Animaldom - 10 Newspaper pages & strips - 1907

Extremely rare surviving pages featuring Animaldom by Joseph Jacinto Mora. 10 full pages from 1907

Comics on the back: Val, the Ventriloquist,...

The pages are in fair/good condition, wrinkles, tears, flaking will occur, look at the photos for details. Very delicate pages.

Joseph Jacinto Mora, who worked as Jo Mora and J.J. Mora, was an accomplished artist, sculptor and illustrator who at least once dabbled in newspaper cartooning. His only documented newspaper series is Animaldom, produced for the Boston Herald from January 13 1907 to January 19 1908. His Wikipedia bio also credits him as working for the Boston Traveler, but I saw no series produced by him there.

Mora evidently enjoyed drawing animals, and also produced several children's books featuring his anthropomorphic characters. Seems to me that in this series the vaguely sinister drawings were more likely to produce nightmares for the kiddies than the light entertainment and morals the Herald was probably intending.

Mora's artwork is certainly intriguing, but the doggerel verses are downright painful. The comics pages were never a place to expect the next Keats, but Mora's poetry manages to stand out even among the lightweight competition. Dare you to read the two samples above without wincing a few times.

An interesting factoid about Animaldom. Mora was originally from Uruguay. Does this strip then qualify as the first American newspaper comics by a Latino creator?

Will be shipped with track&trace.

The lots in this auction can be shipped combined. This is taken into account up to a weight of 5 kg. If packages need to be split due to weight, an additional charge will apply. In this case, we will contact you.

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