Casey Court (and Kabot's Klowns)

[philcom55]

Here's another belated New Year's greeting from a nice (but cheap) bunch of comics I picked up yesterday. Very much in the style of the famous 'Casey Court' in Illustrated Chips 'Kabot's Klowns' tends to be much less well known since it appeared in a comic that was only available in and around Bristol from 1933 to 1936 (though it was easily one of the country's best titles during that period - as well as being published up to five times a week! ).



To my eye the artist seems naggingly familiar but I can't quite put my finger on him (and even Denis Gifford draws a blank in his Comic Catalogue). Does anybody else have a notion of who it could be? (I'd suggest Albert Pease himself if I thought he had time to produce two of these manic crowd scenes every week...!)

All this, of course, was long before the Bash Street Kids or the Banana Bunch (...or even Giles!).

- Phil Rushton

[Lew Stringer]

I think it's more likely to be someone told to ghost Albert Pease's style, as there are some aspects of it that don't look like his work.

Fascinating piece though. What was the name of this short lived, regional comic?

[stevezodiac]

You haven't told us what comic it was in. Your post suggests it was either a local comic or a national comic only available in Bristol for a few years. Clarification would be appreciated. (I must have the wrong time zone on my comics uk cos it says your post was made in 15 minutes time). I never did get the hang of the summertime and greenwich meantime settings - why do we have them?

[philcom55]

The comic is called Boys' and Girls' Evening World - it was a supplement to a regional newspaper called the Bristol Evening News (part of the Harmsworth empire which included AP) and looked a lot like the American 'Funny Pages' of that period. Whereas the latter tended to use nationally syndicated material, however, this was mostly made up of specially commissioned features from top British comic artists (plus some imported Disney strips). I picked up about twenty issues which vary from four to eight large-size pages, in which the real jewels in the crown are a number of outstanding adventure serials by the great Reg Perrott. Though it used cheap newsprint rather than Photogravure, in many other respects the publication seems to have been an indirect forerunner of Mickey Mouse Weekly.

Given that most modern comics struggle to find sufficient readers from the whole country the fact that a single city was able to support a quality venture like this in the 1930s just goes to highlight the incredible appetite there must have been for comic strips back in those last few years before the war!

- Phil Rushton

[philcom55]

I think it's more likely to be someone told to ghost Albert Pease's style, as there are some aspects of it that don't look like his work.

That's my feeling too Lew (one possible name that occurs to me is John Jukes who replaced Pease elsewhere, as well as drawing other strips in Boys & Girls Own Evening World). Funnily enough I also picked up a near six-month run of Illustrated Chips from early 1933 at the weekend and it's fascinating comparing Kabot's Klowns with their Casey Court equivalents. I could be wrong but it looks to me as though all the latter were drawn by Albert Pease; here are four prime examples, followed by another half-page featuring the Klowns:











To my mind the truly glorious thing about Pease's Casey Court is the way in which there is never an inch of wasted space, compared to which Kabot's Klowns give the impression of an artist struggling to fill up the available space with a more limited cast of characters.

Also, I really love the way in which Casey Court authentically captures the rich imaginative life of children. Whereas the Bash Street Kids would, on occasion, climb real mountains or visit the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland the kids of the Court simply recreated the world in their own back yard every week! (Incidentally, I can't help wondering whether these wonderful extravaganzas were scripted by a separate writer or if Pease produced them all by himself - if he did then he must have been blessed with an incredibly fertile imagination as well a rare facility for seeing the world through the eyes of a child)

- Phil Rushton

[Phoenix]

Admittedly it is labelling rather than speech, but the lettering on your second Casey Court, Phil, seems different from that on the other three. It reminds me of an example from 20 November 1915, which I found some time ago on Peter Gray's blog, and which I post below. He was told that the artist was Julius Stafford Baker. I hope you can see it properly when magnified. My interest in it is because a good number of early Spadger's XIs in The Wizard use similar lettering.

[Peter Gray]

-Casey's court is just bursting with fun...
Banana Bunch poster pages were also brilliant...
Also Giles..

[philcom55]

Admittedly it is labelling rather than speech, but the lettering on your second Casey Court, Phil, seems different from that on the other three. It reminds me of an example from 20 November 1915, which I found some time ago on Peter Gray's blog...

That's a fascinating observation Phoenix, and one that hadn't occurred to me before you mentioned it. To be honest the style of artwork, and even the labelled text, looks pretty consistent to me - but the real difference is the total lack of any speech balloons on the aeroplane scene. The advantage of having an unbroken run to compare is that it allows you to put individual episodes into some kind of context, and looking at the first six months of Casey Court from 1933 I was surprised to discover that speech balloons proliferate in every set printed during that time except for a three-week period beginning in the issue dated March 18th (the aeroplane one) where they vanish utterly, returning to the 'silent movie' format of earlier years.

