It’s been a while since we posted some dailies, and I’ve been thinking it might be fun to take a look at a series that ran in the paper exactly one hundred years ago. What I had not planned on was going with this one, but sometime you just have to run with what you have on hand…ladies and gentleman, may I introduce you to Old Doc Gayboy? Old Doc Gayboy is the creation of Jean Paul Arnot, who has a few other credits to his name, most notably The General (which I hope to add to in the coming year). Posted here are dailies for the month of December, 1913 (here is December 1st). There are a few days that are missing and from what I can tell, the strip simply did not run on those dates. To be honest, there are actually a few episodes in the Doc-and-Romeo-at-the-circus continuity I wouldn’t mind skipping, but we here at Barnacle Press take a “warts and all” approach when presenting our discoveries. This is probably a good time to remind folks that comics of this era may contain unfortunate, and often offensive, racial and ethnic depictions that will likely (hopefully) be jarring to a modern reader. I personally don’t feel this exactly excuses creators for giving us these depictions, but it is important to try to view these through a different lens, keeping historical perspective in mind (to me, most of the time these offensive strips seem to come more from a misguided place than a hateful one, though that may well be up to individual interpretation). If I haven’t scared you off, enjoy the forgotten adventures of Old Doc Gayboy today.
