Comic Caper: Back to School Edition

I was thinking of putting together a collection of back-to-school cartoons for today's Studentbacker Saturday, just so I could show off this cartoon by Chicago Daily News editorial cartoonist Vaughn Shoemaker, featuring my Dad:

"Education" by Vaughn Shoemaker for Chicago Daily News, September, 1935

Dad says he was actually five years old when this was drawn, not six. He has the autographed original framed and hanging in his office; the image above is from a photograph rather than a scan because removing the cartoon from the frame would probably ruin it. I've tweaked the photo considerably in Photoshop to minimize the effects from decades of yellowing.

But I haven't come across any inspiring vintage back-to-school cartoons yet, so a full blog post on that topic will have to wait for another day. Not that there aren't any old cartoons on education; I included one by Winsor McCay in a post for Labor Day weekend last year. But I do wonder whether the Katzenjammer Kids ever went to school at all. I read through their entire escapades for the month of September, 1917 without finding one mention of them attending classes — although they did go to the zoo once or twice a week.

🎒

So instead, here's more of my Funny Paper Caper series, drawn for the UW-Parkside Ranger in 1983-84 that I've been running here since July.

Looking back, the inconsistency in how much space my cartoon required from week to week must have really cheesed off the lay-out editor. This was the second time that an episode took up three rows of panels instead of one.

And here, ferschitzengiggels, is one more episode, standard length, for today.