Tuesday, June 02, 2009

King Features LAFF-A-DAY



Who knew? I sure didn't know that King Features offered old gag cartoon panels for its clients! Below is the official descrip. from the KFS site:

Times may change, but the laughs are forever! Here are three "retro" gag panels from the King Features treasure chest: Laff-A-Day, Hubert by Dick Wingert, and Mister Breger by Dave Breger. Older readers may get an extra chuckle from scenes of travelling salesmen, 2-ton Chevies, and women sporting funny hats.


Above are the sample panels from the King Features site.

I noticed the Laff A Day feature in a local free weekly. It was strange to see some of these fashions and cars and televisions with antennas and so on. I clipped some of them and saw some familiar post-war gag cartoonists' signatures.










5 comments:

  1. I have seen a lot of these in the papers when they first appeared (archived, of course - I am not that old) abd have gotten the impression that thy were repackaged magazine cartoons anyway. I have samples by Boltinoff, Gerhard and Orehek. There was a similar series from a different syndicate, with better cartoons. Laff-A-Day wmust have been very cheap, because it as often used very small.

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  2. There's some neat styles on display there, and it's fun to see Dave Breger again. Any idea who drew the very first one ("Certainly I love you for yourself alone...")? I don't see a signature but the style's familiar.

    Still, except for retro nostalgia, I can't imagine there's much market for these. Can't blame King for raiding the vaults, though; they've got some solid gold buried in there.

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  3. Anonymous11:17 AM

    These used to appear in the 60's in my local paper in Waterville, Maine. The ones shown here seem to be older than that. As I recall, a lot of them I read at that time were by Syd Hoff.

    Jeff P.

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  4. the other similar series I mentioned is called This Funny World and they seemed to have better material.

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  5. Hi Ger! Don Orehek and some other cartoonists have mentioned the old Laff-A-Day feature to me, but before this local newspaper, I never saw it -- much less imagined it was still an offering from KFS. These all look to be pre-1960.

    Brian, that "Certainly I love you for yourself alone..." looks very much like Milt Gross, but that's just a guess.

    Jeff, it would be cool to read Syd Hoff in the paper every day, wouldn't it?!

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