PUCK: What Fools These Mortals Be!—

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“it is hard to overestimate the political influence of puCk…during the last two decades of the 19th Century. it was greater than all newspapers combined.”

THE STORY OF

PUCK

“in these early days of cartooning, the weekly humor

MAG AZINE

magazine gave cartoons real prominence, and cartoonists

—stephen hess, e Ungentlemanly Art

immediately began pushing every limit of the art form.”

—from the foreword by Bill Watterson

With nearly 300 color plates What fools these Mortals Be: the story of puCk is the first full-color monograph devoted to the most important political satire and cartoon magazine in american history. e weekly journal’s de caricatures and pointed commentary made it a political force to be reckoned with. it is credited with single-handedly thwarting the third-term ambitions of ulysses s. Grant in 1880 and electing Grover Cleveland to the presidency in 1884—or at least, by its devastating “tattooed Man” series, denying it to James G. Blaine. and puCk did it with art—lavish color full-page and two-page centerspread cartoons. Many of the issues that dominated puCk’s pages more than one hundred years ago continue to influence the political debate today.

MICHAEL ALEXANDER KAHN AND RICHARD SAMUEL WEST

“[puCk] created a genre and established a tradition.”

— david sloane, American Humor Magazine and Comic Periodicals Michael Alexander Kahn is the co-author of May it aMuse the Court: editorial Cartoons of the supreMe Court and the Constitution and more than a dozen scholarly articles on the presidency and the supreme Court. he has assembled one of the country’s leading collections of political cartoons, which has been featured in numerous magazine articles and in an exhibit at the Grolier Club in new york in 2007. he is a frequent lecturer on the significance of political cartoon art and has developed educational materials based on the art for teaching on the university and high school levels and in museum programs.

Richard Samuel West is the author of several books on american political cartooning, the most recent being iConoClast in ink: the politiCal Cartoons of J. n. "dinG" darlinG (2012), and the editor of four collections of political cartoons. he was the founder and editor of tarGet: the politiCal Cartoon Quarterly (19811987), and the political cartoon editor of inks, the MaGazine of CartooninG, published by ohio state university (1994-1997). he is the owner of periodyssey, located in easthampton, Massachusetts, which buys and sells significant and unusual american periodicals.

published from 1877 to 1918, puCk was an american original—the country’s first and most successful humor magazine, the first magazine to publish color lithographs on a weekly basis, and for nearly forty years, a training ground and showcase for some of the country’s most talented cartoonists, led by its co-founder, Joseph keppler.

THE STORY OF

PUCK

AMERICA’S FIRST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MAGAZINE OF COLOR POLITICAL CARTOONS FOREWORD BY BILL WATTERSON

during its illustrious career puCk published more than two thousand numbered issues. When, aer four decades, it ceased publication, e Literary Digest printed an appropriate epitaph: “Puck had no real rival in its best days. fallen from its fine estate, it has le no successor.”

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What Fools These Mortals Be!

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Also by Michael Alexander Kahn May It Amuse the Court: Editorial Cartoons of the Supreme Court and Constitution (with H. L. Pohlman) Also by Richard Samuel West Satire on Stone: e Political Cartoons of Joseph Keppler e San Francisco Wasp: An Illustrated History William Newman: A Victorian Cartoonist in London and New York (with Jane E. Brown) Iconoclast in Ink: e Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling

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What Fools These Mortals Be! THE STORY OF PUCK AMERICA’S FIRST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MAGAZINE OF

COLOR POLITICAL CARTOONS

MICHAEL ALEXANDER KAHN AND RICHARD SAMUEL WEST

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A NOTE ON SOURCE MATERIAL The images reproduced in this book have been scanned from printed editions of Puck. They are primarily from the private collections of the authors, supplemented by images in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs collection. Scans were made of individual issues and loose pages whenever possible; in some instances the only available source was a bound volume and for these images some “bind-in” may have occurred.

BOOK DESIGN BY

Lorraine Turner and Dean Mullaney

THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN COMICS Dean Mullaney/Creative Director and Editor Bruce Canwell/Associate Editor Lorraine Turner/Art Director Beau Smith/Marketing Director ISBN: 978-1-63140-046-9 First Printing, October 2014 Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors 1-410-560-7100 Published by: IDW Publishing a Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC 5080 Santa Fe Street San Diego, CA 92109 www.idwpublishing.com Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/Publisher Greg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/President Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer Alan Payne, VP of Sales Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services Text © 2014 Michael Alexander Kahn and Richard Samuel West.

