Gasoline Alley

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Frank King's Gasoline Alley and That Phoney Nickel (March 12, 1933)

Gasoline Alley is a long-running classic comic strip, created by Frank King, that was first published on November 24, 1918.

Widely recognized as a pioneering comic strip, Gasoline Alley was especially notable for being perhaps the first comic to depict its characters aging as the years progressed.^[1]

[edit] Early years

The strip's origins lie in the Chicago Tribune, which ran a black-and-white Sunday page, The Rectangle, where staff artists contributed one-shot panels, continuing plots or themes. One corner of The Rectangle introduced Frank King's Gasoline Alley, where characters Walt, Doc, Avery and Bill held weekly conversations about automobiles.

This panel slowly gained recognition, and the daily strip began August 24, 1919 in the New York Daily News.^[2]

[edit] Sunday strips

The Sunday page was launched in 1921. The 1930s Sunday pages did not always employ traditional gags but instead sometimes presented a gentle view of nature or imaginary daydreaming with expressive art. Reviewing Peter Maresca and Chris Ware's Sundays with Walt and Skeezix (Sunday Press Books, 2007), comics critic Steve Duin commented:

His skill as a cartoonist, Jeet Heer argues in the introduction, was analytical rather than instinctive: By diligently studying the work of Lionel Feininger and McCay, King developed an eye for "how to view the Sunday page as a dual-level design unit, so that the whole page looks beautiful while each panel unfolds a story." Seven of the strips Maresca presents here are glorious single-scene panoramas -- a day at the beach or a house under construction -- divided into nine panels, each of which captures a different moment in time... "Unlike the daily strips, which traced narratives that went on for many months, the Sunday pages almost always worked as discrete units," Heer writes. "Whereas the dailies allowed events to unfold, Sunday was the day to savor experiences and ruminate on life. It is in his Sunday pages that we find King showing his visual storytelling skills at their most developed: with sequences beautifully testifying to his love of nature, his feeling for artistic form, and his deeply felt response to life." In these Sunday pages, we tag along as Walt takes Skeezix to the beach, the skating pond, the circus, the pumpkin patch. We travel to Rainbow Bridge and Zion Canyon in Utah. And in the dream sequences, we ride lightning bolts, rainbows and magic carpets. For my money, King's real landscapes are easily as inventive as his imaginary ones. When Walt asks Skeezix to behold the wonder of the world that surrounds us, he is, Heer notes, "not trying to teach Skeezix how to think, but rather show him how to experience. The lessons are about noticing the world around you, paying attention to the changing seasons, the interplay of colors, styles of art."^[1]

[edit] Skeezix arrives

The early years were dominated by the character Walt Wallet. The Tribune's editor, Captain Joseph Patterson, wanted to attract women to the strip so it was decided to introduce a baby into it. The only problem was that Walt was a confirmed bachelor. This obstacle was overcome when, on February 14, 1921, he found an abandoned baby on his doorstep.

The baby was called Skeezix (slang for motherless calf), and he called his adopted father Uncle Walt. Unlike most comic strip children (like the Katzenjammer Kids or Little Orphan Annie) he did not remain a baby or even a little boy for long. In fact, as the years went by, he grew up to manhood, the first occasion where real time continually elapsed in a major comic strip over generations. By the time the United States entered World War II, Skeezix was a fully-grown adult, courting girls and serving in the armed forces. He later married Nina Clock and had children. In the late 1960s he faced a typical midlife crisis. Walt Wallet himself had married Phyllis Blossom and had other children, who grew up and had kids of their own.

C.1941 promotional art by King, highlighting Skeezix's marriage proposal to Nina Clock.

Comics historian Steve Stiles established a chronology of the characters:

At first the strip was simply devoted to America's perpetual love affair with automobiles, based on real people the creator had known on Chicago's South Side. "My brother... had a car that he kept in the alley with a fellow by the name of Bill Gannon and some others. I'd go to his house on Sunday, and we'd go down the alley and run into somebody else and talk cars. That was the beginning of Gasoline Alley," King said in an interview. The strip's cast of car-tinkering buddies expanded with a significant addition on St. Valentine's Day in 1921. On that morning the amiable, somewhat bumbling Walt Wallet opened his door to find a small infant on his steps. From there on Gasoline Alley became a family strip, with the clock ticking away in real time, as the child Skeezix saw "Uncle" Walt marry "Aunt" Phyllis in 1926, gained a brother, Corky, in 1928, had his first shave in 1937, enlisted in the army in 1942, married Nina Clock in 1944, and had a child, Chipper, on April Fool's Day (!) in 1945. The progression of normal growth and change throughout the normal ups and downs of family life, school, marriage and employment has entertained the strip's fans throughout its 78-year timespan, a full four generations of the Wallet clan.^[2]

During the 1970s and 1980s, under Dick Moores' authorship, the characters did briefly stop aging — when Jim Scancarelli took over, the natural aging was restored.[1]

[edit] Recent years

The strip is still published in newspapers today. Skeezix has become an octogenarian. Walt's wife Phyllis, aged an estimated 105, died in the April 26, 2004 strip, leaving Walt a widower after nearly eight decades of marriage. Walt Wallet appeared as a guest in Blondie and Dagwood's anniversary party. and on November 24, 2008, Gasoline Alley celebrated its 90th anniversary. On that date, Blondie, Dennis the Menace and Snuffy Smith each acknowledged the Gasoline Alley anniversary in the dialogue. Snuffy Smith presented a character cross-over with Walt in the doorway of Snuffy's house where he is being welcomed and invited in by Snuffy.^[3]

[edit] History of artists and awards

Gasoline Alley for November 24, 2008.

