I’m much too young to have ever seen Andy’s Gang when it was on the air, but thanks to this wonderful internet, I’ve now experienced some of it. Oh, the horror! Let me share it with you. Meet our creepy host Andy Devine, here giving the blatant hard sell for Buster Brown shoes to some impressionable young minds.

Just wait until I introduce you to his Gremlin.

Watch this to the end to see the also creepy little person, W.H. "Major" Ray, that they have impersonating Buster Brown.

Andy took over the show, formerly called Smilin’ Ed’s Gang, from Smilin’ Ed McConnell in 1954, in a switchblade fight. Smilin’ Ed, it seems, had outgrown his usefulness to the sinister Gremlin. As far as I can tell no footage of Smilin’ Ed’s Gang exists on the internet. Shortly after Smilin’ Ed’s disappearance, Andy destroyed all recordings, burning them with siphoned gasoline in an abandoned drive-in theatre parking lot… covering up any evidence of his predecessor in an attempt to seamlessly replace him in the minds of the children of yesteryear. However, some of the comic books have survived.

I may have made this all up, but it rings true, don’t you think? Someone, please, update Wikipedia and adjust reality appropriately.

Above: covers from the Buster Brown comic book before and after Andy’s hostile takeover of the Gang.

It should be noted that I do not believe the Buster Brown comic book ever contained any comics featuring the character Buster Brown (other than as an icon on the cover).

See an excerpt from an issue of Buster Brown Comics featuring Smilin Ed’s Gang courtesy of Stupid Comics here.

Visit froggythegremlin.com.

Read more about Andy Devine on Wikipedia.

Read about Smilin’ Ed McConnell on Wikipedia.

Visit the grave of W.H. "Major" Ray aka Buster Brown here.

• Microsoft launchs WorldWide Telescope public beta
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• *t*his is the book Neil Gaiman was promoting
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• The Making of a Wall-E Picture Book
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• OPENING Night pics of the BONE Exhibit at the Wexner
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• Stupid Comics
• Stupid Comics
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• The Fighting Yank: The Invisible Plane
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• Doc Strange: The Sleepless People
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• The Fighting Yank: The Balkanian Plot
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• Pyroman: The Electrosorber Affair
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• Barnaby Beep
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• The Black Terror: Dr. Turner’s Experiment
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• Fighting Yank: Case of the Extra Nazi Prisoner
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• The Joke’s on Youth
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• Commando Cubs: Flares in the Night
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• Sheep Boy
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• Doc Strange and the Mechomen
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• The Black Terror: Timber!
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• America’s Best Comics #18 Cover
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• Corpse Convention
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• Pyroman: The Saboteurs of Steel
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• The Ghost: The Magic Grail of Gwyllyn
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• Brad Spencer - Wonderman: The Monsters of Dr. Voodoo
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• Commando Cubs: Nazis at Stonehenge
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• American Eagle: Dr. Amato’s Bomb
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• The Fighting Yank: Undersea Island
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• Miss Masque: Diana’s Jewel
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• Son of the Gods: Origin
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• G. I. Andy
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• Pyroman: The Wreakers of Terror
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• The Fighting Yank: The Tormentor
  from Nedor-A-Day
• Jocko and Socko
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• Doc Strange vs. The Conquering Knights
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• Flowers on Deborah’s Grave
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• Tara: The Fabulous Jewel of Morn
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• Jetta in Man Trouble
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• The Fighting Yank: The Japanese Spy
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• Warning; contains language
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• New Strips! Mrs. Dingle and Old Opie Dilldock!
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Here’s an example I scanned of Buster Brown from 1910 by R.F. Outcault (who also created the Yellow Kid). Just say NO to cigars!

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read more examples of Buster Brown at Barnacle Press.

See the last Buster Brown strip at the Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to read about Richard F. Outcault at lambiek.net.

See a Buster Brown original (with the Yellow Kid) at the Library of Congress website.

Read more about R.F. Outcault at Ohio State University’s website.

See examples of Outcault’s Yellow Kid at Ohio State University’s website.

Click here to read more about Buster Brown at Toonopedia.

Hear a radio program on the history of Buster Brown at npr.org.

Visit the website of the R.F. Outcault Society.

Read the Wikipedia entry on Buster Brown.

Read the Wikipedia entry on R.F. Outcault..

