Many fans and scholars of newspaper comics have observed that an excellent way to chart a social history of American culture in the twentieth century is to look at the mainstream comic strip page.¹ This may be especially true of the first half of the twentieth century when comic strips were avidly followed by readers from almost all age, class, and ethnic demographics.² Because of this breadth of popularity, the comics page was a fairly accurate reflector (and occasionally, shaper) of fashions, fads, humor, politics, and racial prejudices. Early cartoonists' ability to place their fingers on the American pulse can largely be attributed to the industry's eagerness to please readers: as a lowbrow entertainment that targeted broad audiences through street corner sales, and later, national syndication, it tried to anticipate the characters, comedy, and ideological content that would attract and retain devoted readers. A few iconoclastic cartoonists such as Al Capp (Li'l Abner) and George Herriman (Krazy Kat) challenged readers with topical satire or appealed to niche audiences with quirky humor and aesthetics; but even the most innovative work in the medium relied on a sort of call and response between core readers, syndicates, editors, and artists—a back and forth that insured that the cartoonist's work resonated with, or spoke for, its fans.

     However, the idea of comic strips as an accurate reflector of a cultural era's values is complicated by the fact that the Zeitgeist of each historical era has been artificially simplified by later generations. In reality, these eras bled into each other with a chaotic messiness and played host to many competing impulses, values, and ideologies. The multiethnic composition of the United States further complicates any effort to locate a generation's normative values or ideals. How could a mass medium reflect, for example, the polyglot richness of American culture in urban centers at the turn of the century—a time when diverse ethnic groups mingled and second- and third-generation immigrants were assimilating to varying degrees into mainstream culture?