Little Joe (comic strip)

Last updated
Little Joe
Author(s)Ed Leffingwell (1933–1936)
Bob Leffingwell (1936–1972)
Current status/scheduleConcluded Sunday strip
Launch dateOctober 1, 1933 (October 1, 1933)
End date1972 (1972)
Syndicate(s) Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate
Publisher(s) Dell Comics
Genre(s) Western

Little Joe was a 1933-1972 Western comic strip created by Ed Leffingwell and later continued by his brother Robert Leffingwell. Distributed by the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, this Sunday strip had a long run spanning four decades. It was never a daily strip.

Ed Leffingwell began in comics as an assistant to his cousin, Harold Gray, the creator of Little Orphan Annie -- which may explain why the artwork and layouts on Little Joe were very similar to Annie's. Little Joe tended toward the highly dramatic, violent and sometimes even grisly. Its stories usually emphasized harsh frontier justice and basic virtues such as honesty, self reliance, and independence with an occasional touch of wry humor.

History

Little Joe began October 1, 1933, but Ed Leffingwell worked on the strip for only three years. When he died suddenly in December, 1936, Bob Leffingwell (also a Gray assistant) stepped in, continuing the strip until its conclusion in 1972. [1] The resemblance to Little Orphan Annie in both style and content diminished in the early 1950s when the format changed from a dramatic adventure strip to a more simply rendered gag strip. It suffered greatly during its last few years routinely involving Joe and a Navajo boy named Dead Pan retelling a tired old joke. Bob Leffingwell continued to ink and letter Little Orphan Annie until Harold Gray's death in 1969 when the feature passed into other hands.

Joe ran in an ever dwindling number of papers until it was caught up in a 1972 syndicate purge of formerly popular strips that included Terry and the Pirates and Smilin' Jack .

Comics historian Don Markstein described the storyline:

Joe Oak was 13 years old, though he looked younger, especially at first. He was an only child and his father had been murdered, leaving him and Mom to run the Oak Ranch by themselves. They were assisted by a white-moustached man named Utah, who had been a gunslinger in his youth. Utah was their foreman and, when times were rough, only employee. He assumed the paternal role when it came to teaching Joe proper behavior for a man, and the survival skills he'd need to become one. Other than that, the strip was populated by outlaws, corrupt businessmen and politicians, Indians both good and bad, and similar staples of the genre. Later on, an old friend of Utah's, a charming rogue known only as "Ze Gen'ral", joined the cast... helping the protagonists out of jams and occasionally (when opportunity permitted) cheating them. [1]

Starting May 16, 1943, Ze Gen'ral became a topper strip above Little Joe. The topper continued until at least the 1960s. [2]

Little Joe was reprinted in Dell Comics' Popular Comics, Super Comics and Dell's Four Color Comics series (1942). The character of "Utah" appears on the box art of the 1930s Little Orphan Anne Shooting Game. A CD-ROM reprinting early Little Joe strips was released in 2002.

Related Research Articles

<i>Little Orphan Annie</i> 1924–2010 American comic strip

Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by the Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and it made its debut on August 5, 1924, in the New York Daily News.

<i>Mutt and Jeff</i> 1907–1983 American comic strip

Mutt and Jeff was a long-running and widely popular American newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Bud Fisher in 1907 about "two mismatched tinhorns". It is commonly regarded as the first daily comic strip. The concept of a newspaper strip featuring recurring characters in multiple panels on a six-day-a-week schedule had previously been pioneered through the short-lived A. Piker Clerk by Clare Briggs, but it was Mutt and Jeff as the first successful daily comic strip that staked out the direction of the future trend.

<i>Little Lulu</i> 1935–1944 American comic strip

Little Lulu is a comic strip created in 1935 by American author Marjorie Henderson Buell. The character, Lulu Moppet, debuted in The Saturday Evening Post on February 23, 1935, in a single panel, appearing as a flower girl at a wedding and mischievously strewing the aisle with banana peels. Little Lulu replaced Carl Anderson's Henry, which had been picked up for distribution by King Features Syndicate. The Little Lulu panel continued to run weekly in The Saturday Evening Post until December 30, 1944. A later variation of the character is Little Audrey from Harveytoons.

<i>Four Color</i> 1939–1962 anthology comic book series

Four Color, also known as Four Color Comics and Dell Four Color, was an American comic book anthology series published by Dell Comics between 1939 and 1962. The title is a reference to the four basic colors used when printing comic books. The first 25 issues (1939–1942) are known as "series 1". In mid-1942, the numbering started over again, and "series 2" began. After the first hundred issues of the second series, Dell stopped putting the "Four Color Comics" designation on the books, but they continued the numbering system for twenty years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonard Starr</span> American cartoonist (1925–2015)

Leonard Starr was an American cartoonist, comic book artist, and advertising artist, best known for creating the newspaper comic strip On Stage and reviving Little Orphan Annie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harold Gray</span> American cartoonist (1894–1968)

Harold Lincoln Gray was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the newspaper comic strip Little Orphan Annie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Topper (comic strip)</span>

A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.

