bounce020413

Our run of Denslow’s Billy Bounce pages hit a snag after the March 16th episode – a full three weeks of Sundays are missing from my source! Luckily, I was able to find the remaining March pages in another paper, but they are in rather poor shape. Still no luck with April 6th; if anyone has a scan they would like to send, we would be more than happy to add it to the archive.  Of note this time around is the April 27th outing, which introduces the two lion cubs; I had no idea Billy had abducted them from their mother after they had all tried to eat him!  These new additions take us through May, which features the start of the Billy Bounce Zoo & Circus and includes the two Denslow pages we posted years ago.  I have better versions of these (May 11th and 25th) and will be replacing them soon.

samson050623

Oh Splash! It’s Samson the Strong Man! Samson is a forebear of the modern superhero, cut from the same cloth as one of our old favorites, Hugo Hercules (their very names call forth strong men of legend, for crying out loud). Samson made his debut in 1905–an awfully long time ago for sure–but that only earns him the distinction of being one of the earliest supermen of the comics page, beaten to the punch at least by the aforementioned Hugo and the high flying Billy Bounce.  My enthusiasm is squelched a bit by the racial stereotyping, but for the sake of superhero history, Samson is an interesting find.

quacks041218

I took a break from the Billy Bounce project to revamp an archive that I am not sure anyone was clamoring for: The Little Quacks. The strips we had previously posted long, long ago were actually reprints from several years later; we now have the original run, including the missing Christmas strip seen above (I kept the whole page as to not butcher the ribbon). Dipping back into the duck pond has produced some curiosities, such as these two; it makes me wonder how many times these characters have appeared since this short lived run (I’m guessing there are are more to be had). Plus I ran into an earlier series that we’ll be adding sometime soon. Look forward to seeing some more Quacks in the new year!