Introduction © 2014 Bill Watterson. All rights reserved. Artwork restoration © 2014 Library of American Comics LLC. The Library of American Comics is a trademark of The Library of American Comics LLC. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contents of this publication may be reprinted without the permission of the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Korea.

This page: Standard illustration supplied by Keppler and Schwarzmann to serve as a frontispiece for issues of Puck gathered into bound volumes.

Dustjacket front: Elements from “Puck’s Review of the Past Year” (centerspread by Joseph Keppler, December 31, 1884).

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In memory of Eleanor Ruth Pick Kahn (1924-2006). M.A.K. In memory of Katherine Orton West (1921-2006) and for Al, Dave, Mur, and Anne, with love. R.S.W.

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oreword Today, as the mass media atomizes, newspapers struggle, and political cartoonists lose their jobs, it’s strange to look at 19th Century publications like Puck, where a political cartoon could take up the entire cover or a two-page centerspread inside. e artistic possibilities and visual impact of that kind of space are revelations.

Even in its own day, the lithograph drawings of Joseph Keppler were a world away from the crosshatched wood engravings of omas Nast’s cartoons of just a few years earlier. e new lithography technology permitted sensuous lines, an immense range of halones, and—what must have been absolutely eye-popping in those days— full color. e cartoonists of Puck were clearly excited by the opportunities and their cartoons are lavishly drawn.

Some are bold and graphic, some are exaggerated and cartoony, and others are richly illustrative. e commentary is equally varied, ranging from silly, to satiric, to outraged. In these early days of cartooning, the weekly humor magazine gave cartoons real prominence, and cartoonists immediately began pushing every limit of the art form.

Decades later, comic strip cartoonists did the same thing in the daily newspapers. Cartoons are partly shaped by their publishing environment, and the artistry of cartoons expands in those rare times when it’s given some encouragement and open territory. e Internet seems to reduce everything to niche markets of dubious profitability, and it remains to be seen if political cartoons will ever thrive again, but we are again at the threshold of a new publishing technology, and cartoonists can now draw any kind of cartoon, in any kind of medium, in any style. e open territory for artistic expansion is here again. Perhaps the Puck cartoons reprinted in this beautiful book will remind us of the power, scope, and artistic possibilities we’ve long neglected.

Bill Watterson 2014

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Foreword

The History of Puck Magazine The Puck Building

Presidential Politics

Politics and Government : Business and Labor Foreign Relations

Race and Religion Social Issues

Personalities Just for Fun

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CHAPTER ONE

istory of Puck Magazine Puck was America’s first successful humor magazine. It was the most influential American humor magazine ever published. It was the first American magazine to publish color lithographs on a weekly basis. And, for nearly forty years, it was a training ground and showcase for some of the country’s most talented cartoonists.

As David Sloane has said in American Humor Magazine and Comic Periodicals, Puck “created a genre and established a tradition,” spawning dozens of imitators. It also led the way for that great American institution, the comics.

Stephen Hess, in his history of American political cartooning, e Ungentlemanly Art, said, “It is hard to overestimate the political influence of Puck…during the last two decades of the 19th Century.

It was greater than all newspapers combined.” Many believe the magazine was single-handedly responsible for thwarting the thirdterm ambitions of Ulysses Grant in 1880 and electing Grover Cleveland to the presidency in 1884. e first issue of Puck, which burst onto the scene on March 14, 1877, featured a spirited cover cartoon of Puck, the magazine's mascot, springing forth into a barnyard full of perplexed journalist-chickens. Modeled aer the colorful political cartoon weeklies of continental Europe, Puck was indeed something of a surprise to American readers brought up on the black-and-white woodcuts of Harper’s Weekly and the various

inconsequential American humor magazines published in the same format.

Puck’s founders, cartoonist Joseph Keppler and printer Adolph Schwarzmann, had high hopes for their ambitious effort.