<i>Little Annie Rooney</i> Popular comic strip

Little Annie Rooney is a comic strip about a young orphaned girl who traveled about with her dog, Zero.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sunday comics</span> Newspaper comic-strip format

The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in most western newspapers. Compared to weekday comics, Sunday comics tend to be full pages and are in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies.

<i>Jungle Jim</i> Fictional hero of a series of jungle adventures

Jungle Jim is the fictional hero of a series of jungle adventures in various media. The series began on January 7, 1934, as an American newspaper comic strip chronicling the adventures of Asia-based hunter Jim Bradley, who was nicknamed Jungle Jim. The character also trekked through radio, film, comic book and television adaptations. Notable was a series of films and television episodes in which Johnny Weissmuller portrayed the safari-suit wearing character, after hanging up his Tarzan loincloth. The strip concluded on August 8, 1954.

<i>Tales of the Green Beret</i> American war comic strip

Tales of the Green Beret is an American comic strip created by the nonfiction author Robin Moore and artist Joe Kubert. Published in the 1960s, its Vietnam War setting was concurrent with the controversial real-life conflict.

<i>Mickey Finn</i> (comic strip) American comic strip by Lank Leonard

Mickey Finn was an American comic strip created by cartoonist Lank Leonard, which was syndicated to newspapers from April 6, 1936 to September 10, 1977. The successful lighthearted strip struck a balance between comedy and drama. It was adapted to a 400-page Little Big Book and was reprinted in several comic book series throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

<i>Tillie the Toiler</i> Comic strip by Russ Westover (1921–1959)

Tillie the Toiler is a newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Russ Westover who initially worked on his concept of a flapper character in a strip he titled Rose of the Office. With a title change, it sold to King Features Syndicate which carried the strip from January 3, 1921, to March 15, 1959.

Comic strip formats vary widely from publication to publication, so that the same newspaper comic strip may appear in a half-dozen different formats with different numbers of panels, different sizes of panels and different arrangement of panels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. R. Williams</span> Canadian cartoonist

James Robert Williams was a Canadian cartoonist who signed his work J. R. Williams. He was best known for his long-run daily syndicated panel Out Our Way. As noted by Coulton Waugh in his 1947 book The Comics, anecdotal evidence indicated that more Williams' cartoons were clipped and saved than were other newspaper comics. A newspaper promotion of 1930 compared him to poets Eugene Field and James Whitcomb Riley.

<i>Out Our Way</i> American comic strip by J.R. Williams

Out Our Way was an American single-panel comic strip series by Canadian-American comic strip artist J. R. Williams. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association, the cartoon series was noted for its depiction of American rural life and the various activities and regular routines of families in small towns. The panel introduced a cast of continuing characters, including the cowboy Curly and ranch bookkeeper Wes. Out Our Way ran from 1922 to 1977, at its peak appearing in more than 700 newspapers.

<i>Room and Board</i> (comic strip) Two American comic strips

Room and Board is the title of two American comic strips. The first, created by Sals Bostwick, debuted on May 21, 1928. He drew it until his death in 1930, after which it was continued by cartoonists Brandon Walsh, Benbee, Darrell McClure, Dow Walling and Herman Thomas before coming to an end in 1932.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western comics</span> Comic genre

Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published from the late 1940s through the 1950s. Western comics of the period typically featured dramatic scripts about cowboys, gunfighters, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, and Native Americans. Accompanying artwork depicted a rural America populated with such iconic images as guns, cowboy hats, vests, horses, saloons, ranches, and deserts, contemporaneous with the setting.

The Register and Tribune Syndicate was a syndication service based in Des Moines, Iowa, that operated from 1922 to 1986, when it was acquired by King Features to become the Cowles Syndicate affiliate. At its peak, the Register and Tribune Syndicate offered newspapers some 60 to 75 features, including editorial cartoonist Herblock, comic strips, and commentaries by David Horowitz, Stanley Karnow, and others.

The Complete Little Orphan Annie is a hardcover book series collecting the complete output of the American comic strip, Little Orphan Annie, written and drawn by Harold Gray from the strip's debut in 1924 to Gray's death in 1968. The newspaper comic strip title as a whole was published uninterrupted during 86 years straight (1924–2010) under the Tribune Media Services syndicate. A strip ranked as the most popular comics strip in its heyday according to a Fortune poll. The publisher of this book series is The Library of American Comics, the series' first volume was released in June, 2008.

References

  1. 1 2 Little Joe at Don Markstein's Toonopedia, Archived from the original on September 3, 2015.
  2. Holtz, Allan (2012). American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. p. 421. ISBN   9780472117567.