CE -- A lifetime of collecting comic related material :: Raymond, Alex, ghosting for Chic Young *

Blondie Daily Strip, 17 Jan 1933, The Fifteenth Day of Dagwood's Hunger Strike

Artists: Alex Raymond (Penciller) , Alex Raymond (Inker) , Chic Young (Writer)

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Blondie Daily Strip, 17 Jan 1933, The Fifteenth Day of Dagwood's Hunger Strike Comic Art

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Artwork Details

Title:	Blondie Daily Strip, 17 Jan 1933, The Fifteenth Day of Dagwood's Hunger Strike
Artist:	Alex Raymond (Penciller)
Artist:	Alex Raymond (Inker)
Artist:	Chic Young (Writer)
Media Type:	Pen and Ink
Art Type:	Comic Strip
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	558
Likes on CAF:	0 1
Comments:	0
Added to Site:	8/1/2006
Comic Art Archive:

Description

Collecting Blondies, cont.

Not knowing what to expect but also having nothing to lose, I called the other collector a couple of days later. It turned out that he was a really nice guy from Ohio. He explained that he had been wanting to collect comic strips but really couldn't afford to buy works by the top names. A friend of his suggested that he collect Blondies by Raymond, thereby obtaining examples by one of the greatest comic artists for less than top prices. It turned out that he was the one who overpaid [I should really say paid a price higher than what other Blondies had been selling for] and bought both the dailies at Gurnseys and Sotheby's that I had liked. He also was the buyer of the three hunger strike dailies that Scott Dunbier had called me about, that the other dealer sold to Jack Gilbert, and that Jack Gilbert had moved to him. I didn't try to convince him to sell me anything, since his interest was similar to my own but much broader. He had bought both the first and second Blondie originals (Sept. 8 and 9, 1930) from one of the major experts and a prolific author of books and articles about comic strip art. That person had been given the first one by Chic Young himself and he, naturally, made some money off of the generous gift. The other collector asked me to help him in compiling a list of all the Blondie strips from before the date of Blondie and Dagwood's marriage in Feb. 1933 that still existed. I was able to help him nearly double the number of entries on his list, since I had years and years of auction catalogues and numerous monthly lists from Jerry Muller, a strip dealer who had sold many early Blondies, including the first hunger strike daily he had sold to me in 1985. The other Blondie collector then updated his own list, sent me a copy, and provided me photocopies of all all the hunger strikes, which he had obtained from microfilms of newspapers -- there was no real reference book which showed those strips at the time, although they were eventually published in two different books.

During the time when we were both collecting hunger strike dailies, Bruce Bergstrom offered me the final strip in the sequence, in which Dagwood wins out and the marriage is announced. I didn't hesitate to buy it, even though the price was higher than what I had paid to date for any other Blondie.

A couple of years later, the other collector fell on hard financial times and decided that he had to sell off his large collection of Blondies. At first he sold me the three hunger strikes which I had missed out on, the dailies for January 5, 20, and 23, 1933. Later, when he needed more money for his business, he sold me the 1931 strip from Gurnseys and the hunger strike from the first Sotheby's auction. I believe it was about then that he wanted me to buy all of his collection other than the first two dailies, but I really had no interest in owning so many early but not historically important dailies. He finally offered the second daily, but I knew that if I bought it, he might never part with the one I really wanted, the first daily. So he agreed to sell me both. At the end, he also sold me the partial Sunday which was missing the wedding portion but had the honeymoon storyline at the bottom of the page. I felt bad for him, since I knew he didn't want to sell any of the strips, but I knew that he was going to sell them to someone out of necessity, so I played the role of Maria Theresa of Austria, who in joining in the partition of Poland, wept but took. I paid the prices he asked, which were, in every instance, very fair and reasonable. I also had grown accustomed to paying prices which were greater than those which I had originally refused to pay for the same originals.

Although I had finally obtained all the strips that I had previously missed out on, there were still some hunger strikes that I coveted. Most of all, I wanted a Blondie and a Barney Google that Bruce Bergstrom had kept for his own collection at some point in the past. He probably should never have told me about them, even though he said that he would only sell them for what were, at the time, fairly outrageous prices. I couldn't get them out of my mind, since the Blondie was my favorite of all the hunger strikes, the 23rd day, with Dagwood dreaming of being surrounded by turkeys, of walking through raining hamburgers, and having his choice of many marching deserts. Even more important to me was the daily which I considered to be the best of all Barney Googles, the single panel daily announcing the Great International Derby in November 1931. As I have already said in my comments about the Google [i.e., the throngs of comic art fans who read all of my ramblings will know that I'm repeating myself!], my chance finally came in the form of a settlement conference in connection with a very significant case of one of my clients. We settled the case at an office that was about 10 minutes away from my par

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