Bub, He's always to blame - 11 Newspaper pages & strips - 1911

Extremely rare surviving pages featuring Bub, he's always to blame by Everrett E. Lowry. 11 full pages from 1911 !

Comics on the back: Cwacking Cwacks with Cwack, Mr. O.U. Absentmind, Pour Old Robinson Crusoe, The Fladder und Ma-Malade Family, Granny Goodthing,...

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

The cartoonists who formed the core of the McClure Syndicate bullpen each had one or two bread-and-butter strips in addition to penning short series and one-offs. For Everrett E. Lowry, those honours went to Bub -- He's Always to Blame, which ran in the section starting January 22 1905* and through his taking leave of the syndicate in 1912.

The strip was a pretty staid effort in which we have a couple of rustic kids, Bub and Billie; Bub being the shrimpy one. The tall gangly Billie is the troublemaker of the duo, while Bub, as the title promises, always takes the rap in the end. Since the denouement of each episode is never in doubt, the fun value can only be found in the action that precedes it. Lowry had a pretty good imagination for interesting plots, so the strip was usually worth reading, but I find the characters themselves rather flat. When Lowry was fiven a full page in which to work (as above) his strips were much better than the half-pagers, which have no choice but to rush to that same old tired gag. Add to that Lowry's seeming inability to organize his word balloons properly (is this really so hard, Ev?) and the strip is eminently forgettable.

I don't believe Lowry was overly attached to this strip; I think it was more the syndicate editor who drove that seven year run.The editor proved his belief in the value of the strip in 1912. Lowry's last episode of the strip ran on June 2 1912**, and rather than that being its swan song, it continued appearing uninterrupted. The strips through August 4 appear to be the work of whoever was ghosting Sambo and his Funny Noises at this time, though on Bub they showed their disdain for the task by seemingly drawing it blindfolded. Then it was taken over by Art Bowen, who would not take credit on the strip until the episode of September 22. During that uncredited part of his run, though, he was spelled one time with an unsigned strip by Fred Leipziger on September 8.

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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