Comic Caper, Part Dos

Stripback Saturday returns to an old comic strip I drew about a murder mystery in the funny pages. I drew The Funny Paper Caper over the course of the 1983-84 school year for the UW-Parkside Ranger (that's four years before Who Framed Roger Rabbit... but I'm not actively considering suing Disney Corporation at this point in time).

When we left our story, our police lieutenant narrator had begun his investigation of the murder of Rufus T. Pornapple. Having just talked to Mrs. Pornapple, who thought he had arrived to take report of a burglary at their home, our intrepid detective is about to meet the neighbors.

In addition to the occasional picture on the wall of some bit of cartoon history, I mimicked the balloons and printing of the cartoon characters. I somehow failed to incorporate a gargantuan sandwich or a bathtub into this part of the story line, however.

I'm going to need to explain here the inside joke that Strollin Bowlin' was a mascot who appeared in UW-P Ranger advertisements for the campus bowling alley.

Mimicking their cartoonists' lettering, it was so much easier to cram a lot of dialogue into Kathy's balloons than Mr. Dumpstead's.

✒

How the Stephen Millers of the 19th Century Regarded Your Forebears

If I hadn't set the ball rolling on this Comic Caper nostalgia last week, I should probably have taken Trump's announcement of his No-Wretched-Refuse-Allowed immigration bill to present a more scholarly look back at 19th-Century editorial cartoons that warned against allowing your immigrant ancestors into the United States.

It's been done before, however. Here's an example that takes on almost every immigrant nationality, anyway (plus First Nations) (and even Canadians); and consider this your trigger warning that it's rather offensive.

"Please, Ma'am, May We Come In?" by Grant E. Hamilton in  Judge, 1893.