Mabel Listens Again
In the words of Bill Hay, “Here they ah!” The “Now Listen Mabel” dailies from 11-8 to 11-22-1919. In the 11-8 there are human figures in the first two panels that anticipate the characters in the illustrations to “archy and mehitabel” which Garge produced in 1931 for Don Marquis’ epic poetic volume about his New York Sun characters archy the cockroach and mehitabel the cat. Starting in the 11-10 strip, Garge writes about an epidemic of Mumps which manages to infect almost everyone in the cast of the strip, starting with Jimmie Doozinberry. I can’t find any record of a Mumps surge in 1919, but the disease goes back to the 5th Century BC at the time of Hippocrates. The virus was not isolated until 1945 and the first vaccine didn’t appear until 1967. So Jimmie and Company got Mumps before very much was known about it. Seems like nobody panicked, they just put up with the swelling until it went away. There was an early link between Mumps and deafness. Garge just used it for comedy.
In the 11-17 through 11-22 strips, “Mabel” feels like a precursor to “Blondie” situations. Floods, vicious dogs, smelly pipes and one of Garge’s favorite comedy crutches, “Twins” and the damage they do, along with mistaken identity jokes. I like Jimmie’s reaction to his pal Sam’s luck in babysitting Mabel’s Aunt Ruby’s twins. They turn out to be attractive teenagers!
Enjoy these, I hope I can post more soon. The strip only ran another two months in the San Francisco Examiner.
Paul Groh says:
The first mumps vaccine came out in 1967? That was the year I had it!
Say Mark, do you know anything about the comic strip “Betty” by C. A. Voight, which was syndicated by the New York Herald from 1920 to 1943? Betty, like Mabel, was an attractive society girl with many suitors, the most persistent of whom, in the Doozinberry role, was one Lester de Pester. P. G. Wodehouse mentioned him in his 1949 novel THE MATING SEASON, in which a character is described as “an undersized gargoyle who looked like Lester de Pester in that comic strip in one of the New York papers.” The line was paraphrased in the “Jeeves and Wooster” TV series in the 1990s, by which time the reference would have become completely obscure to everyone but a handful of comics historians.
“Betty” and Voight aren’t mentioned in Jeremy Dauber’s AMERICAN COMICS: A HISTORY. I was wondering whether the strip might have been inspired or influenced by Herriman’s Mabel to any extent. By the way, in the Wodehouse stories Bertie Wooster, like Mabel, has a couple of twin cousins, Claude and Eustace, who give him no end of trouble.
Mark says:
Hi Paul, Thanks for your comment. I have heard of and read some of, C.A.Voight’s “Betty”. Lester de Pester, is also a character I’m familiar with. Betty actually pre-dates “Now Listen, Mabel” by about a month, Betty started March 16, 1919 and Mabel debuted April 23rd. Jimmie Doozinberry still reminds me more of Dagwood Bumstead than Lester de Pester. De Pester was so ugly, so much of a nerd, that the reader mostly sided with Betty in rejecting his advances. Jimmie does not seem the ugly nerd, but is just a hapless average guy who never has much luck with his dream girl, Mabel. I’m sure your comparison bears weight, but I’m not well versed in Betty-ology. Most of the strip seems to revolve around Betty in bathing suits at the beach, surrounded by beauties, and homlies, like Lester.