Skippy (comic strip)
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Skippy was an American comic strip written and drawn by Percy Crosby that ran from 1923 to 1945. A highly popular, acclaimed, and influential feature about rambunctious fifth-grader Skippy Skinner, his friends and his enemies, it was adapted into movies, a novel, and a radio show, commemorated on a 1997 U.S. Postal Service stamp, and the basis for a wide range of merchandising that includes Skippy peanut butter.
An early influence on cartoonist Charles Schulz and an inspiration for Schulz's Peanuts,[1][2] Skippy is considered one of the classics of the form. Critic and author Corey Ford in Vanity Fair magazine contemporaneously called it "America's most important contribution to humor of the century",[3] while comics historian John A. Lent said, "The first half-century of the comics spawned many kid strips, but only one could be elevated to the status of classic...which innovated a number of sophisticated and refined touches used later by Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson...."[2] Comics historian and legendary comics artist Jerry Robinson said,
| “ | Nothing like Skippy had ever been seen before in the comic strips. It was not just Skippy's expert draftsmanship or remarkable flair, although that artistry earned its creator a reputation as 'the cartoonist's cartoonist'. ... The brilliance of Skippy was that here was fantasy with a realistic base, the first kid cartoon with a definable and complex personality grounded in daily life".[4] | ” |
[edit] Publication history
Skippy started in 1923 as a cartoon in Life magazine, and became a syndicated comic strip two years later, through King Features Syndicate. Creator Percy Crosby retained the copyright, a rarity for comic-strip artists of the time.
The strip focused on Skippy Skinner, a young boy living in the city. He's drawn with a sketchy line suggesting restlessness, usually wearing an enormous collar and tie, and a floppy checked hat. The other characters are only vaguely defined Skippy's parents seem kind but do not pay him much attention; he has a few friends (notably Sooky) without much personality, except for Butch O'Leary, the neighborhood bully. Skippy himself is an odd mix of mischief and melancholy; he may equally be found stealing from the corner fruit stand, or failing to master skates or baseball, or complaining about the adult world, or staring sadly at an old relative's grave ("And only last year she gave me a tie.")
The strip was enormously popular, at one point guaranteeing Crosby $2,350 a week[5], an enormous sum in those days. Crosby published a Skippy novel and other books; there were Skippy dolls, toys, and comic books, and the comic was adapted as a movie by Paramount. A hit, it won director Norman Taurog the Academy Award for Best Director, and boosted the career of young star Jackie Cooper. Crosby disliked the film,[6] and though he had to allow a previously contracted sequel (Sooky) to be made the next year, he never let another Skippy movie be made.
During the war years, Crosby's politics increasingly intruded on the strip, and it began to lose readers. Negotiations on a new contract failed, and Crosby ended Skippy in 1945. His final years were tragic: he was unable to find steady work, drifted into alcoholism, and after a suicide attempt, he was placed in the asylum at Kings Park, New York in 1949. He died there in 1964, unable to secure release.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ "Bob's Comics Reviews: Percy Crosby - Skippy
- ^ a b Horn, Maurice, editor. 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics (Gramercy Books, New York, 1996) p. 358. ISBN0517124475
- ^ Quoted in Skippy: A Complete Compilation 1925-1926, forward by Bill Blackbeard, Hyperion Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1977. ISBN 0883556294 (hardcover), ISBN 0883556284 (trade paperback)
- ^ Robinson, Jerry. Skippy and Percy Crosby (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1978), p. 1. ISBN 0-03-018491-6.
- ^ Robinson, p. 25
- ^ Robinson, p. 81
