Fathers' Day 1918

It's Father's Eve, so Sireback Saturday brings you a selection of 100-year-old comic strips about Father. The dialogue is tiny, in part because comic strips were given much more space in the newspaper than they are today, so you'll have to beclickify these samples to embiggen them enough for eulegibilitizationness.

It seems only natural that we should start with George McManus's long-running strip, Bringing Up Father.

"Bringing Up Father" by George McManus, June 19, 1918

What strikes us immediately is that the typical father in 1918 was pathetically henpecked, subject to the violent mood swings of his mate, just because he was an idiot who blurted out any thought that happened to cross his mind. If anybody had heard of Asperger's Syndrome at the time, perhaps Jiggs could have gotten the treatment he so sorely deserved, rather than having to escape his home on the zip line installed expressly for that purpose.

Everyone had them in those days. I've seen the photos.

"Poor Mr. W." by Gene Carr, June 16, 1918

Gene Carr patterned his Poor Mr. W. (one of several short-lived cartoons by Carr) after Bringing Up Father, but molded its title character into a civic-minded, educated gentleman who was willing to admit his own mistakes in support of the War Effort as seen in this Fathers' Day episode. Note too the forward-looking attitude toward women in the workplace!

"When a Man's Married" by William Gordon "Jack" Farr for US Feature Service, June 15, 1918

The father in Jack Farr's "When a Man's Married" illustrates how getting married drives a man to drink. Sure it may start with an innocently medicinal daily teaspoon of whiskey, but one teaspoon soon becomes a tablespoon, and before you know it, the doctor has you chugging an entire barrel of the stuff.

You may think Mr. Farr's attitudes toward medicinal alcohol quaint. 100 years hence, your great-great-grandchildren will probably think the same about medicinal marijuana.

One thing that has been missing in our Fathers' Day strips so far has been anyone fathered by the title characters. Therefore, let us check in on Dad and the kids.

"'S'Matter, Pop" by Charles M. Payne for Bell Syndicate, June 16, 1918

The father in Mr. Payne's long-running strip has obviously been reading too many books touting the supposed benefits of permissive parenting. By not sternly correcting his son's anastic delusions, the son is put at risk of drowning, or worse. Pop could use a shave, too. I'll bet he's one of them bolsheviki.

"Doings of the Duffs" by Walter Allman for Scripps Syndicate, June 21, 1918

Walter Allman's Doings of the Duffs, I guess, confirms my suspicion that fathers in the Nineteen-teens had not mastered the element of water yet. Best leave them on dry land.

"Polly and Her Pals" by Cliff Sterrett for Hearst Newspapers, June 15, 1918

Sam Perkins' daughter Polly has joined the local police department in the above installment, further entrenching the proto-feminazi domination of American incels in the 20th Century. Fortunately for Pa, there is still a rump force of traditional male patriarchy meeting clandestinely under the cover of cigar smoke around a poker table. The resistance continues.

To the father-child relationship, this next cartoon by Charles H. Wellington adds the dimension of the relationship between father-in-law and son-in-law (a relationship that apparently fascinated him, because he drew strips with three other variations on this title between 1911 and 1942). This Sunday cartoon takes up an entire broadsheet page, which is not only bigger than the phone you're trying to read this on, it's bigger than any newspaper on the newsstand today. In an attempt to make it somewhat legible, I've broken it up into three pieces.

"That Son-In-Law of Pa's" by Charles H. Wellington for Newspaper Feature Service, June 16, 1918

See what Mr. Wellington did there? He very cleverly stepped on his own gag in the topper of the cartoon in case you got tired of reading it and missed the very helpful tip for spotting German spies in the final panel. Sure, it spoiled the joke, but the country was at war, dammit. No mere joke was more important than saving the country from the Boche!

"Doings of the Duffs" by Walter Allman for Scripps Syndicate, June 13, 1918

Returning to Tom Duff: I'll bet he pulled this same trick when he was called up to the draft board, too. (The U.S. raised the draft age was to 49 in June of 1918 as these cartoons were published.)

Now, I've read several episodes of Doings of the Duffs, and I'm not at all sure what Olivia's relationship to Tom and Helen Duff is. She lives in their house and sees gentlemen callers there; but she calls Mr. and Mrs. Duff by their first names, so she doesn't seem to be their daughter or daughter-in-law. She's not their maid (that's Daisy, an African-American woman). If she were Tom or Helen's sister, one would think Tom would be less rude to her beaux in the interest of getting her out of the house.

If she isn't a Duff, is she then, the prototypical DUFF?