Guest Blogging By My Younger Self, Part Four

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Remember having "tapes" which got "eaten"? From the same journal as the previous few posts.

Guest Blogging By My Younger Self, Part Three

 

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These are, obviously, kiddie-style drawings of my friends in the class for which this journal was made.

Could it possibly be any more 1980s? I especially like the gigantic Esprit logo.

You may remember "K.T." as my prom date.

Guest Blogging By My Younger Self Part 1

This is a page from my journal for English class, 1981-2, when I was 16, in which I listed "People who don't deserve to have anything named after them":

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My biggest question today is, to be honest, what were my media sources? I see names from the creaky end of the variety show era, from the news, and from the radio, which is understandable, but how did I know about the whole Warhol Studio 54 crowd? I even remember leaving Warhol himself OFF the list because I liked him too much. How did I know about Halston and Bianca Jagger and Margaret Trudeau? I just don't remember.

Anyway, not substantially different from a blog post I might make today! I especially like the mingling of terrible dictators with minor pop celebrities. I'm pretty sure this is the only list ever made to include Karen Valentine and Baby Doc Duvalier, or Idi Amin and Wink Martindale. Solid pairings.

More to come!

Bookshelf: The "Nancy" Dictionary

Young people probably encounter certain big, thick books and think, "What are these things? So many words!" I am, of course, referring to dictionaries and telephone books, probably the saddest relics of print's bygone age.

You'll pry my copy of Houghton-Mifflin's New College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (1976) from my cold, lifeless hands, however. Why? It's not that great, even by print dictionary standards, though totally serviceable. Why is this particular has-been deserving of my fondness?

Simple! When you look up "comic strip," you find this:

So tiny, and yet still so perfectly legible.

Coming up later this evening: two great original "Nancy" drawings from the 40s.

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

The joys of DIY home repair. Click all for bigger.

OK, you've all been very patient. What can I say? Callista Gingrich hasn't been shot by a wire photographer for weeks, so what am I to write about? What this blog needs is a new spectacular hairdo to follow.

But here is the rest of the collected first year of "Tad" Dorgan's Indoor Sports cartoons from 1914. I love looking at these early ones, because the figure drawings are so much more crude than his slick 1920s IS panels, but it only makes the really successful figures seem all that more impressive.

Below is one of the few sympathetic portrayals of an attractive woman I seen in Tad's work, unlike the nattering dummies shown above. I don't know if I'd call him misogynist; he was reportedly devoted to his wife. Basically, I think he simply lived in a man's man's world, palling around with Damon Runyon, gamblers, boxers, etc.

The ubiquitous "little white terrier" finally becomes the center of a gag:

The battle of the spouses rages on. I love the complex dynamics of the social interactions shown in this one:

I've never read anything about Dorgan's attitude towards religion, but comics like this make me think he thought of it as just another theater for cynicism and pettiness:

Silly young salesgirls:

And more church-centric squabbling:

A lot of these scenes of domestic woe, such as the two below, have the unmistakeable aroma of gripe sessions over poker games:

And, finally, more office hijinks:

I have more original "Tad" drawings in my collection, including a book illustration, a boxing gag strip, another 20s Indoor Sports panel, and a significant "funny dogs" strip from considerably earlier, so more to come!

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

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.

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

(Click any image for larger) Right on the cover: Tad at his most morbid.

This collection of Thomas Aloysius "TAD" Dorgan's daily Indoor Sports panels, published by [EDIT: corrected] the National Specials Co. of New York, is an early example of bound and reprinted newspaper comics. Indoor Sports debuted in Hearst newspapers in 1914, and all of the cartoons in the book appear to date from its first year, so I'm assuming this was published in about 1915. It measures 6" x 9" and contains 60 drawings beautifully reproduced on relatively cheap paper (I've seen much worse) and simply bound in boards with a cloth taped spine. I don't think I'll be able to scan every page without damaging the book more than it already is, but I'll give it my best, although the reproductions here won't be in order. The first page, alas, appears to be missing, but here's the introduction:

So right off the bat, Tad is pointing an accusatory finger at the reader: enjoy your schadenfreude now, because you're next. And indeed, his caustic daily slice of urban life was enjoyed by many; it was an enormous success, launched a thousand catch phrases (as I explained here and here), spawned numerous imitators, and ran for nearly fifteen years until Dorgan's death in 1929.

Tad's subject matter ranged from major embarrassments and gaffes, such as seen above, to minor annoyances, such as the prattling ladies below. Note also above that Tad is still working out how to tell a sequence of events in a single drawing; it's awkward that the earlier remarks take place on the right side of the drawing. He was much better at this later.

Practical jokes on unsuspecting rubes are a common theme, as with this hapless office boy:

Dorgan's ear for, and love of, slang was unparalleled, and a lot of these are hard to understand today. I also own a copy of Tad's best-selling collected Daffydils, his hand-written column from the preceding decade, and the stuff is so utterly drenched in now-forgotten vernacular as to be totally incomprehensible (see somebody else's scans of this 1911 (not 1901) book here).

Note the reference above to Bill Mizner. who not only knew a scammer when he saw one, but was quite a scammer himself.

Below is one of my favorites, a classic scene of card table revenge:

Another technique of note seen above and in many (if not most) of these is Tad's use of minor background characters to serve as a Greek chorus. Below is a humorous reminder that much of the film industry was still based in New York in the teens. This one is from the first week of Indoor Sports' run in 1914:

Another card table scene, another argument:

And below is yet another would-be scammer caught in the act. Also note the primitive quality of the early "Benday/Zipatone" dot screens:

I bet Tad visited a New York film studio and got plenty of ideas, such as this grotesque couple:

The inconveniences of modern conveniences:

The bitter, the jealous, the petty, and the incidental dog:

The chiseler seen coming from a mile away:

The Broadway boarding house:

And a more lighthearted theme, fooling around at work, for which Tad was notorious:

Another pretentious ego deflated:

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