Keppler, born in Vienna in 1838, had studied art as an adolescent but turned to acting as a young adult. He developed a name for himself in provincial Austria's theatrical world. When he immigrated to the United States in 1867, he seems to have decided to give up acting in favor of cartooning. He settled in St. Louis and with the help of others established several short-lived humor magazines. In 1872 he moved with his young wife and infant son to New York City, where for four years he worked at Frank Leslie’s Publishing House. It was there that he met Adolph Schwarzmann, foreman of the printing department for the German language edition of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

Schwarzmann, Keppler’s contemporary, had emigrated from his native Germany in 1858. Aer more than a decade working under Frank Leslie, he established his own printing firm in 1875. e following year he convinced Keppler to join him in publishing Puck Illustrirte Humoristiches Wochenblatt, a cartoon weekly for German-speaking Americans, which first appeared in September of 1876. When it proved successful, they launched Puck in English the following March.

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RIGHT: The three men most responsible for Puck's success—Joseph Keppler, Adolph Schwarzmann, and H. C. Bunner (seated)— discuss a cartoon rough during a staff meeting in 1887 (detail from an illustration by Joseph Keppler in Puck's Tenth Anniversary Illustrated Supplement, March 2, 1887).

OPPOSITE: Illustrations (from the same supplement) of activities involved in the magazine’s production.

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Puck’s first editor was Sydney Rosenfeld, a young New York playwright who had attracted Keppler and Schwarzmann’s attention because of his skillful translations of contemporary German plays.

He soon gave way to his associate, H. C. Bunner, a 21-year-old New Yorker who would turn out to be the perfect editor—cultured but not effete, sentimental without being cloying, prolific and clever.

He would guide Puck’s black-and-white content for nearly twenty years, until his untimely death in 1896.

Puck was the latest in a long line of political cartoon magazines that had appeared in Europe and the United States beginning in the 1820s. e European magazines such as Le Charivari (Paris), Punch (London), Kladderadasch (Berlin), and Kikeriki (Vienna) thrived. e American magazines, such as Yankee Doodle, the New York Picayune, e Lantern, Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, and Vanity Fair (all of New York) did not. But Puck was different. By innovating with color lithography, displaying an irreverent and light-hearted touch in its cartoons, and operating under the spritely editorial hand of H. C. Bunner, Puck managed to survive its lean early years and then prosper.

Keppler had named the magazine aer the famous character in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and used his first daughter as the model for the forest sprite. Puck took as its motto “What fools these mortals be” to underscore its intent to expose folly and puncture pretension. It soon became clear that Puck meant business.

For most of its run Puck was a journal of reform. It crusaded

against political corruption, the undue influence of money in politics, and monopolies in all their forms. It advocated for the rights of labor, for fair immigration policies, for tariff reform.

During its more conservative middle years it supported the gold standard and expansion. Many of the issues that dominated Puck’s pages more than one hundred years ago continue to dominate the political debate today.

Puck’s most distinctive feature was its sharp focus on presidential politics and its stinging satirical portrayal of America’s political leadership. roughout the decades Puck was a supporter of the Democratic Party and stood with it through every presidential campaign, except when the nominee was William Jennings Bryan, whom Puck could not stomach. From its earliest days Puck brilliantly lampooned some of the most prominent Republicans of the day—Roscoe Conkling, Ulysses Grant, James G. Blaine, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, omas Reed, eodore Roosevelt, William H. Ta, Joseph Cannon, and more.

Keppler’s work dominated the pages of Puck from its inception until 1894, the year of his death. en his son Udo (who renamed himself Joseph Keppler Jr.) took over and produced an equally impressive body of work before selling the magazine twenty years later. rough both eras Puck employed a legion of talented cartoonists, including James A. Wales, Frederick Burr Opper, Bernhard Gillam, Eugene “Zim” Zimmerman, C.J. Taylor, W. A. Rogers, Harrison Fisher, Rose O’Neill, J. S. Pughe,

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RIGHT: Illustrations from March 2, 1887 illustrated supplement that helped explain the chromolithography process.