Frank King (1918-1959)
Bill Perry (Sunday strips only, 1951-1975)
Dick Moores (1956-1986)
Jim Scancarelli (1986-present)

King was succeeded by his former assistants, with Bill Perry taking responsibility for Sunday strips in 1951 and Dick Moores, first hired in 1956, becoming sole writer and artist for the daily strip in 1959. When Perry retired in 1975, Moores took responsibility for Sunday strips as well, combining the daily and Sunday stories into one continuity starting September 28 1975. Moores died in 1986, and since then Gasoline Alley has been written and drawn by Jim Scancarelli, formerly assistant to Moores.^[3]

The strip and King have been recognized with the National Cartoonist Society [NCS] Humor Strip Award in 1957, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1982 and 1985. King received the 1958 Society's Reuben Award, and Moores after him received it in 1974. Scancarelli received the Society's Story Comic Strip Award in 1988. In addition, the strip received an NCS plaque for the year's best story strip in 1981, 1982 and 1983.

[edit] Reprint collections

Examples of the full page Sunday strip were printed in The Comic Strip Century (1995, reissued in 2004 as 100 Years of Comic Strips), edited by Bill Blackbeard, Dale Crain and James Vance. Dick Moores' dailies and Sundays have appeared in Comics Revue monthly, as have the first strips by Jim Scancarelli. In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative US postage stamps.

In 2003, Spec Productions began a series of soft-covered collections titled Frank King's Gasoline Alley Nostalgia Journal, reprinting the strip from the very first "Rectangle" panel from November 24, 1918. To date, four volumes have appeared:

• Volume 1, Nov. 24, 1918 to Sept. 22, 1919
• Volume 2, Sept. 23, 1919 to March 2, 1920
• Volume 3, March 3, 1920 to July 25, 1920
• Volume 4, July 26, 1920 to December 31, 1920

In 2005, the first of a series of reprint books, Walt and Skeezix, began, published by Drawn and Quarterly and edited by Chris Ware. The first volume covers 1921–22, beginning when baby Skeezix appears. These reprint only the daily strips, with Sundays to appear in another series:

• Walt and Skeezix: Book One, 1921–22, ISBN 1-896597-64-5
• Walt and Skeezix: Book Two, 1923–24, ISBN 1-896597-99-8
• Walt and Skeezix: Book Three, 1925–26, ISBN 1-897299-09-5
• Walt and Skeezix: Book Four, 1927–28, ISBN 1-897299-39-7 (2009)

In 2007, Sunday Press Books published Sundays with Walt and Skeezix, which collects early Sunday strips in the original size and color.

[edit] Radio

Frank King's Gasoline Alley (1931)

There were several radio adaptations. Gasoline Alley during the 1930s starred Bill Idelson as Skeezix Wallet with Jean Gillespie as his girlfriend Nina Clock. Jimmy McCallon was Skeezix in the series that ran on NBC from February 17 to April 11, 1941, continuing on the Blue Network from April 28 to May 9 of that same year. The 15-minute series aired weekdays at 5:30pm. Along with Nina (Janice Gilbert), the characters included Skeezix's boss Wumple (Cliff Soubier) and Ling Wee (Junius Matthews), a waiter in a Chinese restaurant. Charles Schenck directed the scripts by Kane Campbell.

The syndicated series of 1948-49 featured a cast of Bill Lipton, Mason Adams and Robert Dryden. Sponsored by Autolite, the 15-minute episodes focused on Skeezix running a gas station and garage, the Wallet and Bobble Garage, with his partner, Wilmer Bobble. In New York this series aired on WOR from July 16, 1948 to January 7, 1949.^[4]

[edit] Films

Gasoline Alley was adapted into two feature films, Gasoline Alley (1951) and Corky of Gasoline Alley (1951). At the time these films were in production, it was announced that the Gasoline Alley film series would replace the Blondie film series which came to an end in 1950 with Beware of Blondie. The films starred Jimmy Lydon as Skeezix, known at that time for 1947's Life with Father and his earlier character of Henry Aldrich.^[5]

[edit] Listen to

• Glowing Dial: Gasoline Alley: "The Adventure of Jealous Jessica" (1948-49)
• Radio America: Gasoline Alley, October 29, 1948.

[edit] References

Frank King's Skeezix Out West (Reilly & Lee Co., 1928)

[edit] External links

• Gocomics.com
• The New York Times: "See You in the (Restored, Reprinted) Funny Papers"
• NCS Awards
• Toonopedia
• Gasoline Alley (1951) and Corky of Gasoline Alley (1951) at IMDb.com
• Wallet family tree
• Right Back In the Alley with Skeezix