And so our half-week of Comic Supplement spotlights comes to an end. I hope that you’ve found some new and interesting strips as a result of our endeavors; I know that we’ve enjoyed the opportunity to look over our collection and assemble these lists. Below is my final effort in this regard, ten strips that haven’t been otherwise covered but are eminently deserving of your attention.

Abie the Agent
This is the strip that started it all, for me. When Thrillmer and I first began combing through microfilm and posting the results to our individual blogs (since subsumed by Barnacle Press), it was Abie the Agent who first arrested my attentions. Harry Hirschfield’s strip was one of the first unabashedly “adult” strips, centering on the travails of a little Jewish car salesman as he tries to stake a place in the world. I mention his ethnicity because it’s central to the character and to the strip’s cachet as an example of a cultural shift from the “Hebrew” comedy tropes of Vaudeville to the nuanced Judaic identity that we’ve come to know in the ninety intervening years. By me, the later period stuff became rather pedestrian and typical, but these early strips are earthy and brilliant.

Citizen Fixit
The flipside of Everett True, Citizen Fixit shares Ev’s outrage at the boorish behavior and poor mores of his fellow man, but is decidedly less effective in remedying them, often ending up on the receiving end of flying fists rather than the giving side. In this way, he illustrates the more likely outcome of curbside vigilantism, and generates loads of comedy with his ineffective stabs at enforcing civility.

Jerry on the Job
Along with Abie, this is the other strip which caught my attention in the early days of this project. Jerry is a diminutive young man who works at an office when he’s not sneaking out to go to the movies or making time with the ladies. One of my all-time favorite features.

Monkey Shines of Marseleen
Norman Jennett is a name that should, by all rights, be as well known as Swinnerton or Sterrett, but fame has eluded this strip about a very clever clown and his endless supply of bright ideas. This strip has such beautiful artwork and inventive uses of comic grammar, I find it hard to believe that it’s not better known.

Mr. Jack
Oh, I shouldn’t like this strip as much as I do. Mr. Jack is a rake and an inveterate philanderer, an anthropomorphic tiger who most always meets with violence at the hands of his wife, the young ladies who are the objects of his attentions, or their beaus, but he lives his life with no regrets. A behavioral role model he’s not, but he is very, very funny.

Old Opie Dilldock’s Stories
I fell in love with F.M. Howarth’s instantly recognizable art the moment I saw it, and my ardor only deepened the more that I read. Opie is a teller of tall tales that are too good not to believe. Opie adventures throughout the world, and the details Howarth includes in his depictions of foreign peoples reveal his affection for humanity.

One Way Ticket to Laughterville
I’m a sucker for corny jokes, and these pages are full of them, along with poems, cartoons, and other comic tidbits, with contributions from such literary notables as Dorothy Parker. You could spend an afternoon in worse ways than perusing this feature.

Out Our Way
Part of the fun of poring over piles of vintage newspapers and reels of microfilm is just getting to know the era and its people. Each Out Our Way panel is a slice of life from a bygone era, and its gentle wit is keenly appreciated in this hectic and cynical age.

Uncle Mun
When we added this feature to the Supplement, I remarked that Uncle Mun is nothing less than a gilded age Bat-Man, capable of performing feats of ingenuity that boggle the mind. I’ve certainly seen better-rendered strips, but Mun possesses a verve and charm that I find irresistible.

Various Comics and Features
Lastly, I’d like to call attention to this catch-all category that’s likely to be overlooked. This page is where we stow all of the odds-and-ends that we come across in our trips through vintage newspapers. There are odd stories, stunning illustrations, and many limited-run and one-off comics that don’t warrant their own headline.