Political Cartoons by Chester Gould

Here's a bit of cartooning history I hadn't known before.

Earlier this week, I stumbled across a bunch of political cartoons by Chester Gould, better known as the creator of "Dick Tracy." Sure enough, the Lambiek Comiclopedia reports that Gould drew editorial cartoons for the Tulsa Democrat before moving to Illinois to draw for Hearst's Chicago Evening American.

"Serving His Country" by Chester Gould, July, 1920

By the time these cartoons appeared in the second half of July, 1920, the Tulsa Democrat had been folded into the Tulsa Tribune, which means that Gould, born in 1900, drew his Democrat cartoons as a teenager. Neither of those two Tulsa newspapers appear to be archived on line (a potential loss to history, given the Tribune's culpability in fomenting the 1921 Tulsa race riots), but I found each of these six cartoons widely disseminated to other Oklahoma newspapers: The Tahlequah Arrow Democrat, the Cimmaron Valley Clipper, the Beaver Democrat, the Wapanucka Press, Renfrew's Review in Alva, the Stigler State Sentinel, the Mountain View Times, the Norman Daily Transcript, and the Apache Week's Review.

"The Rubber Stamp Gore Used" by Chester Gould, July, 1920

All six attack incumbent Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, who was challenged for reelection to a third term by Congressman Scott Ferris in the August 3 Democratic primary. The "Rubber Stamp" cartoon refers to a congressional resolution Senator Gore and Representative Atkins Jefferson McLemore of Texas introduced in 1914 in an effort to prevent the United States from being drawn into World War I. It would have banned Americans from traveling on armed merchant vessels or ships with contraband. For the most part, that meant British ships like the Lusitania, sunk by German U-boats one year later. Under pressure from President Woodrow Wilson however, both the House and Senate tabled the Gore-McLemore bill.

"Better Watch Out, Old Timer..." by Chester Gould, July, 1920

Gore, who ran for Congress in Mississippi as a Populist before joining the Democratic party and moving to Oklahoma, was elected to the Senate when Oklahoma became a state in 1907. He was blind, and a grandfather of author Gore Vidal. He was one of the first senators to endorse Woodrow Wilson's run for the presidency, in 1911, and was influential in Wilson's first term; but his strong antiwar stance before World War I and his isolationism afterward estranged him from the second term Wilson administration.

The note "Apol. to Knott" under Gould's signature in "Better Watch Out, Old Timer..." must refer either to John Knott of the Dallas News, or comic strip creator Jean Knott, one of whom who must have drawn a similar cartoon.

"That Won't Wash Off" by Chester Gould, July, 1920

Gould's cartoons attack Gore relentlessly for his prewar actions, such as the Senator's opposing military conscription, saying it would create "an army of conscripted slackers." Gore had asked: "Why should we brand the American boy as a conscript without affording him the opportunity to earn the glory of an American volunteer?" In addition to his opposition to the draft, Gore "was one of the earliest and most vigorous sponsors of a constitutional amendment to require a popular referendum on any congressional declaration of war."

"The Accusing Fingers from Flanders Field" by Chester Gould, July, 1920

By some freakish coincidence, the Ferris campaign's main attack against Gore was also over his antiwar statements and legislation. Both candidates complained loudly that the other was attacking him unfairly, while proclaiming that each himself had treated the other with the utmost respect and civility.

"Senator Gore Called Them 'Conscript Slackers'..." by Chester Gould, July, 1920

Given that these cartoons each appeared on the front page of so many Oklahoma newspapers in July, and that I haven't come across any Gould cartoons on any other topic, I have to conclude that the synergy between Gould's cartoons and the Ferris campaign is no coincidence at all. Bolstering my conclusion that Gould was working directly for the Ferris campaign is the Week's Review of Apache, Oklahoma: it ran the "Better Watch Out, Old Timer" cartoon atop its front page on July 23, but with the disclaimer "Political Advertising" beneath it. None of the other newspapers — some of which found reason to run Ferris's portrait on page one every day — ran such a disclaimer with any of these cartoons.

Which is not to say that other newspapers weren't just as brazen in their support of Senator Gore. Newspapers in those days were not the slightest bit shy about trumpeting their political allegiances. You can rest assured that not one of those pro-Gore newspapers ran the Gould cartoons.

