help me find thimble theatre daily strips 1922-1928

[kevinh]

I'm looking for digital scans (to read) of the complete Thimble Theatre daily strips from 1923-1928. Would appreciate any info, leading to the location and apprehension, etc.

thanks, etc.

[kevinh]

I have googled around extensively so, like, don't send me any links from the first 10 pages of google results. Don't say newspapercomicstripsblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/popeye/ because I know, and I downloaded it all.

The stuff at that link is INCOMPLETE for many years, and many years have only Sunday pages. I am not interested in Sunday pages, just DAILY STRIPS.

The closest I've gotten is the link at that site for 1923, which are clippings of the entire comics page from the San Antonio News from 1923.
I'm thinking that this came from newspapers.com. I don't want to have to sign up for that site and do all the physical clipping and saving, I don't have time for that, and I'm hoping to find something better before I lose my mind doing that.

[kevinh]

The Whiffle Hen storyline, during which Popeye appears, starts in Sept of 1928, so those are reprinted all over the place. So, the back quarter of 1928 is covered, but I haven't been able to find 1928 up until then.

[kevinh]

The Mike Higgs book has the great "Blizzard the Wockle Hen" storyline, from 1924

[kevinh]

There's the Sunday Press book, but those are Sundays, obviously, not dailies

[BubblesZine]

I've talked to Lucas, I'm going to help yall. I just need more free time. But here's what I have so far:

- From the Popeye Wikipedia page: "Thimble Theatre was cartoonist Segar's third published strip when it first appeared in the New York Journal on December 19, 1919. The paper's owner, William Randolph Hearst, also owned King Features Syndicate, which syndicated the strip. Thimble Theatre was intended as a replacement for Midget Movies by Ed Wheelan (Wheelan having recently resigned from King Features).[52] It did not attract a large audience at first, and at the end of its first decade appeared in only half a dozen newspapers."

So a half dozen papers. I've been trying to figure out what papers those are, and then find the microfilm for them. There's a great chance we'll need to digitize these ourselves. If you can find out what papers, I can use my university library (which I have full access to being a employee of the school) to find the microfilm via interlibrary loan.

I think those strips would be in the "New York Journal" based on the above, but I need to find a place where those microfilms exist.

OSU has some old Thimble Theatres on hand, they have 1917-1921 from the Oakland Post. So that made me think that paper might have the 1922-1928 comics too.

[kevinh]

Cool, thanks, good catch on the half a dozen newspapers (!).
I was going to reach out to Rick Marshall as well.

[thebeautifulpuffin]

Maybe you've already done this, but it surely couldn't hurt to write directly to Maresca at Sunday Press and Mullaney at LOAC. If anyone is hep to a stack, or hep to who's hep to a stack, it's probably those two. Reynolds is editing the Popeye books for Fanta now, yes? He's easy to bother!

[thebeautifulpuffin]

Any progress?

[shrelp]

I too was searching for archives of this, came across this site. Seems to have complete archives of its papers. Which serialized 'Thimble Theater' from 1922-1924 in its pages. Has an easy enough UI to navigate through.

chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/issues/1922/

[kevinh]

Some progress, but slow, since I am more interested in working on my own comics... Thanks everybody for your help so far.