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Showing posts with the label Paul Robinson

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

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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"...