OPEN POST: Sunday Comics With Etta Kett, Plus Girls!

When I first stumbled upon the comic strip, "Etta Kett," I was surprised to learn of its long run, from 1925 to 1974. Why? Because I'd never heard of it. At all. Not even a whiff. Originally, as you can probably guess from its pun-ish title, it was meant to teach teenagers about proper etiquette and appropriate, i.e. modest, fashion. 

This must have gone over like a lead balloon, because with astonishing speed, its creator, Paul Robinson - an early-1900s railway clerk turned animator for the pioneering Bray Studios turned cartoonist - switched things up. No longer was "Etta Kett" a teaching tool, but a lighthearted, always clean-minded, comedy about teenagers and their families. Clean-minded at that time meant that it was hilarious to make sexy-times moves on an unwilling gal. But it was a "different time," as they say. 

Again, this was all wildly popular, so much so that the likes of Harvey Kurtzman, of Mad magazine and "Little Annie Fanny" fame, parodied it, a sure sign that it had more than arrived. It even spawned a long-running comic book series. When Robinson died in 1974, the strip died with him. It's near-50 year run remains a truly remarkable achievement. 

Remarkable, I should add, for a strip that no one talks about anymore, and perhaps for good reason, since the humor is somewhat dated, while the artwork lacks genuine inspiration. Far more interesting, I think, is Robinson's previous, short-lived strip, "Just Among Us Girls," a single-panel strip with looser, livelier line drawings and a late-1920s-era sensibility that still hits the mark and makes me smile. 

Artwork: Paul Robinson, King Features Syndicate, Ohio State University Archives, Central Press Association