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Home arrow The Pioneers

The Pioneers
Page 32 of 35

Book 2
The Mutt and Jeff Cartoons, Book 2 (Bell Publishing, 1911). Art/script: Bud Fisher. Domestic comedy dominated newspaper strips in the first two decades of the century, and explored areas of working class life often ignored by other media. Booh collections of strips, such as the latter two illustrations, were increasingly popular, though could not yet be counted as 'comics' per se.
Other notable domestic soaps included: Bud Fisher's 'Mutt and Jeff (1907), a vaudevillian double-act about two continually warring friends (Mutt being a depressed cynic, Jeff a wise fool); Cliff Sterett's 'Polly and her Pals' (1912), about a 'new woman', her suitors, and her father's reaction to them; Harry Tuthill's 'Bungle Family' (1918), about a bunch of (quite likeable) misanthropes; Frank King's 'Gasoline Alley' (1918), about a neighbourhood and the effects of (among other things) the automobile craze; and Sidney Smith's 'The Gumps' (1917), concerning the problems faced by a family during a period of rapid industrial change. Again, these strips often had serious subtexts, as one historian explains: 'Both The Gumps and Gasoline Alley showed that narratives about the problems of middle-class families of the Midwest trying to get ahead and hoping to achieve the American Dream of financial security struck a responsive chord in Americans facing the same difficulties.
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