Jimmie Acorn Packs Up, Mabel Visits Again
Hi Readers, This is our last post of 2025, a chaotic and not very happy year. Let’s hope that 2026 will be much happier. Jimmie Acorn has an encounter with a zoo elephant named “Pygmy”, a small pachyderm that Jimmie befriends. This episode is from January, 1955. If anybody has access to more Children’s Activities magazines, please let the Catblog know about it. UPDATE: I’VE LOCATED A SMALL CACHE OF CHILDREN’S ACTIVITIES, SO MORE JIMMIE ACORNS WILL BE COMING SOON! D.D. Degg, who has generously supplied the Catblog with “Now Listen’, Mabel” strips before, now has sent us information about another week of Mabel that ran in the Buffalo Enquirer, 19200119 to 19200124. Jimmie Doozinberry hides behind a disguise to prevent Mabel from discovering his socially lower class position as a “soda squirt” at a drugstore. Allan Holtz in his “American Newspaper Comics” book, says that Mabel ran to 19191218, so these 1920 strips are quite a discovery. Also they ran under the title “Listen Mabel” in the Enquirer, not “Now Listen, Mabel”. It’s a mystery; we don’t know how long this obscure Herriman strip actually ran. Wishing all the readers a Happy New Year!
Don M Yowp says:
Cross-hatching really was an art, wasn’t it? I like the work on the elephant. I’ve seen very elaborate cross-hatching on drawings of buildings and statues and such in 19th century artwork. Getting it to look right must have been a task.
Thanks for finding time to post, Mark.
Mark says:
Thanks, Yowp, for your comment. I like not only the cross hatching in the drawing of the elephant, but the delicate handling of Jimmie Acorn. This really establishes the contrast in sizes between the elephant and Jimmie. I’m assembling more content for the twentieth anniversary of the Catblog, begun in 2007. Thanks for reading! Mark