Art Young, Hy Mayer, Rube Goldberg, and Ralph Barton, among many. e high-water mark of Puck’s success was the 1884 presidential election campaign when it reached a peak circulation of 125,000, a number attained by only a few weeklies of the period. Puck’s success prompted its owners to create a small but highly profitable publishing empire that included such spin-off titles as Puck’s Annual (1880-1887), Puck on Wheels (1880-1884, 1886), Pickings om Puck (1883-1916), and Puck’s Library (1887-1915); Puck Press, a publishing arm that reprinted stories and drawings from Puck’s pages in book form; as well as a few original periodicals, such as Fiction (1881-1882) and Um Die Welt (1882-1885).

As Puck’s influence increased the magazine became a lightning rod for criticism. During the 1884 campaign the Republican weekly Judge spent more time attacking Puck and Harper’s Weekly than it did advocating for its candidate, James G. Blaine. Aer the election, Blaine, so incensed by Puck’s devastating “Tattooed Man” series, considered suing the magazine for libel and was dissuaded from doing so only by the strong objections of friends and advisors. In subsequent years Puck was frequently the target of boycotts by interest groups and was banned from public libraries, YMCA reading rooms, and by foreign governments.

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In 1893, Puck went to the World’s Fair in Chicago. e fair, also known as the World’s Columbian Exposition to mark the 400th anniversary of the voyages of Columbus, was the major event of the year and Puck’s presence there was a singular honor.

It had been invited to the fair to provide fair-goers with an object lesson in the art of lithography. To accomplish this Keppler and Schwarzmann erected their own building on the Midway and designed it so that the millions of people who visited the fair could witness firsthand the amazing chromolithographic printing process employed to print Puck. For the duration of the fair, from May 1 to October 30, Keppler and Schwarzmann published a special on-site World’s Fair Puck while simultaneously publishing the regular Puck in New York.

Although political humor always played an important role in Puck’s pages, the magazine also devoted considerable space to lampooning social and cultural trends of the day. Puck’s pages are filled with cartoons about the wealthy, the working class and the poor, religion, matrimony, the new woman, servants and maids, resorts and beaches, college sports, bicycling and golf, courtship, pets, and just about everything on the minds of turn-of-thecentury Americans.

Keppler’s death in 1894 and Bunner’s in 1896 ended twenty years of stability in Puck’s leadership. Adolph Schwarzmann

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consolidated control of the magazine in his own hands and tilted the magazine rightward, espousing conservative economic and foreign policy positions. Upon Schwarzmann’s death in 1904 Keppler Jr. and Schwarzmann Jr. took control of the publishing house. ough Puck had initially admired eodore Roosevelt, it ended up supporting the more conservative candidate in the presidential campaign of 1904, Judge Alton Parker. is proved to be Puck’s last dalliance with the right. From 1905 on Puck returned to its progressive roots, embracing socialist themes about economic inequity and the evils of the trusts. But this didn’t prompt Puck to renew its support for Roosevelt. e magazine had become tired of what it viewed as his insatiable ego and dangerous militarist streak.

Puck flew the Democratic banner proudly in 1912 in support of the candidacy of Woodrow Wilson. In the campaign of 1916, the magazine supported Wilson again, but by then politics played a diminished role in Puck’s weekly fare.

In January 1914 Keppler and Schwarzmann sold the magazine to Nathan Straus Jr., the son of the department store magnate. By then, Puck’s circulation had sunk to 12,500, barely enough to sustain the publication. Straus attempted to recreate Puck in the image of the great French and German humor magazines, L’Assiette au Beurre and Simplicissimus. To this end he hired the cosmopolitan cartoonist Hy Mayer as art director, introduced a

number of European artists to Puck’s pages, and emphasized social satire and coverage of the arts. He didn’t have time to realize his dream before the advent of the First World War crippled his plans.

In March 1917 Puck, which now described itself as America’s “cleverest weekly,” celebrated its fortieth anniversary. ere was in fact little to celebrate: in an effort to save money at the beginning of the year Straus had converted it to a bi-weekly. War shortages had forced him to print the magazine on newsprint, a humiliating comedown from his initial vision of the magazine. Though many new talents were contributing to Puck, in truth, the magazine had lost its spark. In June Straus sold out to William Randolph Hearst, an ironic twist in the history of a magazine that had previously vilified Hearst and his brand of journalism. Under Hearst's management the new Puck emphasized covers with patriotic themes. Most notable during this period was a series of scathing antiGerman cartoons it published by the great Dutch cartoonist Louis Raemaekers. Hearst converted Puck into a monthly in March 1918 and then killed it in September, transferring its good name to the Sunday comic section of his many newspapers.

