketches of Cartoonists & Illustrators in Library of Congress

I've known Sara Duke since the early 1990s, and have always been impressed with her scholarship and breadth of knowledge. At some point, when I was complaining to her about the lack of a cartoonist biographical dictionary, such as had been done in the UK, she replied that she had a draft of one that had never been published. Terry Echter had begun the project, and Sara took it over in 1993 and completed it by 1995 when the Swann Collection became publicly available (although no additions were made to the collection after 1983). She was kind enough to forward a copy to me, as it is in the public domain.  I have edited and updated it slightly, but this volume remains overwhelmingly the 1995 version that Sara wrote. 

Now available at cost: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/biographical-sketches-of-cartoonists-illustrators-in-the-swann-collection-of-the-library-of-congress/18846113 (print) or http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/biographical-sketches-of-cartoonists-illustrators-in-the-swann-collection-of-the-library-of-congress/18864437 (pdf) or a free download at https://archive.org/details/DukeBioSketchesOfCartoonistsInSwannCollAtLOC

Biographical Sketches of Cartoonists & Illustrators in the Swann Collection of the Library of Congress
by Sara Duke, 340 pages

Inside this book are short biographical sketches about the many artists represented in the Library of Congress' Swann Collection compiled by Erwin Swann (1906-1973). In the early 1960s, Swann, a New York advertising executive started collecting original cartoon drawings of artistic and humorous interest. Included in the collection are political prints and drawings, satires, caricatures, cartoon strips and panels, and periodical illustrations by more than 500 artists, most of whom are American. The 2,085 items range from 1780-1977, with the bulk falling between 1890-1970. The Collection includes 1,922 drawings, 124 prints, 14 paintings, 13 animation cels, 9 collages, 1 album, 1 photographic print, and 1 scrapbook.

UPDATED 2/22/2017: A new printing has been uploaded with a correction - deleting TE Coles and adding in CE Toles.  You can print out the following and insert it in your first printing -

Biographical Sketches of  Cartoonists & Illustrators in the  Swann Collection  of the

Library of Congress - Errata sheet for first edition, first printing (2012)

Delete the entry for T.E. Coles.

Insert instead

CLAUDE ELDRIDGE TOLES (“Hugh Morris”)

1875-1901

American cartoonist, who was born and grew up in Elmira, New York and worked as a cartoonist for the Elmira Telegram in 1893 after starting his working career as a clerk. Editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post in 1894. His work appeared in the Texas Sandwich a humorous periodical, as well as the Canadian magazine Toronto Saturday Night. He returned home in 1895 to recover from pneumonia. Cartoonist who worked for the New York Herald as a freelance cartoonist in 1896. In 1898, he went to Baltimore to work for the International Syndicate which distributed his work nationally. He joined the Baltimore Sketch Club while there. His work was distributed to the Philadelphia Press between 1899 and 1901. He soon rose to the position of art director. He created The Reverend Fiddle D.D. for the New York Journal in 1898. He also contributed cartoons to Puck and Judge. He drew under his own name and several aliases, including Hugh Morris. At the time of his death, he had formed the Baltimore Illustration Syndicate. He died of Bright’s Disease – kidney failure – on December 16, 1901 in Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York, while visiting his in-laws. He was buried in Elmira, New York. Editorial cartoonist Tom Toles is not related.

Info from: “Guide to the SFACA Collection: Newspaper Comic Strips, series II: comic strips – Philadelphia Press,” Ohio State University, http://cartoons.osu.edu/finding_aids/sfaca/philadelphia_press.html , 10/04/2011 {See Swann Collection}; “Claude Eldridge Toles Collection (1875-1901), http://charleywag.wordpress.com/ , 06/11/2013; “News of Yore: The Life and Times of C.E. Toles,” Stripper’s Guide Blog, entry for March 3, 2012,  http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2012_02_26_archive.html , 06/11/2013: “Wellknown Cartoonist Dead,” Westfield (N.Y.) Republican, December 18, 1901, p. 2; Mike Rhode, “Claude E. Toles exhibit at the Cosmos Club,” ComicsDC Blog, entry for October 25, 2016,  http://comicsdc.blogspot.com/2016/10/claude-e-toles-exhibit-at-cosmos-club.html , 10/25/2016