Michigan Miscellany: Comic Strips

In addition to comic books, I've always liked and enjoyed newspaper comic strips... although oddly enough I've never followed many in the newspapers themselves. It's been pretty rare when any local or otherwise easily obtainable newspaper had the strips I wanted to read.

In fairly early youth, I discovered (via the well-equipped Fort Clayton library) collections of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Little Orphan Annie, books I've been able to obtain in adulthood. Both collections were sometimes frustrating selections of stories, sometimes cutting off in mid-episode or starting in the middle, but they were still very satisfying. The Buck Rogers material, titled The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, was very primitive for the most part, but had an appealing energy. The strips were written by Dick Calkins and usually drawn by Phil Nowlan, and featured an endless series of very art deco spaceships and gadgets, and the usual derring do. Rogers fights rather incongruous Mongols who'd taken over the 25th Century Earth to begin with, but was soon on to interplanetary voyages and wars with the likes of Tiger Men of Mars. He spars with the air pirate Black Barney and Killer Kane, and has a rather testy relationship with Lieutenant Wilma Deering, his guide to the future he's landed in. It's glorious stuff.

I had no notion of Flash Gordon at this point, outside of TV reruns of the old serials, because of the vagaries of library collections. But Buck Rogers had many qualities. The strip began in 1929, the same day as Tarzan, and was one of the first serial adventure strips. While not as popular as Thimble Theatre with Popeye, which gave mid-century Americans words like jeep and goon and phrases like "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," the imagery and excitement of the strip entered daily usage. Even today, no one would be mystified by a phrase like "No bucks, no Buck Rogers," from The Right Stuff. This early spaceman's name is a synonym for advanced technology. Most people might recall Buck Rogers from the 1970s TV show; can't say I ever watched it, so I can't comment. I guess I couldn't believe it was likely to measure up to that old stuff from the 20s and 30s.

Arf! The Life and Hard Times of Little Orphan Annie 1935-1945 was a very different sort of experience. Annie's adventures were more down to Earth. Frequently separated from her billionaire adoptive father "Daddy" Warbucks, Annie would find herself caught up in some poor or middle class family's struggles with evil bankers or organized criminals or sometimes communist spies, which author/artist Harold Gray had a gift for portraying with particularly horrifying amorality. Annie was no shrinking violet; perhaps the most ordinary and unremarkable character of the golden age of the comic strip, she had no noticeable powers or even skills. She was tough and honorable, and spent the Depression years giving an example of how to behave on the comic pages.

Annie isn't impressed with orphanages; Warbucks isn't, either, but he is determined to do things the legal way. Notice Annie's businesslike outfit, suitable for the times. Her usual dress might have seemed frivolous in WW II.

Gray was a flinty conservative in a very liberal age. He notoriously disliked FDR, who is never mentioned in the strip, loathed communists with a burning passion, showed unions in a very bad light, and generally praised the virtues of self-reliance, thrift and enterprise. The real hero of the story, on the relatively rare occasions he shows up, is the unapologetic capitalist tycoon Oliver Warbucks, who loses fortunes and gains them back with reckless abandon, always quietly serving his country's interests without much real regard for his own bottom line. Perhaps the most unique part of the strip's appeal is the fact that the good guys are actually rather terrifying. Warbucks is somebody you wouldn't want to get on your bad side - though generous and kind, enemies find him merciless; his chief aides are two truly appalling musclemen, the giant turbanned Punjab, who has mystical powers and sometimes disappears foes in a cloud of smoke, never to be seen again, and the sinister Asp, a black-hatted assassin of vaguely Eurasian appearance, who is the very model for someone you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

When things cut up rough, and Gray builds up to these big confrontations with great skill and patience, one genuinely worries about the characters. Annie's opponents are not concerned about her tender age; Warbucks ends up nearly dead many times. The strip is moody and dark, and Gray does not spare the reader. Some scenes stay with you forever after you read them, like the terrifying 1937 sequence in which Warbucks and the Asp are apparently slain by a murderous gang far up a jungle river, and then the strange Mr. Am intervenes, with eerie, understated consequences. Who is the jolly, white-bearded Mr. Am, who seems like an eccentric old rich man who makes inexplicable remarks and claims to be millions of years old? The reader can only guess. Or the 1938 series of strips in which Annie and her dog Sandy are being hunted in the night by the evil spy Axel and his gang, who are using two huge, horrible hunting dogs. One of the dogs catches them, and Sandy, a mutt a third the size of the hound, fights like a hero, his death apparently inevitiable, until Annie is able to intervene with an ax, off panel. When Axel's men and the other dog arrive, the second beast sees what happened to his partner and doesn't care for it; he refuses to continue to track Annie and Sandy. Axel shoots the dog, and the hunt is over, but Annie is still in danger from the gang.

Both the Buck Rogers and Orphan Annie strips become spare and different in the 1940s, when World War II begins. In different ways - the Buck Rogers strip is set in the future, after all - both become tied to the war effort. Calkins signs his strips "Lt. Dick Calkins" and his characters fight their own war; Annie tangles with Nazi spies and Warbucks is no longer interested in wealth as he supports the war effort. Both of the compilations end in 1945, and of course the golden age of the adventure comic strip did, as well. Steve Canyon was yet to come, and Prince Valiant and Buzz Sawyer had good years yet, but nothing was really the same for comic strips after the war.

The comic strip format is very different from comic books. Each daily (or Sunday) strip has to be a little self-contained story. It constrains the narrative, and makes it a bit jerky at times, but it also unmistakably shows the skill of the storytellers. Not just anybody can tell an effective story in four panels a day and keep the reader interested. Modern strips aren't as good at it. The size of the daily strip is smaller, the serial strips are regarded as old fashioned, and the great creators of the 20s to the 40s, Al Capp, Harold Gray, Bud Segar, Harold Foster, Milt Caniff and Chester Gould are all long gone. The better comic strip men of the second half of the 20th century would be gag artists: Charles Shultz, Bill Watterson, Walt Kelly and Mort Walker all worked with humor first, adventure second.

Annie (the "Little Orphan" is gone) is still around, revived in the 1970s. But now the strip is about Warbucks, and a bunch of new characters, all adults for the most part. Annie is mostly carried along like baggage, moving from one comfortable stop with friends to another with adventures in between. Not the same thing at all, although it is a decent strip. I wonder what's changed that in our society that 12 year old Annie of the 20s-40s could be such a vigorous moral force in the strip, but in the modern period, the creators or the syndicate can't believe the readers might like that. The strip is aimed at adults now, I suspect. The old Little Orphan Annie was appealing to children and adults alike.

More comic strips another time. Prince Valiant was my other big favorite, and I thought I'd survey some of the strips one can get at on the Internet today, including reprints of old comics.