THE MEANEST COMIC STRIP EVER

I just stumbled on what I consider the meanest newspaper comic strip ever. It's not the one above, it's something else. I'll come back to this subject in a minute, but first let me put it into context with a little history.

The common wisdom is that newspaper comics experienced a Golden Age starting somewhere around 1925. That's the era when physical comedy artists like Ridgewell (above) were nudged aside in favor of sedate, story-oriented strips like (several years later) "Little Orphan Annie."

Above, more Ridgewell. In my opinion the real Golden Age of the newspaper strip was 1903-1924, or thereabouts. Most of the characters of that era weren't especially memorable but the drawings were really creative. 

Live action comedy films evolved along similar lines. Physical silent comedians like Chaplin and Keaton were phased out in favor of personality actors like (a decade later) Cray Grant.

Surely something valuable was lost when purely comedic artists like Frank Leet (above) were deleted from the papers. Why couldn't physical comedy co-exist side by side with the newer, more story-oriented stuff? 

Alan Holtz, creator of the blog "Stripper's Guide" (link on the sidebar) and my source for these strips, speculates that original physical gags may have been just too hard to come up with over the long haul. Take the Leet strip above. The idea of unleashing an attack dog on two ne'er-do-wells must have been used hundreds of times before Leet got hold of it. I can imagine Alan asking, "How many more times can you do a gag like that?"

I'm only half in agreement with that explanation. It seems to me that physical comedy could have evolved like everything else. Look at Fearless Fosdick, Milt Gross, Don Martin, Jerry Lewis, Jim Carey. 

Gee, comics (above) were so experimental in that era.

The point I want to make is that early comic strips were an anything-goes hodge-podge of everything that was considered funny in that era. Maybe that's why they were so creative. Political correctness hadn't discovered them yet. You could even do death gags in those strips. And talking about death gags........

What do you think of these death gags (above) in the strip I call "the meanest strip ever,"  Frank King's "Jonah" from 1910. I kinda like it. Here Jonah assists a woman in her attempt to commit suicide. Click to enlarge. 

The strip (above) was unbelievably drastic. You just never knew what would show up there. 

How do you like this one (above)? Jonah deliberately pushes a baby into a pond. Try to do a story like that today.