Blondie 1931 at her Best

This is the Blondie for Sept, 17, 1931. My information is that Chic Young stopped doing the heavy lifting drawing Blondie by this time and was primarily using the great Alex Raymond. Comparison with earlier Blondie strips and the Dumb Dora (Definitely drawn by Young) strip elsewhere in my gallery, shows that this isn’t Chic Young’s work. This is as good as Blondie Boopadoop or Blondie Bumstead ever looked. She is a dream girl of 1931, I doubt any other character of 1931 surpassed her. The drawing is very crisp and well-defined, a feature which is largely lost in the printed version. I have a hardback book of this era’s strip and the loss is notable. I can imagine how much it degraded when put on newsprint.

Seeing this, I can finally see what Blondie’s distinctive hairstyle is supposed to be. Obviously there was one artist doing the Blondie character and another doing everything else, including Blondie’s mother. That’s OK for the furniture, but Mom doesn’t even look like she belongs in the same strip. I can just hear her telling her daughter, “Find a good husband before they assign an inferior artist to draw you.”

I am posting this at 100 dpi instead of the standard 72 to show the artistry to better advantage.