Petey Dink/Petey (1919) by Voight

"Ira May Administer Gas But He'll Never Take It," April 1919.

Although the original art is undated and untitled, it was published in April 1919 according to online newspaper archives. Philadelphia's Evening Public Ledger ran the daily as Petey on April 4, 1919. It also appeared as Petey Dink in the Morning Press, Santa Barbara, California on April 9, 1919.

It resonates with Petey's disbelief and frustration having to listen to a loud-mouthed poseur and blatant liar. (It certainly resonated with me!) Perhaps Voight had the pleasure of running into such a character when the troops came home from World War I. The daily ran six months after the armistice and the end of the fighting in Europe.

Petey Dink, which was Voight's first strip, chronicles Petey's humorous passivity in marriage and life. Begun in 1908 in the Boston Traveler the strip moved to the New York Herald where it became simply Petey. Sometimes, however, newspapers kept the original title or ran it under the variant Poor Little Petey.

Voight is best known for his 1919-1943 glamour strip Betty. Early Batman artist Jerry Robinson lauded Voight's Betty for its "exquisite pen style in defining the visual delights of the long-legged, cool sophisticate in the extreme fashion of the day, including beachwear that revealed areas not previously shown in the comic pages." Voight also did illustrations for advertising such as Rinso Soap ads.

After Betty ended in 1943 he found work in comics, creating Atomic Man (Prize Comics), Impossible Man (Rural Home), and He-Man (Baily Publishing). Voight had only a short spell in comic books, passing away in 1947, He influenced Bernard Krigstein, who briefly worked with him at comics packager Bernard Baily Studios. Krigstein's trade of one of his illustrations for 16 Petey strips in the 1980s underscored his admiration for Voight's work.

Sources: CartoonWiki, Wikipedia, Heritage, WorthPoint price guide, GCD, Bleeding Cool ("Charles A. Voight's Atomic Man in Headline Comics, Up for Auction" by Mark Seifert, April 8, 2023), California Digital Newspaper Collection, Library of Congress