I must confess that I'm at something of a loss to explain this. Could it have resulted from a casual editorial fiat, or a brief change of writer (assuming he was different from the artist)? I'd really value Lew's opinion on this as he's usually much better than me at identifying humorous art styles. As far as I'm aware Pease took over as Casey Court's regular artist sometime during the early 1930s, and to my eye the examples I posted all look like his work rather than Baker, Walter Bell or any of the feature's earlier illustrators - though I could well be wrong.

- Phil Rushton

[Lew Stringer]

It's not always easy determining the artists behind 1930s humour pages as so many of them were following the house style of Roy Wilson. The lettering can be a giveaway, as Phoenix mentioned (because the artists lettered their own strips back then). I'll study them closer and compare them to other comics when I have more time.

Chances are all of those Casey Courts you've shown from the thirties are by Albert Pease, but it's also possible that other artists ghosted one or two, just as they did on other pages from time to time, if the comic needed to get ahead of schedule or if an artist was ill.

[Tin Can Tommy]

I bought the Casey Court book pictured below a while back and one of the interesting things I noticed was how they copied parts of older Casey Court strips for use in newer ones.

[philcom55]

I wondered if any of the older Casey Court sets might have been redrawn too, but apart from the inevitable re-use of particular themes like Bonfire Night and Christmas I've yet to spot any obvious examples (though apparently there were a few reprints over the years). Which bits did you notice that were copied Tommy?

As a matter of interest here's another variation on the aeroplane theme from 1949, though - as with the two shown above - there are plenty of fresh twists redolent of the period in which it was devised:



For such a historic feature there seems to be surprisingly little information available on the net or elsewhere about Casey Court's long run. That 'Nostalgia Collection' is particularly frustrating in that it doesn't attribute dates or artists to any of the episodes shown (apart from the very first), and Mary Cadogan's one-page introduction is remarkably sparse compared to the other books in the series.

Artistically Casey Court is almost like a piccalilli sandwich, with Julius Stafford Baker and Albert Pease representing substantial bread slices at the beginning and end, between which there was a piquant spread of styles provided by the likes of M.C. Veitch, H. O'Neill, Louis Briault, Allan Morley and Walter Bell. Here are the first and last episodes to appear in the pages of Chips (from the issues dated May 24th 1902 and September 12th 1953 respectively - an amazing run of over fifty years and 2,385 episodes!).





(Interesting to see that the Court's larger-than-life impresario Billy Baggs actually started out as 'Billie Bangs'!)

Between these two pieces there seems to have been a gradual evolution from Baker's rather grotesque ragamuffins (clearly inspired by Richard Outcault's 'Yellow Kid') to the more rounded 'Roy Wilson' look embraced by Pease and his contemporaries. As a result the artists who drew Casey Court during its middle years have a tendency to blur together for most collectors. So far the only other identifiable examples I've been able to find are this signed Allan Morley page from 1925 (enlarged from Paul Gravett's indispensable book Great British Comics)



And this one-off revival drawn by Walter Bell in 1976:



(Bell is said to have worked on the series in Chips for ten years, though nobody seems able to say when this was - or if he did so on a rotating basis).

I don't know about anyone else but I can't help feeling that Casey Court deserves a much more detailed 'coffee table' book, including background information about all the artists and writers involved as well as extensive coverage of the famous Music Hall show it inspired with Charlie Chaplin playing Billy Baggs. To my mind there are few cultural artifacts that record the changing social history of the first half of the twentieth century with such startling accuracy!

- Phil Rushton

[paw broon]

Difficult to explain just how excellent and entertaining this thread has been. My thanks, Phil. I'm quite good at ferreting out info. and comics from among the zillions of misleading traces on the interweb but I can find little on Kabot's Klowns - and it's soooooooooooo frustrating. I was aware of Casey's Court and have a few issues of Chips. Always enjoyed the panels as I did with Banana Bunch and Bash St. Kids big 1 panel pages. That sort of anarchy and quality appealed to me.

[Tin Can Tommy]

Which bits did you notice that were copied Tommy?

It was just a couple of background gags which were reused. They reused the same bits in differently themed sets. I think a small a part of the set used for the inside cover is reused in another strip in the book. I'd take pictures of the actual examples but my copy of the book is about 100 miles away from me at the moment.

Also I think they often reused the faces in the background.

[Tin Can Tommy]

I know its been 7 years since I last posted in this thread, and nearly all the images in the thread have now been scrubbed from the internet, but I think its finally time I posted evidence of reused artwork in Casey court.





I love finding the little shortcuts the artists took making these old comics.