My Literary Foundation
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Most people who read my columns would assume my preference in reading material would lean toward scientific journals, philosophic writings (usually in the original Greek) or musings and theories by other great thinkers of history, brilliant women and men like Marie Curie and Immanuel Kant.
Manny, as we who are familiar with Kant’s writings know him, was a German philosopher of the Enlightenment, and famous for his work with transcendental idealism. Although I don’t always agree with his theories and have often argued with his proponents in heated university debates, but that is a subject for another time.
For the most part your assumptions of my scholarly pursuits tend to be true, ‘the deeper the better,’ I always say, or did until the day someone pushed me off the town dock. But I do have other interests and it is one of those other interests we shall be discussing today – and that is the Saturday comic section of the Toronto Star.
When I was but a child in my 20s and 30s, the comics were my life. Many happy hours were spent locked in the bathroom with Mutt and Jeff, Witch Hazel, and Beetle Bailey, although admittedly I was more often rapt in the writings and nature studies of Hugh Hefner, Doug Sneyd, Gahan Wilson and other giants of the publishing industry. Their influence on the teenage lads of yesteryear was immense. Curiously their work also appears to have greatly contributed to the growth of optometry and certainly to the eye-glass industry.
But as I was about to say, contrary to the accepted belief that the Bible is one of the oldest literary works still in publication today, several of these comics may be even older. In Galoshes 34, verses 2-22, mention is made of a young married couple, Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead and their dog, Daisy. Later in the Song of Solomon, a Mr. Ally Opp is said to have carried an ax over his shoulder and was said to often journey from cave to cave on the back of a huge dinosaur. There was also a few verses in there about Mr. Oop dating, for want of a better word, a scantily dressed young lady with the unlikely name of Ooola but that whole section appears to have been scratched out with some sort of bronze chisel-like instrument by a prissy censor who was thankfully drowned in the great flood, or at least I hope so.
I have to say I am amazed the Saturday comic section is still running after all these years. There are new comics every now and then, some are very good, but many of the old regulars are still around. Lynn Johnston’s For Better of For Worse has been running daily since 1979. I met Lynn several years ago at a tribute to her at the Leacock Home, a wonderful and beautiful lady.
But let me take you back to your comic-reading years and see if you can recall those halcyon Saturday mornings when you lay on the living room floor immersed in the fabulous world of comic book art and stories.
Do you remember Mutt and Jeff? If you are a geezer, of course you do. How about Maggie And Jiggs? (How did he survive the beatings and flailings she gave him? Nowadays she would be arrested and jailed for spousal abuse. A genteel lady she was not.)
Some I had almost forgotten until I looked up comics on-line. Little Orphan Annie is one and she’s a classic. Annie has to be the most remarkable of all the comic characters. She managed to see without pupils in her eyeballs. They must have painted them in for the movie and the musical.
Barney Google, was long gone from what little brain I have left, but once I saw his name written down I quickly began to sing ‘Barney Google with the goo goo googly eyes’ and was asked to leave the library.
There are too many to go into now, but a couple deserve honorable mention. Hi and Lois has been running continuously in dozens (possibly hundreds) of newspapers for 70 years. Perhaps first newspaper comic was The Yellow Kid, I don’t remember him at all. He and his gang of street urchins first appeared in 1895, closely followed by The Katzenjammer Kids that started in 1897. I find both absolutely amazing since Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press until 1921 (I’m not sure about that date; my computer was in the hospital the day I wrote this and I am going on my memory which has been known to be somewhat shaky even without the single malt.)
Of course we all remember Popeye, the sailor man and his girlfriend, Olive Oyl from Thimble Theater (I know ‘theatre’ is spelled wrong but it was written by an American and Americans can’t spell.)Olive in a sweater made Jane Russell look flat chested – well perhaps not.
(Image Supplied)
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