Sunday, February 5, 2012

The Un-Natural Born Truan' Officer

Another early Sunday strip, generously provided by DJ David B.

October 8, 1950

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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous2/5/12, 7:57 AM

    once again: the Deacon witout fancy lettering looking kind of underdressed.
    Bye the way, another fancy-lettered creature occured to me: anyone remembers Sarcophagus MacAbre?
    Thanks for posting!

    Hun

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  2. Thomas Haller Buchanan2/5/12, 11:21 AM

    Hi Hun,

    To answer your earlier questions of whether any other comic strips used character-centric lettering in a fancy way: so far, I have not found any example of that kind of use.

    Your other question as to which other Pogo characters used fancy lettering as a character trait:

    You just now brought up one of the ones I was going to answer—Sarcophagus MacAbre, who spoke with mournful lettering surrounded by heavy black straight-lined balloons. You already mentioned Deacon, of course, who once he became the political animal, never missed speaking in Old Gothic lettering. You mentioned the Krushchev pig, but for the most part, he only spoke Cyrillic lettering whenever he spoke Russian, English was usually normal. The same for the Castro goat whenever he spoke Spanish. The same for any Chinese speaking characters, mostly from the Pandemonia era.

    As you've already pointed out, PT Bridgeport was delightful with his use of blustery circus poster talk.

    For a short episode, a swarm of gnats formed their own lettering by gathering themselves into groups.

    Off-hand, that's all I can think of on a regular basis, though I feel like I'm missing someone.

    One thing that must be said though for the lettering throughout the history of the strip—it was the most delightful, expressive, and thoroughly choreographed lettering in the history of comics as far as I'm concerned, and I've wanted to do a thorough post on that subject when I get more free time (who knows when that'll be).

    Thanks Hun for digging into interesting aspects of The Whirled of Kelly.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous2/5/12, 1:32 PM

      oh, yes! The gnats... predicting football - or was it baseball - results. If my slowly failing memory is correct it was for Beauregard. Also, Albert lost his voice at some time and some kind of flying creature helped out against his will by occupying his speech ballons. Until spoilsport Albert stopped trying to speak. Those were the days, my friend!
      Personal thanks to you, Thom, for working for me personally.
      Hun

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  3. Anonymous2/6/12, 8:11 PM

    Nice job as usual retouching my scans. Thanks!

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  4. Chris Barat2/7/12, 4:37 PM

    Tom,

    I recall that there was a short-lived (in the strip, that is) character named Senator Bullfrog whose prolix proclamations were rendered in florid cursive lettering. I think that SB was meant to be a parody of Everett Dirksen.

    Chris

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