Scott Ferris would emerge the victor in the August 3 primary, but then lost to Republican John Harreld in November. Gore won election to the Senate in 1930, but opposed Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs and was ousted again in the 1936 primary.

RFK, 50 Years On

This Tuesday will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Somberback Saturday brings you a round-up from the pens of cartoonists from half a century ago.

"New Kid in the Neighborhood" by Alfred Buescher for King Features, May, 1968

Just to put things in context: Kennedy and Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy had entered the 1968 presidential race as the more liberal alternatives to incumbent President Lyndon Johnson. When LBJ withdrew from the race at the end of March, his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey (who should have had plenty of liberal cred of his own, but was tainted by association with Johnson's war in Vietnam) stepped in as the favored candidate of the Democratic establishment.

The Democratic nomination was still up for grabs when Kennedy won the California primary on June 5. After giving a victory speech to his supporters in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he started through the kitchen toward the press room but was shot three times by Sirhan Bishir Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian. (Yes, I know that RFK Jr. thinks that Sirhan was innocent. George Plympton is no longer with us, but someone can ask Rosey Grier or Rafer Johnson who it was that they wrestled the gun away from.)

Kennedy died of his injuries some 25 hours later at the age of 42.

"The Brothers' Tragic Reunion" by Cy Hungerford in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 7, 1968

America and the world were in shock. Robert's brother, President John Kennedy, had been assassinated only five years earlier; and this was the second major assassination in the U.S. in only two months — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's killer had not even been caught yet. (James Earl Ray would be apprehended in London a few days after Bobby Kennedy's death.)

"Bookmarks" by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun Times, June 6, 1968

I'm sure that Cy Hungerford was not the only cartoonist to draw the "Tragic Reunion" of two of Joe Kennedy Sr.'s sons, but Bill Mauldin's cartoon is more representative of the craft. What I'm finding is that by and large, cartoonists and editorial writers went to their drawing boards and typewriters to argue that RFK's assassination, as horrible as it was, bespoke a larger problem in the United States.

"He Must Be Stopped," possibly by Ted Shearer in Baltimore Afro-American, June 8, 1968

In the above cartoon, Ted Shearer (I'm confident that he was an editorial cartoonist for the Afro-American chain of newspapers, although I can only speculate whether he drew any particular cartoon) listed seven leaders murdered in just over five years. His scorecard leaves room for more, but there isn't enough space in the entire cartoon to list all the other victims of gun violence in the 50 years since.

"Tell Me Again about Keeping the World Safe for Democracy" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, June, 1968

Pat Oliphant mused mordantly on what American soldiers fighting in the jungles of Vietnam must have thought of the violence back home.

Our soldiers were not the only ones overseas taking notice.

"American Folklore: Choose Your Candidate" by Rob "Opland" Wout in De Vollskrant, Amsterdam, June, 1968

Time magazine described the rest of the world's perception of the U.S. as "a blood-drenched, continent-wide shooting range where toddlers blast off with real rifles, housewives pack pearl-handled revolvers, and political assassins stalk their victims at will." "America dreamed of a government of judges, but it suffers the law of violent people," declared Le Monde of Paris, where violent protests mere days before had nearly brought down the DeGaulle government.

"Violence" by John Yardley-Jones in Toronto Telegram, June, 1968

As it turned out, the assassin was an immigrant born in Jordan acting on behalf of a conflict halfway around the world from the U.S. According to Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, Sirhan Sirhan's diary revealed that he was determined to kill Kennedy by June 5, the first anniversary of the Six-Day War in which Israel had occupied the West Bank, Golan Heights, and Sinai peninsula.

"Always There Is a Black Spot in Our Sunshine..." by Stanley Franklin in Daily Mirror, London, June, 1968

Yet I came across no editorial cartoons illustrating the Mideast connection to the assassination; granted, I didn't check Ha'aretz, Ad-Dustour, or any other journal directly concerned. The Montreal Star glossed over the Palestinian connection and faulted U.S. racial injustices instead:

"It did not matter if Senator Kennedy's assailant was first believed to be a Mexican, and then a Cuban and then an Arab. The fact remains that in Harlem and Watts and every other Negro community... [assassins] exist as perpetual enemies, while the one figure who might have provided hope was removed forcibly from the arena."

