Bookshelf: "Indoor Sports" Collection By "TAD" Dorgan, Ca. 1915, Part Two

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Continuing onward with scans from the collected Indoor Sports comics by "Tad" Dorgan from the New York Evening Journal, ca. 1914. What's interesting about these earlier drawings to me is that Tad's pen technique is so good, totally refined and in-control, but his figure drawings are still occasionally terrible, like the man on the right seen above. Five years later, all the awkwardness was totally gone.

All the same, Tad was really getting to be a master of body language, and came up with some wonderful figural compositions, like this hilarious retail scene:

Caveat emptor:

Just look at Dorgan's amazing hatching/crosshatching. I'm guessing that he only resorted to dot screens when he was up against a deadline:

More  mayhem in the workplace:

And always, always lots of newspaper and journalism gags. Below, on the right, is a caricature of legendary editor Arthur Brisbane:

The battle of the sexes never wanes in Tad's world:

Another newsroom scene:

I love this one, a superb scene of religious awkwardness and hypocrisy:

The impossibility of privacy in a modern urban middle class family household:

And the unlikelihood of escaping that environment:

Classic "bullpen" scene showing Dorgan himself behind the drawing board. Some of these guys are obviously caricatures, but of whom I do not know. Note the reference to Tad's pal George Herriman of Krazy Kat fame:

Itinerant salesmen in a second-rate hotel:

The battle of the sexes, suffused with delusion and deception, rages on:

Baby's caterwauling threatens to interfere with some old-fashioned air duct eavesdropping:

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the newspaper offices:

Literally counting their chickens before they're hatched. And speaking of hatching, this one looks unfinished on the right, and notice the ugly dot screens used to finish the characters:

Tad got lazy! Not in this drawing, though:

Part one is here, part three is here, and part four is here.