Wisconsin: Good for a Laugh

The Museum of Wisconsin Art recently named cartoonist Paul Noth of South Milwaukee to be the state’s first-ever Cartoonist Laureate. The New Yorker has printed more than 400 of Noth’s cartoons. In the thirty years I’ve lived in Wisconsin, I’m only now learning about the role of Wisconsinites in the history of comics and cartoons.

To boost sales of a Chicago paper in 1904, Reedsburg WI native Clare Briggs created the first regular, daily newspaper comic strip. Sidney Smith’s The Gumps in the Chicago Tribune (1917-59) made Smith wealthy enough to settle in a Lake Geneva WI waterfront mansion, with a statue of Andy Gump on the front lawn. In 1918, Frank King from Cashton/Tomah WI created Gasoline Alley, the oldest U.S. comic strip still running. Six years later, H.T. Webster from Tomahawk WI introduced the character Casper Milquetoast, whose name came to symbolize a socially awkward wimp.

The Western Publishing Company in Racine WI, publisher of the Little Golden Books, won exclusive book rights to all Walt Disney licensed characters in 1933. These came to include many of my childhood favorites, such as Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Mickey Mouse.

Fast forward to 1970, when Denis Kitchen of Milwaukee launched the Kitchen Sink Press, originally a counter-cultural artists’ cooperative. The press also reissued historic comics such as Al Capp’s Li’l Abner from the 1930s. The designation of a Cartoonist Laureate continues Wisconsin’s comic tradition. Can’t we all use a good laugh?

Image: Wisconsin comic artist Clare Briggs, 1922, cropped.