Untitled, by Andy Donato in Toronto Telegram, June, 1968

Overwhelmingly, the Mideast Conflict and U.S. racial injustice took a back seat to The Gun as the root cause of America's tragedy. From within and without our borders came the demand for the U.S. to control its mass of weapons of destruction. And as has become depressingly predictable, the National Rifle Association, the 100,000-member strong enablers of our national nightmare, leapt into the fray to prevent any meaningful action from being taken.

"The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed" by Frank Benier in The Sun, London, June, 1968 

Guns don't kill people, only outlaws will have guns, registration leads to confiscation — any argument against gun control you have ever heard was already cliché in 1968. Supreme Court precedent still held that the first half of the Second Amendment established that it was about a collective right rather than an individual privilege, so the N.R.A. concentrated on the amendment's second half. (Republican majorities on the Court have since erased that "well-regulated militia" silliness.)

"How's Business?" by John Pierotti in New York Post, June, 1968

Time estimated the American arsenal to include anywhere from 50 million to 200 million handguns, shotguns, rifles, plus "uncounted machine guns, hand grenades, bazookas, mortars, even antitank guns." 3 million more were sold every year, 2 million of them by mail order sales. Some of those sales were driven by white fear of the urban riots breaking out in the 1960's, to say nothing of the lucrative market selling directly to the gangs and criminals White America was afraid of.

"In Cold Blood" by Paul Conrad in Los Angeles Times, June, 1968

The National Rifle Association had successfully quashed every attempt to regulate America's unregulated militia even after President Kennedy's assassination. Congress did manage to pass a ban on mail-order handguns, but President Johnson scoffed that the bill was a "watered-down" half-way measure.

"I Just Don't Know What This Country Is Coming To" by Herb Block in Washington Post, June, 1968

A number of Senators who had bent to the N.R.A.'s will in the wake of Rev. King's assassination, such as Hugh Scott (R-PA), Warren Magnuson (D-WA), Bill Proxmire and Gaylord Nelson (D-WI), Ed Muskie (D-ME), Mike Monroney (D-OK), and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT), indicated support of a measure by Joseph Tydings (D-MD) to require licensing and registration for the purchase of a gun.

"So You Heard Another Shot..." by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, June 6, 1968

The Senate failed to pass the Firearms Registration and Licensing Act, and the N.R.A. successfully drove Tydings out of office in 1970.

Even among liberals, however, there was a recognition that America had a problem not just with guns, but with a culture that glorified violence.

"Make Your Move, Ringo..." by Jules Feiffer for Publishers-Hall Syndicate, June, 1968

As case in point — and because it's the only way to end this blog post on a somewhat lighter note — I have to bring you the climax of a story in "Dick Tracy" on the comics page that very same week. Sharing the page with Charlie Brown and Miss Peach, Chester Gould's police detective literally vaporized a criminal mastermind and a yacht full of henchmen and bathing beauties who had schemed to steal a shipment of gold bars from Diet Smith's mines on the moon. (You read that right.) Gould's moral in Friday's episode struck many readers, and not a few editors, as being the credo of assassins and terrorists:

"Dick Tracy" by Chester Gould in Chicago Tribune, June 7, 1968

Several papers, such as the Seattle Times and Greensboro News, deleted the strip that day or dropped the feature entirely.

Any counter-protests from the National Laser Association fell on deaf ears.

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On second thought, there is a better way to end this post, and that is with a few words from Robert Kennedy's final speech to the crowd at the Ambassador Hotel:

"What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis, and that what has been going on within the United States over the period of the last three years — the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society — the divisions, whether it's between Blacks and Whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or on the war in Vietnam — that we can start to work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country, a compassionate country."

Funny Paper Caper: Denouement

I've spent much of this summer rehashing a 34-year-old parody I drew for the UW-Parkside Ranger, and today the time has finally come to post the final chapters. The plot is too far along to give a synopsis here; suffice it to say that our nameless police lieutenant is being held at gunpoint by the suspect in the murder investigation that has been underway, but has managed to slip a coded message to a co-worker.

What follows will be familiar to any fan of "Fearless Fosdick."

