Opper, Outcault and Company

The 10 page article below appeared in the June 1905 edition of Everybody’s Magazine. Written by the American journalist and humorist Roy McCardell, the article is subtitled “The Comic Supplement and the Men who Make It”. By 1905, as the article points out, the Sunday newspaper supplement featuring comic strips was ten years old. McCardell’s piece takes and inside-baseball look at the state of the Sunday comics, providing anecdotes and rumors about the major newspaper cartoonists and syndicate folks of the day.

As you’ll see by the images on the website’s homepage and within the article below, there were some wonderful drawings created specifically for this piece. Interestingly, even though the magazine published a superb self-caricature by Gus Dirks, he is not even mentioned in McCardell’s article. Maybe the stigma of Dirks’ suicide made it difficult to talk about him in a public forum. Sadly, it was a missed opportunity to get some contemporary views on Dirks’ wonderful work.

I have not cleaned up these pages very much. Outside of scanning them from the original magazine, I’ve tried to make them as readable as possible, while maintaining the paper’s wonderful patina.

I hope you enjoy this somewhat rare peek at a first-hand account by someone who was there at the dawn of the newspaper Sunday page comics section.

I apologize for the irregularity of my blog postings. With retirement I figured I’d have more time to devote to the blog, but happily I’ve been spending much more time in my studio, creating new, odd works. I have a long list of blog ideas and subjects to write about, and will get to them little by little. My aim is a new post every two to three months.

Until next time, I hope everyone is well.