Monday, February 4, 2008

HOW TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT

Duncan Swan started the “Jeepers” comic strip back in 1957.  By ’58, the hilarious, four-panel antics of the out-of-work, job-seeking Wally Jeepers were syndicated in over 300 newspapers across America.  1960 saw the introduction of a rodent-like sidekick of Jeepers known as Phipps, which soon took the spotlight away from Jeepers and started a cultural phenomenon the comic strip community had never seen:  a TV show based on a popular sidekick from a comic strip that barely featured him and made no mention of the main character.  When Swan killed off Phipps in a 1963 strip, coinciding with Kennedy’s assassination, the country revolted.  Riots in the streets, protests and mass suicides were the result.  Phipps had struck a chord with so many, and the fact that Swan would do such a thing infuriated the American public.  Soon thereafter, Swan gave up the “Jeepers” strip for good, but after much cajoling from his syndication company, Royal Blue, he retooled the strip, this time called “Phipps,” so that he could give the public what they seemingly wanted.  This all-new strip told the full life of the character, starting with his birth through his childhood, his teenage years, all the way up to adulthood.  Whole generations grew up with this strip and it grew with them, the first chronological strip of its kind.  Although “Phipps” made Swan a household name all over again, provided him with endorsement deals and made him a billionaire, he always regretted having to cow-tow to the public’s needs.  He hated compromising his original vision of the “Jeepers” strip for such a cheapened, watered-down version.  The only enjoyment he received in his life was the fact that no one ever noticed that Swan had always drawn Phipps with a slight, barely visible shit stain on the back of his pants and his sideburns were actually two, overlapping words written over and over again until almost illegible.  The words “fuck” and “you.”  Swan died with this secret at 97 and he died happily.




-SLL

1 Comments:

Blogger Adam Fox said...

Wonderful story. Two questions: did you ever get around to reading the Schultz biography & is Duncan Swan's name a reference to Paul Williams' character from de Palma's Phantom of the Paradise?

February 7, 2008 at 11:07 AM  

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