February 21, 1960
January 22, 1961
January 31, 1961
March 5, 1961
August 22, 1959
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Irving Phillips' The Strange World of Mr. Mum ran from 1958 to 1974. It was a daily panel which added a Sunday strip in 1960. As I recall, Mort Walker told Virgil Partch he could get him a syndicated gig. VIP told Walker he was doing fine with gag cartoons in magazines. When the magazine markets began to dry up, Partch in 1960 prepared his cartoons as a newspaper feature, but the syndicate said, "We just bought this Mr. Mum, and one surreal cartoon is enough. Sorry." So instead of doing the type of imaginative cartoons that made him one of the leading 1940s cartoonists, Partch syndicated the suburban backyard Big George.
Thanks for the memories! I had a well-worn paperback collection of these comics in my car's glovebox for years. I'd pull it out in dull moments of waiting.
ReplyDeleteHey, Bhob. I got a Mr. Mum original as a birthday present in 1969. A family friend was married for a while to Irv Phillips' niece and she got the cartoon from him for me. I had never heard of the feature before that day -- it wasn't in any of the newspapers I saw back then.
ReplyDeleteOl' Irv was apparently once a vaudevillian, a comedy writer for the radio, and a gag cartoonist before he went into syndication. His work was obscurely surreal and he drew with an accomplished line.
Dan Steffan