Sunday Mirror Funny Papers

As noted elsewhere, at many newspaper stand dealers and candy store owners put the funny papers on top of the Sunday papers to attract customers.This meant Joe Palooka by Ham Fisher was the face of the Sunday Mirror for many readers.

Palooka was a boxer who first appeared in 1930 and according to a 1948 poll was one of the five favorite comic strips of the day. Wikipedia says originally his features changed to match those of the reigning heavyweight champ until African American Joe Louis took the title and Joe Palooka became fixed as a boyish-looking Nordic blond. "Palooka" had been a derogatory word for an inept boxer before the strip premiered, but Joe Palooka was a champion. In 1946 Monogram launched a movie series with Joe Kirkwood as Joe Palooka. The first of these movies, "Joe Palooka: Champ," was playing in New York this week. A would be-boxer was also the central character played by Danny Kaye in The Kid From Brooklyn, the week's big movie opening.There had been earlier films and shorts based on the Palooka strip as well. A Joe Palooka comic book debuted in 1945. Fisher had a longstanding, bitter feud with Al Capp who had at one time been his assistant. Capp's comic strip L'il Abner was also carried by the Mirror. See Don Markstein's wonderful encyclopedia of comics Toonpedia for more.

L'il Abner by Al Capp began in 1934, introducing readers to the Yokums, Daisy Mae and the other colorful hillbillies who inhabited Dogpatch USA. It had been popular with general readers since its inception but in the post war years it became increasingly seen by the highbrow set as a witty satire on society and politics, particularly when Capp targeted Right Wing politicians (in his later years he went after the counter-culture of the late 1960s). A low-budget movie version of L'il Abner was made in 1940 (a Broadway hit and movie musical came later) as well as a series of cartoons in 1944 that came to a quick end at Capp's insistence. (At the 2009 Comic Con publisher IDW announced it would begin releasing a definitive collection of all the L'il Abner strips).

The back page of the Mirror funny papers was devoted to the adventures of Superman, who needs no introduction. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, he made his comic book debut in 1938. The strip began in 1939. The strip had storylines that departed from the comic book, but a number of characters and premises, like the quick change in a phone booth, were introduced in the newspaper strip. Several writers and artists worked on the strip in the 1940s. This week found Superman foiling the plot of Queen Arda who had tried to trick him into believing that his superpowers did not work on her planet in order to force him to marry her. He catches on to her plot and tells her she should marry the man who loves her. But first he has the man give the headstrong monarch a good spanking to show her who was the boss. Not much of feminist, this Superman character.

Another comic strip superstar in the Sunday Mirror stable was Red Ryder by Fred Harman. Red Ryder was a cowboy who began riding the newspaper range in 1938. He was heavily merchandised from the beginning. Republic produced a series of Red Ryder motion pictures in the 1940s. There were Red Ryder comics, books, a radio show and a bevy of merchandise, most famously the Daisy Red Rider BB gun coveted by Ralphie in the Christmas time movie favorite A Christmas Story. Many little boys as well as some of their sisters wanted to grow up to be cowboys in 1946. I had a friend who a few years later would answer only to the name Roy Rogers in first grade.

Alley Oop, another favorite, was created by V. T. Hamlin in 1932. He was a caveman but by 1946 a time machine took him on adventures throughout history. This week he was in Atlantis. The strip is still carried in hundreds of newspapers.

Henry was by Carl Anderson. Henry was a bald kid who started out in The Saturday Evening Post in 1932 and moved over to King Features at the end of 1934. He never spoke in the comic strip but acquired a voice in the Dell comic books that began appearing in 1946. Anderson was 81 in 1946 and, although the comic strip was set in contemporary times it had a nostalgic feel.

A number of the comic strips in the Mirror had been around longer than the paper, including Toonerville Folks by Fontaine Fox, The Toonerville Trolley had been running zanily along in this classic comic since 1908. Other longtime favorites included:

• Out Our Way: The Willets by J.R. Williams, a strip about small town life that began in 1922. The Sunday strip was handled by assistants and differed somewhat from the nostalgic single panels drawn for the dailies.

• Our Boarding House: Major Hoople. Blowhard Major Amos B. Hoople was the star character in this strip which debuted in 1921. Boarding houses were a big part of the urban scene until the middle of the Twentieth Century. They were where unmarried men generally took their room and board as well as a popular way for families with more house than income to pay off the mortgage.

• Freckles and His Friends was created by Merrill Blosser in 1915. It was the adventures of a teenager and his pals in a small town. Hector was the strip's topper, a companion single strip about a young boy.

More recent additions included:

• The Flop Family by Swan (George O. Swanson), the comic adventures of an All American family which debuted in 1943.

• Kerry Drake by Alfred Andriola, the Mirror's answer to Dick Tracy, begun in 1943. It had a more realistic look than Tracy.

• Mickey Finn by Lank Leonard was a lovable small-town, Irish-American cop who first appeared in 1936.

• Bobby Sox by Marty Links began in 1944 as a lighthearted depiction of the emerging teen culture. Marty Links was one of the few female cartoonists active at the time. The strip is better known by its later name. Emmy Lou, which it acquired in 1951 as the bobby sox craze began to fade.

• Barney Baxter in the Air by Frank Miller. Baxter was a teenage aviator when he debuted in 1935 but had become a crime-fighting adult by the time he reached Hearst's King Features Syndicate. Miller had returned to the strip in 1945, having left in 1942 after a heart attack. He is not the same Frank Miller who is a cartoonist today.

• Jane Arden was a spunky girl reporter who first appeared in 1927. Monte Barrett was the strip's writer and Russell Ross the artist in 1946.

• Batman & Robin by Bob Kane was the first of three short-lived attempts to create a newspaper strip featuring the popular comic book characters. The comic book began in 1939 and was a big hit. The strip ran from 1943 to 1946.

• Cranberry Boggs by Don Dean was a weak attempt to replicate the success of a L'il Abner by locating a lovable, naive oaf in a small fishing village populated by yokels. It debuted in 1945 and folded in 1949.

• Captain Easy was introduced in 1929 as a globetrotting soldier of fortune. It was one of the first adventure strips. He joined the Army during the war and became a detective in the postwar world. Creator Roy Crane left in 1943 to create Buzz Sawyer, a competing strip.

The funny papers also carried ads for products like Spic & Span. The ad for Camel Cigarettes claimed it was the cigarette that "more doctors smoke." A small town nobody becomes a glamor gal thanks to Listerine toothpaste in another ad.