As Lt. No-name observed of Dick Thelma, very few of Dick Tracy's villains survived long enough to be tried for their crimes under Chester Gould's story-writing. It saved the cartoonist from having to spend long, tedious months watching Tracy fill out the paperwork and sending Tracy to testify in court. The drawback was that memorable characters such as the Brow and Flattop weren't available to become recurring characters — except on the rather silly Saturday morning TV cartoon version.

In a real continuity strip, this would have been the launch of a new story line, but that was never my intent. I doubt I could have gone thirty more episodes without somebody needing to call the Lieutenant by name.

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.

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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.

Comic Caper, Caibidil a Cúig

Sagaback Saturday returns yet again to the thrilling days of yesteryear and the gripping serial "The Funny Paper Caper." If you've been keeping up with the story but only check this blog on Saturdays, there was a fourth installment on Tuesday that you missed. It introduces the series macguffin, in case you want to go back and read it. I'll wait right here.

Moving on, The Funny Paper Caper throws in a passing reference to Jeff MacNelly's "Shoe."

In the next couple of episodes, I gave myself the challenge of imagining what a cartoon character who was a child when his cartoon originally ran might look like as a wizened old man. I also took over more space on the UW-Parkside Ranger page. Those old comics were granted more newspaper real estate than cartoons nowadays; and besides, this character's dialogue, instead of appearing in balloons, appeared on his shirt.

The next week referred to above was spring break already, so time was running out to get this story wrapped up.

The Yellow Kid was not, in fact, oriental, but Irish. The original character's name was Mickey Dugan. Richard Outcault was the cartoonist who created "The Yellow Kid" for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World in 1895; George Luks continued the strip in the World when Outcault took it to William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal the following year. "Yellow" referred to the color of Mickey's shirt (color being a resource I didn't have on the Ranger comics page), and is where the term "yellow journalism" comes from.

With the characters crouched beside a dumpster, it was possible for the strip to return to regular size. For one week.

Comic Caper, Holiday Edition

For this Swipeback Saturday wallow down memory lane, I need to explain that when these next episodes of "The Funny Paper Caper" appeared in December and January of 1983-1984, Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" was in the middle of a 22-month hiatus. At the time, it wasn't clear whether the comic strip, having been moved to the editorial page of some newspapers, was going to come back.

Fed up with drawing all those soundproofing dimples in the wall of the interrogation room, I switched to one of Trudeau's tricks and set the next episode outside the building its characters were in. It was the last episode of the year, and ran on a little longer than the previous thirteen had. If you're not in the habit yet, you'll definitely want to Click To Embiggen.

In the new year, it became increasingly clear that I would need to move the plot along in order to complete the story by the end of the school year. Kind of like Davos rushing to fetch Gendry from King's Landing so they could join Jon Snow's Magnificent Seven racing north from Dragonstone to the Wall while, presumably, Daenerys, Cersei and the Dothraki paused to get their hair done.

A purely technical note here: in the Ranger's Christmas gift exchange, news editor Bob Kiesling gave me a Koh-i-noor rapidograph set, which I began using for some of the drawing of this strip in the new year. The technical pens produce a steady, uniform line in india ink, but they clog up and become useless if you're not assiduous about cleaning them. I did find them superior to felt-tip pens for lettering; but sometimes a uniform line is not what you want, so I have never given up on hawk and crow tip pens.

On the topic of moving the plot along, I gotta post some of these midweek, or I'll have to cancel some retrospectives of other people's work I've had planned. Stay tuned.

Comic Caper, Chapter Drei

For this week's Sleuthback Saturday feature, I dredge up the November installments of a comic strip I drew for the UW-Parkside Ranger back in 1983-84. "The Funny Paper Caper" told the story of  the murder investigation of one Rufus T. Pornapple, who was also the victim of an unreported burglary, and romantically linked with more than one comic strip female. As we rejoin the story, the investigation turns to a little lady whose name was McGill, and who called herself Lil, but everyone knew her by another name.

One characteristic of "Nancy" in those days was that cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller avoided use of any and all punctuation, save for the occasional dash or unavoidable question mark. It may have been part of Bushmiller's minimalist approach to cartooning overall. He put nothing in the cartoon that wasn't essential to the gag du jour. I like Wally Wood's observation about the strip that "By the time you decided not to read it, you already had."

