I'm currently working on a series for kids about Theodore Roosevelt and conservation, and, as part of that, was going through political cartoons of the era.
This two page spread by Puck cartoonist L.M. Glackens ran in that publication in 1906, when William Randolph Hearst was a candidate for governor of New York (click on it for a larger version).
"Hoist, the Friend of the Comic People," is supported by (clockwise from top center) Alphonse and Gaston, Happy Hooligan, The Katzenjammer Kids, Buster Brown and Foxy Grandpa, as he rides into the fray on the back of Maud, backed by a throng of, well, mostly hooligans.
How could he lose?
And yet he did.
Glackens did a highly credible job of copying those now-legendary cartoon characters, but Hearst was apparently not as adept at imitating a credible politician, and he lost the election to Charles Evans Hughes, who went on to compile a remarkable series of accomplishments, but, I ask you, did he sponsor the creation of this many immortal cartoon characters?
There y'go. Hearst made a much more important contribution. Several of them, as you can see.
And I've probably horrified the comic connisseurs by doing a little cleanup of this cartoon in Photoshop to undo the yellowing of the pages that had occurred in the decades before the Library of Congress digitized it.
Thing is, I understand that, if you are exhibiting the original page, or attempting to sell it to a fellow aficianado, then the grace with which it has aged is part of its identity.
But I'm talking about the cartoon, not this particular printed copy, and I'm pretty sure the cartoon itself was created for and printed on relatively white paper and that, while this may be a tad brighter than the original, it's a closer approximation to the way readers saw it in 1906 than is that vintage document.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go switch the Shroud of Turin from the washer to the dryer. I think I got most of the stains out.
But before I go, here's a relevant and depressing report on the status of political cartooning from the Herb Block Foundation to remind you of why we should all miss Citizen Hoist who, for all his foibles, certainly was the Friend of the Comic People, and of newspapers and of people who read newspapers.
If you don't want to read the whole pdf, you'll find a summary over at The Daily Cartoonist, which is where I came across it.
On the other hand, you'll be missing essays on the topic by Clay Bennett, Matt Davies, Mark Fiore, Kevin Kallaugher, Mikhaela Reid, Jen Sorensen, Scott Stantis, Ed Stein, Ted Rall, Ann Telnaes and Matt Wuerker. Which would be kind of like looking at a caricature of Hearst instead of the wonderfully populated cartoon above.
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