Read the Wikipedia entry on The Yellow Kid.

See the copyright application for the Yellow Kid at the Library of Congress website.

Read Outcault’s obituary from a 1928 Time Magazine.

Buster Brown the character was already long dead in the 1950’s… but he was quite a character before they sucked his soul and made him and his dog Tige as innocuous as Hello Kitty. We’ll be focusing on Buster both in his original form as a mischievous imp on the comics page, and also take a look at his bizarre television bedfellows here for the next couple weeks.

“He’s really just a picture… but it’s fun 2 play pretend!”

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• Original Art Stories: Gene Colan, Part II, A Living Tribute
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• Herriman Saturday
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• #29 flimpflump
  from CUTE LI’L GUY OF THE DAY
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• The Thing from the Sea
  from THE HORRORS OF IT ALL
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• Chocolate Cheeks for 5/9/08
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Here’s a Thanksgiving example I scanned of Willie Westinghouse Edison Smith, The Boy Inventor by Frank Crane from November 25, 1906. You know how sometimes when you tell someone something you saw that was funny, but it isn’t funny at all when you describe it? Well, this is a strip apparently devoted to that phenomenon.

There is also a lovely Howdy Doody-like illustration in the middle of the page by “Walker” or “Halker”… if you can identify this cartoonist, please let me know and I’ll update the post. Bonus points if you can identify any of the characters in the illustration.

To top it off (or bottom it out, as the case may be) we have The Almost Family- They Have Nothing to Be Thankful For by W.R. Bradford. It appears to be a Little Jimmy clone from this example, right down to the corporal punishment in the last panel.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Please be advised that like many of the comic strips of the era, it contains offensive racial overtones. If this sort of thing offends you, you may not want to view it.

Click here to read about W.R. Bradford at lambiek.net.

Click here to read about Frank Crane at lambiek.net.

What? A rerun won’t cut it for your Saturday morning? You kids today are spoiled! When I was a kid long, long ago in the decade we called the Seventies, we had four channels, and one was PBS, which didn’t even count! We were happy to get reruns! We’d watch the same Woody Woodpecker cartoon 100 times, because that was the Woody Woodpecker cartoon the local station had a copy of! Hell, forget Woody Woodpecker, we even watched Fred and Barney meet The Thing and The Shmoo! And we liked it! Loved it, even! And it was terrible! You… you’ve got the low-res version of the history of animation at your fingertips whenever you want it! What the hell is wrong with you?!? Be grateful!

Oh, fine, have another, you lucky little bastards… here’s the Fleischers’ An Elephant Never Forgets from 1934.

Read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database.

I accidentally deleted this post from a couple weeks ago, so this is a rerun. A very fun Fleischer short chock full of the sort of mayhem that wouldn’t even be considered in a modern kids’ cartoon.

Read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database here.

• Sketchbook #37
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• Russian People 100 Years Ago in Color
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• Strange Soviet Poster, 1933
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• Abandoned Heavy Machinery
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• Archeological Dig in the Moscow Kremlin
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• Soviet Cigarettes Collection
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• Moscow Underground Tunnels (HDR)
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• Russian UFO Tank
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• Abandoned Anti-Aircraft Missile Launching Site
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• Russian Wooden Church, Abandoned Now
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• Frog Can Fly
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• SciFi Movie: Made in Russia
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• Swallow’s Nest, the Sea Castle in Crimea
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• The “Dead Biker” Monument
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• Abandoned Soviet Trains In Belarus
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• Soviet Ads for Western Audience
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• Soviet Food Posters
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• Abandoned Light Bugs
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• Lenin Swims Away
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• See-Through Lenin
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• Freshly Abandoned
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• Kadykchan. The City of Broken Dreams
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• The Sputnik Cult
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• An Appartment in Kharkov Style
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• Secret Brain Lab
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• An Abandoned Horror
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• A Prehistoric Fish in the Russian Pond
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• The Old Moscow
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• Mc Duck
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• Soviet Dairy Products
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• Vodka Now and Then
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• Abandoned Frozen Ships
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• Abandoned Wooden Miracles
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• An Abandoned Library
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• Collen Coover
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• Print Liberation: The Screen Printing Primer
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• It’s Incredibly Depressing Being Green
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• *Number 308* * * *The Filler Brush Man*
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