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Funny Page Flashback of the Week

AG/DC May 14 2008 09:23 AM Edited 2 time(s), most recently on May 14 2008 09:39 AM

Dondi was a strange strip that I seem to recall ran the whole back page of the Daily News tabloid-fold comic section when I was a kid. It was odd to me, his sad dark eyes betraying an existential confusion as to where he belonged in the great scheme of things. Turned out that was at the heart of what Dondi was. Dondi was a strip like it's rhyme-sister Blondie, that began as topical, but by freezing the characters in time, lost it's topicality. The boy Dondi was an Italian war orphan found and adopted by an American GI. His name came from his repeating the word "donde" ("where?") as he searched for his parents in the rubble of a destroyed Italian town. His adventures, to me, seemed to be the little lost soul stumbling into the lives of other misbegottens, feeling their pain, and appreciating a little more the gift of his adopted family, which included a retired ballplayer named "Pop" Fligh as a step-granddad. As time passed, his origin became obscured as it became anacronistic, but a few later references placed him as a Korean War orphan, and still fewer in the seventies noted that he was from Vietnam. The strip was produced by Gus Edson and Irwin Hasen. After Edson's death, Hasen teamed up with Bob Hocksner. It ran from 1955 until 1986, but at the time of its demise, it remained in only 35 papers, so the primo real estate it got from the News is a mystery, unless they were living in the past. A film adapatation came in 1961, featuring David Janssen and Patti Page (the Singing Rage, according to WHLI). Leonard Maltin's criticique says to "watch this film and you'll see why Janssen became a fugitive!" I never saw it and it probably was awful, but I don't put it beyond Maltin to make getting a good zinger in there his top priority in film reviwing. Looking for Dondi artwork online is funny. Like Bambi, Dondi is a big-eyed innocent orphan who apparently has lent his name to generations of exotic woman marketing their beauty.

Benjamin Grimm May 14 2008 09:35 AM

I remember that strip well. Dondi's pals were Web and Baldy, and his dog's name was Queenie. And his dad was Ted and his mom had some European-sounding first name. I think it was Katje, or something like that.

AG/DC May 14 2008 09:38 AM

Katje is correct. I think she was perhaps a war bride herself. Sounds like Ted came home from Europe fully familied. I think that means you get next week's Funny Page Flashback.

Frayed Knot May 14 2008 12:02 PM

Irwin Hasen was about 4'10" and kind of looked like an older - but barely bigger - version of Dondi.

John Cougar Lunchbucket May 14 2008 12:08 PM

I had little interest in comix but less than that in Dondi, whose look always freaked me out. I useta deliver the sunday Snooze and hated seeing that cover compared to Newsday which always had Peanuts front & center. Daily News color was always more saturated, tho.

Benjamin Grimm May 14 2008 12:17 PM

As I recall, the News' funnies were on a more glossy stock, while Newsday's were on plain newsprint. I remember when Sunday Newsday first came out. (Newsday had previously been just a Monday through Saturday paper.) I got a real kick out of seeing the familiar Newsday strips in color, in a larger size, and with additional panels. Newsday and the News had almost no overlap in comic strips back then. So I was used to seeing Dick Tracy and Dondi and Moon Mullins in color, but not Peanuts and the other Newsday strips.

AG/DC May 14 2008 12:24 PM

I read the News funnies back to front. I felt I had to read them all, but a sense of delayed gratification made me want to get Dondi and the other back matter out of the way first. Had I known Irwin Hasen was having tea with the Knots, I might have felt differently.

Frayed Knot May 14 2008 12:28 PM

In the old days comics (and other syndicated features) were sold to newspapers with the guarantee of territorial rights to that strip, so the idea that one paper had what its in-market competitor didn't wasn't just coincidence. Not quite sure when that system started breaking down but, back during the time when strips were a much bigger part of the paper, getting the rights in your city to a popular feature like 'Dick Tracy' or 'Terry and the Pirates' was a huge selling point. I never read Dondi either.

Benjamin Grimm May 14 2008 12:30 PM

Irwin Hasen, 90 years young this year, is a person who is still alive.

HahnSolo May 14 2008 12:53 PM

Dondi was one of those things that was always prevalent (my parents were Daily Snoozers) that I never really looked at. Winnie Winkle was another comic that I remember forever but never read.

metsguyinmichigan May 14 2008 01:21 PM

I remember that Dondi played baseball, and one year he faced a girl pitcher named "Tammie Seever" who threw a pitch that could amazingly zig-zag one its way to the plate.

AG/DC May 28 2008 06:07 PM

Before The Boondocks, and before Curtis, the strip I remember with a struggling young black protagonist was Luther. Borrowing his name from the protestant icon Martin Luther as well as well as civil rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr., Luther ran from 1969 to 1986. His landscape and disenfrancisement more resembled Curtis, but the Luther world seemed far bleaker --- the heavily inked artwork suggesting a perpetual twilight, no supportive adults (in fact, like Peanuts, adults were entirely absent if I recall correctly), and a teacher always described as antagonistic. The landscape these kids moved through was largely empty, suggesting a blown out neightborhood to me. What background buildings I do recall were drawn with a sag to them, like they could go any moment, or maybe they were just depressed with the lives they've been left to host. Brumsick Brandon, Jr. was the author, and in the later years his daughter Barbara assisted him. She would go on to become the first black woman with a strip distributed by a major national syndicator, Where I'm Coming From. Brandon also played "Mr. BB" on a seventies children's televsion show called Time for Joya, aka "Joya's Fun School." I don't know that the seventies was a bleaker time than today to be black kid in the city, but man I don't recall a whole lot of chuckles from Curtis. The kids' outlook was so defeated. It was like Peanuts might be if every kid was Charlie Brown.

Benjamin Grimm May 29 2008 12:07 PM

I do remember Luther. (I thought I had mentioned the strip earlier in this thread, but it must have been elsewhere.) I had only remembered two characters names: Luther and Oreo. In the strip pictured here, Luther is the character delivering the opening line. Here we only see him in shadow. I had forgotten that there was a character named "Hardcore" but I do remember his cap. If I recall correctly, there was no Sunday version of Luther. I don't know if it was a daily-only strip, or if Newsday just chose not to run it on Sundays. I'm looking forward to Edgy's flashback look at Boner's Ark.

AG/DC May 29 2008 12:14 PM

Look how stooped by fate all three are. You know, you can take a Funny Page Flashback entry yourself. Brumsick Brandon, Jr. is alive and well, according to the web, in his 81st year.

Vic Sage May 29 2008 12:35 PM

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I had little interest in comix ... I hope your dad doesn't know that. I knew Hasen only from his work on the golden age GREEN LANTERN. I knew DONDI existed, but i never read it, and never realized its connection to Hasen.