Blondie: The Courtship and Wedding, Complete Daily Comics 1930-1933
IDW Publishing
Eighty years in and Blondie is still going strong. Even though she has anchored one of the strongest and most durable strips in comic history, she is often taken for granted by those who read her. My Mom and Dad both love her and have been reading the strip for at least sixty-five years. But neither of them was aware of her storied past.
When I told them about Blondie's history as a street-wise little flapper and Dagwood's history as the disinherited son of a Railroad magnate, they were stunned. Any other image of Blondie than the overly familiar idea that she is the near-perfect suburban American housewife was beyond their ken.
IDW's beautiful reproduction of her earliest adventures in Blondie: The Courtship and Wedding, Complete Daily Comics 1930-1933 will open their eyes. In this wonderful reprinting we are reminded that in her earliest appearances, Blondie was much closer to the tradition of pretty girl strips than the domestic comedy she evolved into.
The tradition of pretty young women in newspaper comic strips had basically started with Polly and her Pals in 1912 and continued through Winnie Winkle in 1920 right into the strip Chic Young drew before he created Blondie, Dumb Dora. Any evidence of a suburban housewife Blondie would evolve into is still years away. Instead, in IDW's reprint of her first three years we see a hot young woman dealing with the world around her.
This is a perfect book for an older fan to discover the true history behind their lovable housewife. At the other end of the age spectrum it is also the perfect book for a new, much younger reader to find that Blondie was once as radical a youth as they might perceive themselves to be in 2011.
Each daily strip in this volume is crystal clear and the detail of Young's line, and the work of those who he hired such as Alex Raymond (1931), is beautiful to look at. (The Sunday Blondie strips were not part of the daily continuity). IDW sets the highest standards possible for quality in the world of newspaper strip reprints and this is among their best looking volumes ever.
Blondie's early run is a time capsule look at America at the dawn of the depression. That is if you were really rich. As created by Chic Young, Blondie gave the reader a look into a world most could only dream of at the time, the world of the really rich; a world that most of the strip's regular readers had little hope of ever really seeing in 1930.
But more than anything else that was crucial to the strips longevity, Young created strong characters that readers could easily identify with. These were characters that could be read every day, year after year and never become tired or boring. They could grow with the reader and change as the years, and America, advanced across the decades.
Before creating Blondie, Young was known as a very strong cartoonist. He had already experienced success with another strip pretty-girl daily comic strip, Dumb Dora and was making good money for the Syndicate.
The strip was popular, but Young bristled when King Features Syndicate refused his request for a raise. Sure of his own skills and worth as an artist and writer, he left Dora and than went on vacation. When he returned Young spent a few weeks creating Blondie. His next step was to take the early strips to the very same Syndicate that had refused his earlier request for a raise. The very same editor who had turned him down for a raise made a deal with him within an hour.
This is all covered in detail inside the thorough and detailed essay about the origins of Blondie as written by noted comic historian Brian Walker. Walker and IDW have fleshed out the essay with a wide range of original art as well as early publicity work that was created by the Syndicate and Young to help sell the strip.
The highlight of the book may be the crisp and clean reproduction of the original art for the February 17, 1933 wedding of Blondie and Dagwood. It serves as a perfect example of how good an artist Young and his assistants actually were. Walker's writing puts the strip in perfect historical perspective and also serves as a reminder of what it took for a strip off the ground in those early days of newspaper syndication.
As mentioned earlier, the characters we know today are radically different than the ones that debuted in 1930. When she first appeared Blondie herself was street-wise poor near-waif who was out for a good time. But she is still a woman who conducted herself with a strong feel for what was right and what was wrong.
Her self-assurance in the world around her is evident in the very first week of strips. She is neither intimidated by wealth nor is she impressed with social standing. When Dagwood points out the woman that his parents want him to marry, Blondie responds by telling him "It's up to you, Dagwood, to decide which of us you'd be happiest with." And she means it.
There isn't a note of insincerity in the way that creator Chic Young has written the character. It is the very same woman who would eighty years later be leading a family through the battles of every day life. Her consistency as a character, regardless of her age, is another example of how smart Young was as a writer.
Dagwood, as originally written, was the son of a millionaire railroad magnate. He can be a bit naïve and occasionally oblivious to what is going on around him, but he knows this. He loves Blondie. When his mother and father heard that he was determined to marry Blondie, they threatened to disinherit him. The conflict of the snobs vs. the outcasts (such as Blondie) is what fuels the first three years of the strip's run. That conflict is the exact same comedic idea that runs through the classic film Caddyshack. It may not be as wild, but Young makes a goldmine out of it.
In the three years that lead to their wedding, Young creates a rich and full world that is populated with quite a few memorable characters. While she was in love with Dagwood, Blondie still had other beaus. But none has the sparkle of Dagwood. And Blondie knows it.
Dagwood's parents are as stuffy and condescending as you would expect from people so rich. Their friends are even worse. Blondie deals with all of them with a smile and usually closes out each daily with a quip that deflates the pomposity of those around her.
While the characters are different than the ones we know today, Young's strong and sure line is there from the beginning. One of his stock gimmicks is the use of punctuation, stars or lines to emphasize reactions. He was an expert at extending the action outside of the last panel by throwing a few well placed stars and lines right after Blondie's little smart-alleck remark.
Another stock gag in his repertoire was having a character being knocked off their feet as a response to something Blondie (and occasionally someone else) has said. When Mr. Bumpstead leaves his feet at the end of that first week, Young is setting a template that Mr. Dithers and Dagwood would be following eighty years later.
And as time-worn as that gag may be, we still smile when we see it.
Because she is so familiar to so many of us, and because she translated to well into mediums such as Radio and Film, many forget how skilled an artist Young and his associates really were. In the early years he gives Blondie such a perfect sense of fashion that he rivals anything that would follow in strip known for their portrayals of women's fashions such as Winnie Winkle and Brenda Starr.
At its heart Blondie is a comic strip equivalent of a familiar radio or TV sit-com. As it is reprinted in the IDW collection it reminds us how much that theatrical convention found root in comics and than evolved as radio and TV eventually supplanted comic strips in the public consciousness.
Those who may dismiss the strip as pedestrian or boring should take a look at Blondie's early years. They are in for a real surprise.
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