This tenth installment, however, requires considerably more commitment.

There's an inside joke in the first panel of strip #11. John Kovalic was a cartoonist colleague at the Ranger that year, drawing a comic strip which appeared just below mine every week. Carson the Muskrat in his current "Dork Tower" is a survivor of his earlier "Wild Life."

As promised earlier this week, Dick Tracy — er, Thelma — has entered the story line. After reading Tuesday's post here, Dave Brousseau reminded me that Dick Locher continued to script Dick Tracy's story line for two years after he stopped drawing the strip in 2009, which I did not explain on Tuesday. He also noted that there was talk on some message boards that perhaps Locher was still drawing some of the strip after 2009. I can't venture an opinion on that; there are signs of Parkinson's impairing his ability to draw in his late editorial cartoons, but comic strips such as Dick Tracy employ support staff (such as Locher himself, early in his career) to polish up, ink, and letter what may only be rudimentary sketches from the person whose name is attached to the cartoon.

You can compare, for example, the rough look of Doonesbury when Garry Trudeau was a student at Yale to its slick production values once the cartoon became a marketing juggernaut a few years later.

Dick Locher's Presidents

Dick Locher, a long-time editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, passed away this past Sunday at his home in Naperville, Illinois, at the age of 88. In a career stretching from 1972 to 2013, he won the Pulitzer Prize (1983), Fischetti Award (1987), Overseas Press Club Thomas Nast Award (1982 and 1983) and Sigma Delta Chi Award (1982).

"Shhhh! ... I Think I Hear Someone Coming" by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, May 13, 1974

In honor of Mr. Locher, here is a quick sampling of his cartoons of American presidents during his career.

"Bug Spray" by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, August 17, 1974

I had wanted to share here a September, 1974 cartoon showing a Chicago road crew filling potholes on the expressway with "marshmallow fluff." It is what I'm referring to with the term "pothole cartoon," meaning an evergreen idea that a cartoonist could leave with an editor for release during the cartoonist's vacation or family emergency. It's a hilarious image that I used to have on my bedroom wall before moving it into a scrapbook. Unfortunately, when I did so, I used rubber cement, which has since seeped through the newsprint, creating dark brown stains that I just can't Photoshop out.

"After All Those Promises You Made" by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, February, 1978

Instead of any of Locher's editorial cartoons from the Reagan era, here is an episode of Dick Tracy in which the Gipper makes an appearance. Locher worked as an assistant to Dick Tracy's creator, Chet Gould, from 1957 to 1961, and returned after the death of Rick Fletcher to draw the strip with Max Collins from 1981 to 2009.

"Dick Tracy" by Dick Locher and Max Collins, 1983

Locher's son John also assisted in the drawing of Dick Tracy until the younger Locher's untimely death in 1986 at the age of 25. For the next 30 years, Dick Locher and his wife, Mary, have been at the helm of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists' John Locher Memorial Award for college cartoonists. Eligibility for the award was expanded in 2015 to include graphic journalists and web cartoonists age 17-25.

"But His Lips Aren't Moving" by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1990

If you ever find yourself in Naperville, look for the statue of Dick Tracy, down by the river at South Webster Street.

"I'm Here to Arrest Mumbles" by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, 1993

Current Chicago Tribune cartoonist Scott Stantis writes:

"In this world of snapchat vulgarity Dick was that rare breed: a courtly gentleman. When I was lucky enough to be named editorial cartoonist here at the Chicago Tribune one of the very first people to reach out and congratulate me was Dick Locher. I first met Dick years earlier at an Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention. As a wet-behind-the-ears cartoonist I was in awe of this giant of our industry but, like a true gentleman, he put me at ease and we became fast friends. Dick has always been a font of encouragement, advice and good humor."

Read more encomiums of Dick Locher from his fellow cartoonists here. Then look up the word "encomium."

"We're Going to Hand Him His Lunch" by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, 2002

Parkinson's disease persuaded Locher to retire from cartooning in 2013. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Mary; a daughter, Jan Evans; a son, Stephen, a brother, Bob; a sister, Carolyn Holubar; five grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

"Obama Care" by Dick Locher for Tribune Media Services, 2012

P.S.: Totally by coincidence, I've got more Dick Tracy coming here this Saturday. Do tune in.