Now & Then: Comic strips, then and now

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

— I’ve been a reader of comic strips for most of my life. When I was a small boy, when my Dad came in from evening chores, I would sit in his lap and read the day’s paper, which for me was mainly the comic strips. Of course, at first he read them to me;

but as time went on he would show me the words, and even before I started school I could read quite a few words.

In the 1940s, I was a big fan of Dick Tracy. In this strip, Dick Tracy and his buddy Sam Ketchum were busy catching dastardly crooks with names like Mugsy Gigenheimer. Dick Tracy’s hero was Fearless Fosdick, and sometimes the writer brought on Fearless.

But Fearless was a bumbler.

He was always getting shot full of holes. That didn’t stop him, though, and as luck would have it, he would come out good in the end. In the early days, Dick Tracy had a sweetheart named Tess. Eventually Dick and Tess married, and they had Junior Tracy. Still later, Junior grew up and married Moonbeam. Moonbeam was from a moon colony. (The strip had gotten a little far out by then.)

But back in the day, one of Dick Tracy’s friends was B.O. Plenty. B.O. Plenty was married to Gravel Gertie.

B.O. was kind of a n’er-dowell, but good and honest-hearted. Gravel Gertie was tougher and smarter than B.O., but she never let on about it. B.O. Plenty had a dog named Hey You. Did you ask how B.O.’s dog got to be named Hey You? Well, it was like this. The dog showed up at B.O.’s place one day, and B.O. called him all kinds of names, but the dog just ignored him.

Finally he hollered, “Hey You,” and the dog looked around and came to him.

So, B.O. figured Hey You was his name! B.O. Plenty was a very logical thinker, don’t you see.

Dick Tracy and Sam Ketchum were the first policemen to have two-way wrist radios. They didn’t call them cell phones back then, but it’s pretty much the same idea. The only thing was, Dick’s and Sam’s two-way wrist radios had wire antennas extending up their sleeves. Those were the days before real electronic miniaturization, of course. The transistor had not been invented. But the Dick Tracy writer was a man of imagination, so Dick and Sam had two-way wrist radios. In the ’50s, he even gave them two-way wrist televisions.

I was also a big fan of Little Orphan Annie and her dog Sandy. Her Daddy, Daddy Warbucks, was sometimes in the picture, but the strip was mostly about the scrapes that Annie and Sandy got into, and got out of. At one time Annie had two “protectors,” one a big, giant turbaned guy named Punjab, and a mysterious, almost-sinister guy known as The Asp.

Punjab and The Asp were just about invincible, and the bad guys who were out to do Annie harm always ended up tied up in humiliation, or with their heads thoroughly bonked. One thing I noticed about Little Orphan Annie as I grew older year by year was that she never grew older.

One of the comic strips that has lasted through the long years is Dagwood and Blondie. I don’t know exactly when Dagwood Bumstead was first invented, but it was before my time in the world. Dagwood and Blondie and Junior and Cookie are still the same age today as they were in the 1940s. There are a few differences, however. In the old days, Blondie was a stay-at-home mom. Today she is a caterer. That transition seemed to work, even as one writer followed another in doing the strip.

Also, today, Dagwood rides to work in a carpool. Of course he is still usually late, and makes the others late. Back in the day, Dagwood was rushing to catch the bus to go to work. The bus had steps at the rear, and a bar which the passengers grabbed to steady themselves as they boarded. Many a morning, Dagwood just barely reached the bus in time to grab the bar and hold on for dear life. After all these years Dagwood is still trying to get a raise from Mr. Dithers, his ever grouchy boss;

and I still haven’t figured out if the Dithers Company is an advertising agency or a manufacturing company.

Dagwood is still goofing up accounts, and Mr. Dithers still regularly almost fires him for it, but I still don’t know what kind of accounts he manages. And, Dagwood and Herb are still finding excuses to go golfing or bowling, and are still borrowing stuff from each other until they don’t really know whose stuff is whose any more.

Somewhat like Dagwood, Dennis the Menace is ageless. Dennis has been a little kid for 50 years. All these years he has been pestering and annoying old sourpuss Mr. Wilson, and enjoying sweet Mrs.

Wilson’s cookies. How things stay the same as they change!

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 6 on 01/30/2013