Comics 1910s-1920s:

I know since we changed up the structure of things I am no longer doing comics. So, Alex, you can use any of the stuff from this that helps your research.

-Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland(began Oct 15, 1095) set new standard for the genre: good draftsmanship, produced in full color
-common themes: Children, ex. Loyonel Feininger The Kin-der-Kids(April 29, 1906), Merrill Blosser Freckles and His Friends(Sept 20,1915), Gene Byrnes Reg'lar Fellas(c. 1916), R.M. Brinkerhoff's Little Mary Mixup(1917), Edwina Dumm Cap Stubbs and Trippie(early 1918), Ernie Bushmiller Nancy, Carl Ed Harold Teen(May 4, 1919)
-Also family ex. George MaMaus Bringing Up Father(Jan 2, 1913) was about married life, Jimmy Murphy Toots and Casper(Dec 17, 1918), Sidney Smith The Gumps, George Herriman Krazy Kats(also about enduring quality of love which would have gone over the heads of the children reading, The Family Upstairs(Aug 1, 1910)
-Animals also often used: Uncle Wiggly(c. 1919), Peter Rabbit(c.1920)
-Sunday supplements, imitated weekly comic magazines, started in part for kids, but they also had adult themes(that would go over the heads of children)
-Clare Briggs and H. T. Webster both did daily comics whose subject's changed by day: sometimes focusing on children, other times on their parents
-Thomas A. Dorgan: did sport comics, Indoor Sports and Outdoor Sports
-J. R. Williams comics about machine shop and open range(west), Out Out Way
-Comics reflected interests and aspirations of the middle class
-popularity of movies also inspired: Ed Wheelan Midget Movies(April 8, 1918) later became Minute Movies(1921), characters are actors who are appearing in a movie, E. C. Segar Thimble Theatre(Dec 19, 1919) later in Jan 17, 1929 Segar introduced some new secondary character who took over the strip: Popeye , Chester Gould did a similar Fillum Fables (c. 1927), before he created Dick Tracy
-Growing liberation of American woman = comics aimed at this new audience: Cliff Sterrett's Polly and Her Pals(Dec 4, 1912) humor in contrast between heroine attitude and that of her Victorian parents, Martin Branner Winnie Winkle, (Sept 20, 1920) and Russ Westover Tille and the Toiler(Jan 3, 1921) both about life of working girl
-Emergence of flapper also had influence: C. A. Voight Betty(1920), Edgar Martin Boots and His Buddies(Feb18, 1924), Jefferson Machamer Petting Patty(1928), John Held Jr. Merely Margy(1929), Virgina Huget's Molly and the Manicure Girl(c.1928), Ethel Hays Flapper Fanny Says(1924)
-Chicago Tribune publisher, Robert McCormack, thought his readers needed help learning how to care for/repair their automobiles, which where just starting to become affordable for the middle class, had staff cartoonist Frank King to add a panel about car maintenance to weekly page of comics called The Rectangle, created Gasoline Alley in 1918
-Strip changed greatly in 1921: McCormack's cousin/ Tribune partner, Joseph Patterson, felt the strip was alienating women = wanted a baby in it
-but the main character, Walt Wallet, wasn't married, so he was made to discover a baby on his doorstep on Valentine's Day 1921
-Arrive of baby = strip developed a day to day story line, grew into a family strip
-strip then gained its most unique feature: its characters aged
(p36-63)

Hervey, Robert. Children of the Yellow Kid. (Seattle: Frye Art Museum, 1998)