Chester Gould, whose cartoon Dick Tracy is known to millions, with a drawing and roller skates on February 13, 1952, that he wanted to send to 12-year-old Veronica Tracey. (Louis Paus/Chicago Tribune)
Those who joined the estimated 1 million people who came to the lakeshore over the weekend for the annual Chicago Air and Water Show noise festival were able to see many amazing things.
“The best water in the world,” shouted a guy selling plastic water bottles for $5.
Of course you could see aerial maneuvers, parachutists and a biplane. The Blue Angels. Two men playing chess. There was a man with a colorful parrot on his shoulder and a woman whose face was painted red, white and blue. And near Oak Street I saw an older man sitting in a chair reading comics.
Nowadays, you rarely see anyone reading a newspaper the old-fashioned way, with ink on paper rather than on a phone or laptop. But comics?
The man, who told me he lived in Kenosha, said he had been reading comics since he was a child, “and that was a long time ago.” A newspaper was on the floor next to him and he was holding the comics in his hands. We talked for a while and then his two grandchildren came running and the Saturday Sky Show began.
“Look,” he said, handing me the comics.
While I’m not a regular comic book reader, even as a child, I respect those who do (one grandmother was a fanatical comic book fan) and know that comic books have been a popular form of entertainment for more than a century.
Some people consider them an integral part of the country’s cultural fabric. Richard Marshall, author of America’s Great Comic-Strip Artists, told me years ago, “Comics and jazz are the only two American art forms.”
Although many newspapers, including the Tribune, published a few pages of Sunday cartoons and comic strips in the late 19th century, these were not in color and did not feature continuous figures.
The first newspaper cartoon character appeared in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1895. It was “The Yellow Kid,” a gap-toothed boy with big ears who wore a nightshirt. He became an instant sensation.
William Randolph Hearst, editor of the rival New York Journal, hired the artist of “The Yellow Kid” and made the comic strip the star of a Sunday edition, later touted in 1896 with the title “Eight Pages of Polychrome Splendor That Make the Rainbow Look Like a Lead Pipe!”
The newspaper world realized that this was a circulation booster. After World War I, when comic strips became a daily staple in more and more newspapers, the bosses of the Chicago Tribune, cousins Col. Robert R. McCormick and Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, began producing their own comic strips.
Patterson was a leader, especially after he moved to New York in 1919 to found the Illustrated Daily News (which soon became the New York Daily News).
“It is probably true that no other publisher in history – not even Hearst – had as much interest in the comics he published as Patterson,” wrote Stephen Becker in his 1959 book Comic Art in America.
Patterson was involved in the development and maintenance of many comic strips, including The Gumps, Gasoline Alley, Moon Mullins, and Terry and the Pirates. He was an enthusiastic practical person, giving advice, counseling artists, and coming up with ideas for advertising campaigns. He often gathered cartoonists together to discuss characters and storylines.
My favorite comic story is about the day an artist came into Patterson’s office with a proposal for a comic called “Little Orphan Otto.” Patterson looked at the drawings. “He looks like a wimp,” he said in a disparaging tone that was common at the time. “Put a skirt on the boy and call him Annie.”
Here’s another notable comic story from the Tribune.
When a man named Chester Gould arrived in Chicago in 1921, he found the city “exciting” and decided to stay. He attended Northwestern University, where he studied business and commerce. He married and started a family. He took classes at the Art Institute.
And he created comic strips for the city newspapers. He tried the Tribune but was unsuccessful for ten years. Then he came up with drawings of a detective he called “Tracy in plain clothes.” Patterson took a look at it, shortened it to “Dick Tracy,” and the comic strip was published on October 4, 1931.
It was an instant success. Gould settled with his family on a farm in Woodstock and commuted to the Tribune Tower six days a week. Although he rarely took vacations, he spent half a century in both places creating a variety of strange characters, compelling plots and gadgets that fascinated readers.
I was more than surprised to find Dick Tracy on the pages Campbell gave me, and also “Doonesbury.” I didn’t know other strips like “Wumo,” “Frazz,” “Bound & Gagged,” or “Sherman’s Lagoon,” but I suppose they are popular with some people.
The pages also said that you could “read over 75 more comics.” Seventy-five! Among them I found an offering called “Breaking Cat News” by Georgia Dunn. Ever seen that?
