{"id":71,"date":"2005-07-04T13:11:28","date_gmt":"2005-07-04T17:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harrymccracken.com\/hgr\/?p=71"},"modified":"2005-07-04T13:11:28","modified_gmt":"2005-07-04T17:11:28","slug":"another-vertical-original","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/04\/another-vertical-original\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Vertical Original"},"content":{"rendered":"

I kind of liked the way the Bullwinkle <\/em>strip original I ran sideways looked<\/a>, so I’m going to dig into my original art stash every now and then and run more pieces this way. Tilt your head and enjoy…<\/p>\n

Here’s an example of Vi and George Smith’s The Smith Family<\/em>, an unjustly obscure strip that ran for decades. (This one is undated, but I’m guessing it’s from the late 1970s or 1980s.) Vi Smith had a unique, highly animated style, and the strip was reliably funny, often in a somewhat dark manner. I’m not sure what George Smith’s involvement with the strip was, but much of the time (not in this example), it was done from a woman’s point of view.<\/p>\n

I read it for years in The Boston Globe<\/em>–where it ran every day, then every Sunday…and then, it seemed, only when they had unexpected space to fill. I’m not sure when the strip died altogether, but it ran into the late 1980s, at least.<\/p>\n

I would wonder if I’m the only person on earth who remembers The Smith Family<\/em>, except Shane Glines’ Cartoon Retro has a discussion going on<\/a> about it, with more examples.<\/p>\n

Update: This comics index<\/a> says that the strip ran from 1951 until 1994. I’m not sure if I’d buy a Complete Smith Family<\/em> series, but I’d love to see some sort of best-of collection. It’s a strip that’s thoroughly worthy of rediscovery.<\/p>\n

\"smithfamily-small.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"smithfamily-vertical.jpg\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I kind of liked the way the Bullwinkle strip original I ran sideways looked, so I’m going to dig into my original art stash every now and then and run more pieces this way. Tilt your head and enjoy… Here’s an example of Vi and George Smith’s The Smith Family, an unjustly obscure strip that … Continue reading “Another Vertical Original”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}