In its illustrious career Puck published 2,121 numbered issues in 81 volumes. e Literary Digest, on September 7, 1918, printed an appropriate epitaph: “Puck had no real rival in its best days. Fallen from its fine estate, it has le no successor.”

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PUCK’S FIRST DEBUT German edition, September [27], 1876, Vol. 1, No. 1, cover.

ARTIST: JOSEPH KEPPLER Puck began as a German-language humor magazine intended for German-Americans. It quickly attained a circulation of about twenty thousand, a robust figure for an American foreign language publication, and maintained it for most of its run. It was published for twenty-one years, until August 1897.

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A STIR IN THE ROOST English edition, March 14, 1877, Vol. 1, No. 1, cover.

ARTIST: JOSEPH KEPPLER This stylish cartoon graced the cover of the first issue of the English-language Puck. Notably, Thomas Nast, the most famous cartoonist of the day, stands apart and in front holding a copy of Harper’s Weekly. Frank Leslie, Keppler and Schwarzmann's former employer, is the fat hen on the left, firmly in control of his brood.

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PUCK SENDS HIS COMPLIMENTS TO MR. NAST ONCE MORE! June 4, 1879, Vol. 5, No. 117, back cover.

ARTIST: JAMES A. WALES Puck enjoyed needling Thomas Nast. Wales perfectly mimicked Nast's style in this back cover spoof that skewered the famous Harper's Weekly cartoonist for his labored drawing technique and painful use of puns.

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A MID-SUMMER DAY’S DREAM While our artist sleeps, his favorite subjects are left to do justice to themselves, and to correct his conceptions.

August 10, 1881, Vol. 9, No. 231, centerspread.

ARTIST: JOSEPH KEPPLER In this self-portrait Joseph Keppler naps while his victims do justice to their own portraits. The humor is found in the contrast between Keppler's caricatures and the inflated fantasies purportedly drawn by the subjects themselves.

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PUCK’S ANNUAL Puck’s Annual, an elaborate almanac for the year, was published from 1880 to 1887.

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PUCK ON WHEELS Puck on Wheels, a mid-summer entertainment intended for the vacationing crowd, was published from 1880 to 1884 and once more in 1886 and was then replaced by an expanded regular issue entitled "The Mid-Summer Puck."

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PICKINGS FROM PUCK The success of Puck's Annual and Puck on Wheels prompted Keppler and Schwarzmann in 1883 to begin publishing handsome compilations of cartoons and stories that had already appeared in the magazine. Initially issued erratically, Pickings from Puck became a quarterly in 1891 and continued to be published into the teens.

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PUCK’S LIBRARY The demand for Puck 's humor seemed unquenchable.

In July 1887 Keppler and Schwarzmann launched Puck's Library, a monthly magazine free of political references that reprinted cartoons and jokes around specific themes, the first issue being devoted to baseball humor. It became Puck's Monthly Magazine in 1905 and continued to be published for another decade.

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THE RETURN OF "THE PRODIGAL FATHER" TO THE PUCK OFFICE October 10, 1883, Vol. 14, No. 344, centerspread.

ARTIST: JOSEPH KEPPLER Keppler announced his return from a six-month European vacation with this lively cartoon of his reception. Puck 's other cartoonists, Opper, Gillam, and Graetz are on the viewer's left, while the editors are clustered on the right. Editor Bunner comes in for the roughest treatment— he is depicted as a goat rummaging through the trash for contributions.

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PUCK’S POLITICAL HUNTING-GROUND — HOW HE HAS MADE GAME OF THE POLITICIANS January 14, 1885, Vol. 16, No. 410, centerspread.

ARTIST: JOSEPH KEPPLER Puck’s high-water mark was the election of 1884 when its influential cartoons were generally believed to have made the difference between victory and defeat for both major candidates. Here Puck the hunter gloats about the game it has hunted down and bagged, most notably presidential candidate James Blaine (as a fox) gripped in the jaws of satire.

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