Professor Knix by Jimmy Swinnerton (July 3, 1904) People stop me the street. They knock on my front door and politely inquire. A few poke their heads through my bedroom window late at night when I am sleeping. I think I once heard the question emanating from deep within my bathroom plumbing. “What other cartoonists […]

Say “howdy” to Sam Howdy! Our previous last two Screwball Sundays have shared recently discovered vintage essays by George Swanson on screwball cartooning (see here and here). Today we share three prime examples of $alesman $am in 1924, when Swanson’s cartooning reached its peak of manic intensity. There’s never been a comic strip quite like […]

In the fall of 1930, George “Swan” Swanson wrote and illustrated this essay on what he called a “bang finish,” but which is more commonly known as a plop take. Arguably, in Swan’s hands, the plop take – where a character flies out of the last panel – ascends to an art form in itself. […]