The Squirrel Cage July 4, 1937 by Gene Ahern Poor Ches and Wal. When they aren’t torturing each other with corny and surreal jokes in the panels of Gene Ahern’s sublimely ridiculous comic strip, The Squirrel Cage, Ches and Wal are deeply annoyed by the presence of other eccentrics in their proximity. Usually their foil […]

“Puck’s Life of Garfield”by Frederick Opper (Puck, September 8, 1880) Politics can certainly be pretty screwball. In fact, one of the primary antecedents to screwball comics is the political cartoon. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the comics Frederick Opper created for the Puck weekly. In today’s Screwball Sunday comic, I’ve selected a wonderful […]

Below: Dis-continued Stories/Needlenose Noonan by Gus Mager – December 9, 1934 There’s a lot of guff to lamp in this four-color fish wrapper, to briefly speak in the breezy, slangy style of Walter Hoban’s inept lawman. Hoban created Needlenose Noonan at the end of his career. With about a quarter of a century of experience […]

Main Street by Gus Mager – July 22, 1923 Why did Gus Mager create a syndicated Sunday comic page that looks so much like George McManus’s Bringing Up Father? Although no record has been found of Gus Mager stating that Main Street was ever meant to emulate—and at times lampoon—the flagship strip of King Features […]