There Oughta Be a Law! | |
---|---|
Author(s) | Harry Shorten (1944–1970) Frank Borth (1970–1983) Mort Gerberg (1983–1985) |
Illustrator(s) | Al Fagaly (1944–1963) Warren Whipple (1963–1981) Mort Gerberg (1981–1985) |
Current status/schedule | Concluded daily gag panel |
Launch date | 1944 |
End date | April 13, 1985 |
Alternate name(s) | Bitter Laff (1944–1945) TOBAL! |
Syndicate(s) | McClure Newspaper Syndicate / Bell-McClure Syndicate (1944–c. 1972) United Feature Syndicate (c. 1972–1985) |
Publisher(s) | Midwood Books Belmont Books |
Genre(s) | gag-a-day, humor, adults |
There Oughta Be a Law!, or TOBAL!, was a single-panel newspaper comic strip, created by Harry Shorten and Al Fagaly, which was syndicated for four decades from 1944 to 1985. [1] The gags illustrated minor absurdities, frustrations, hypocrisies, ironies and misfortunes of everyday life, displayed in a single-panel or two-panel format. There Oughta Be a Law! was similar to Jimmy Hatlo's They'll Do It Every Time . [2] TOBAL! was initially syndicated by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate; eventually it moved over to United Feature Syndicate. [3]
In 1944, while an editor at MLJ Comics, Shorten created the strip, bringing along MLJ artist Al Fagaly. The strip's original title was Bitter Laff, changing to There Oughta Be a Law on October 22, 1945. [1] A Sunday strip began in 1948, and ended in 1980. [1] Eventually, the strip incorporated reader ideas. [3]
Fagaly died in 1963, with Warren Whipple taking over the art duties until 1981. Shorten provided scripts until 1970, [4] when Frank Borth took over the writing, lasting until 1983. Mort Gerberg took over art duties in 1981, and both writing & art in 1983. [3] The strip ended on April 13, 1985. [1]
Many strips ended with a character yelling out the phrase "There Oughta Be a Law!", or just "TOBAL!" [3] Because of its format, recurring characters were infrequently used, but TOBAL! did feature occasional characters such as Cringely, Carbuncle, Locknutt, and so on, as well as the daughter character Bratinella.
Many collected editions were published by companies affiliated with Harry Shorten, including Midwood Books, Belmont Books, Belmont Tower, and Roband Productions:
A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.
A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays. They typically are smaller, 3-4 grids compared to the full page Sunday strip and are black and white.
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.
James Cecil Hatlo, better known as Jimmy Hatlo, was an American cartoonist who in 1929 created the long-running comic strip and gag panel They'll Do It Every Time, which he wrote and drew until his death in 1963. Hatlo's other strip, Little Iodine, was adapted into a feature-length movie in 1946.
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Black Hood Comics was the name of an American anthology comic book series published by MLJ Magazines Inc., more commonly known as MLJ Comics, for eleven issues between Winter 1943 and Summer 1946. The series featured MLJs costumed hero Black Hood, and "Boy Buddies", featuring Shield's partner 'Dusty the Boy Detective' and Wizard's side-kick 'Roy the Superboy', together with humor strips.
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Firefly is a fictional comic book character created by Harry Shorten and Bob Wood for MLJ Comics in 1940. He first appeared in Top-Notch Comics #8. Artist Warren King and writer Joe Blair loaned their talents to many of the Firefly's installments.
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Al Fagaly was a Golden Age American cartoonist and creator of Archie Comics' Super Duck and the syndicated gag cartoon There Oughta Be a Law!.
Louis Horace Silberkleit was an American publisher of magazines, books, and comic books; together with Maurice Coyne and John L. Goldwater, he co-founded MLJ Magazines, and served as its publisher for many years.
Harry Shorten (1914–1991) was an American writer, editor, and book publisher best known for the syndicated gag cartoon There Oughta Be a Law!, as well as his work with Archie Comics, and his long association with Archie's publishers Louis Silberkleit and John L. Goldwater. From the late 1950s until his 1982 retirement, Shorten was a book publisher, overseeing such companies as Leisure Books, Midwood Books, Midwood-Tower Publications, Belmont Tower, and Roband Publications.
Tower Publications was an American publisher based in New York City that operated from 1958 to c. 1981. Originally known for their Midwood Books line of erotic men's fiction, it also published science fiction and fantasy under its Tower Books line and published comic books in the late 1960s under its Tower Comics imprint. In the early 1970s, Tower acquired paperback publisher Belmont Books, forming the Belmont Tower line. Archie Comics' cofounder Louis Silberkleit was a silent partner in Tower's ownership; longtime Archie editor Harry Shorten was a major figure with Tower in all its iterations.