BOODY ROGERS

 

By Chance Fiveash  

(This article originally appeared in THE COMICS JOURNAL #275) 

           

            “Being nutty wasn’t necessarily a prerequisite for being a cartoonist, but it surely helped,” wrote Gordon “Boody” Rogers in his 1984 self-published autobiography, Homeless Bound. If this is to be true then Boody Rogers must have been the nuttiest of them all, or at least neck in neck with Bill Hollman (Smokey Stover) and Basil Wolverton (Powerhouse Pepper). With an off the wall cartooning style combined with an even more oddball sense of humor, Rogers created some of the most bizarre comic stories of his time that seemed out of place in 1940’s but would have been right at home with the underground cartoonists of the seventies.

            Born Gordon Rogers in Hobart, Oklahoma 1904, he grew up and attended Childress High School in Childress, Texas from 1922 to 1926. His earliest ambitions during those years were, “…first to be a football quarterback (to win girls), and second to be a cartoonist and make people laugh.” High school was where he attained the nickname “Boody” when he started playing quarterback for the football team, “That’s how I got the name…. I could boot the pants off that ball!” It was during these years that Rogers would later channel his misadventures while writing and drawing the high school themed comic book Dudley for Feature Publications (Prize) in 1949.

            After high school, Rogers moved to Chicago where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts. It was there where he first befriended and eventually became roommates with Zack Mosely. Mosely would later become the creator of the comic strip Smilin’ Jack and take Rogers on as an assistant.

            In 1928 Boody Rogers married his high school sweetheart. That same year they moved to New York. Hearing that Dell Publications was starting a comic book, Rogers decided to visit their offices to see if he could sell some cartoons, “ I showed my one page of Rock Age Boy to the editor. He bought it! There was nothing to this cartoon business- it was a cinch. Then I did some other things- Deadwood Gulch, Campus Clowns, Sancho and the Don, and some puzzle pages. Dell bought them all. We soon had enough money to eat three meals a day.”

            Rogers goes on to say, “I didn’t realize it then, but I was working on the first comic book ever published. It was the right idea, but the wrong format. It was more like a tabloid paper than the small comic books of today. It only lasted about a year, but, thank God, it got us started in New York City.”

            The comic book Rogers is referring too was The Funnies. It was published in 1929 and ran 16 pages long. It contained original strips as opposed to reprints and was printed using the four-color process. Up until that time, most comic strip collections were printed in black and white. It was published every Saturday and ended its run with issue 36, which left Rogers looking for work wherever he could get it.

            Meanwhile The Great Depression hit in 1929 and along with everyone else, Rogers was struggling to find jobs wherever he could, “Thank goodness, it took awhile…. to seep down all the way to us guys near the bottom. I sold a few gags to the leading mags, lettered some Dumb Dora strips drawn by Paul Fung, drew a strip for Drug Topics (a druggist trade journal), did a little hard-back comic for Dell Publications called Deadwood Gulch- I did anything to make a few bucks.”

            With the cartoon markets drying up, Rogers sent his wife back to Texas, “…so she could get three squares a day,” while he remained in New York for a time looking for work. Soon though, he ended up having to move back to Texas for a while to make some money. He worked various jobs, from a soda jerk to an assistant manager of a grocery store, until he made enough money to move back to New York and continue looking for cartoon work.

            Then one day in 1933, while in New York, he ran into an old friend of his from Chicago, Zack Mosely. Mosely had created the Smilin’ Jack comic strip for the New York News and wanted Rogers to assist him on the strip. Happy to find work in his field, he accepted his friends’ invitation. It’s hard to say who influenced whom while working on the strip. Mosley’s and Roger’s style are so similar that if one were not familiar with their art, they may think each man’s work came from the same cartoonist.

            Throughout the 1930’s, Rogers assisted Mosely on Smilin’ Jack. But like most cartoonists, he had dreams of creating his own comic strip. This opportunity came when he sold his comic strip Sparky Watts to the Frank Markey Syndicate in 1940. Sparky Watts debuted in 40 papers on Monday, April 29, 1940. Sparky Watts was the story of a college student working his way through school by selling magazines door to door. In his first adventure, Sparky comes to the door of a scientist, Dr. Static who makes a deal with the young man. The Doctor promises to buy all of his magazines if he’ll agree to submit to a test involving his Cosmic Ray Machine. Thinking the old man insane, Sparky humors him and agrees to be bombarded with the cosmic rays. In the process, he gains super strength, super speed, invulnerability and the power of flight (sound familiar?). The differences between this strip and the other superhero strips of the era, was that it was executed with a humorous tone and the main character wore ordinary clothes and had no secret identity. Sparky Watts contained a great cast and had a wonderfully cartoony drawing style. Sadly, it was not to last…as a comic strip anyway. 

Sparky Watts lasted just two years before Rogers heard the patriotic call of Uncle Sam and joined the Army to fight in World War II in 1942. It’s been written elsewhere that Rogers was drafted in the army, but he tells a different story, “I was drawing a syndicated comic strip, Sparky Watts, when World War II started. I kept the radio on all the time while I worked. Listening to how the Japs were treating our guys was hard to take, so I put the stopper in my inkbottle and enlisted. I figured I’d already had a good life, so maybe they’d bump me off instead of some kid who had yet to have a hand full of soft and round”

For the next four years, Boody Rogers served in the army. It meant the end of his comic strip Sparky Watts, but not the end of Sparky Watts himself. Frank Jay Markey, the man who syndicated Sparky Watts among other strips, was also a publishing partner in the Columbia Comics Corporation. Beginning with the 14th issue of Big Shot comics, Sparky Watts became one of the features of the title. Throughout the war years, the stories were mainly reprints, but when Rogers returned to civilian life he began creating new episodes strictly for the title. There was also a Sparky Watts comic book published during this time that mixed reprints of the strip along with stories by lesser artists from 1942-1944. It only lasted 4 issues. But when Rogers returned from the war they resumed the series with issues 5 in 1947 with all new stories by the artist himself and it lasted until issue 9 when Columbia Comics shut down their operations in 1949.

In 1947, while still with Columbia, Rogers created a comic strip called Babe. The Bell Syndicate was interested in it but wanted to change the title to Ivy Green. They ended up passing on it, but once again the comic book gods stepped in and saved another Boody Rogers strip from fading away into obscurity. Crestwood, the publishers of such comics as Young Romance by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and Frankenstein by Dick Briefer, picked up the strip and published it as a comic book in 1948.

Babe was about a beautiful hillbilly girl named Babe who lived in the Ozarks. She lived with her hillbilly mother and father and interacted with their fellow hill folks. Occasionally the outside world would creep in take her out of the Ozarks where other adventures would occur. The similarities to Li’l Abner by Al Capp run rampant throughout, but Rogers, with his own particular (or peculiar) style of wild zany humor makes it his own.

Crestwood also published another comic book by Rogers called Dudley. Dudley was a teen humor comic book, the type that was popular at the time, thanks to Archie Comics. While Dudley still contained the same brand of humor that Rogers brought to his other two strips, it’s obvious that Rogers hadn’t spent a lot of time observing America’s youth in 1950. The dress and the way the characters spoke harkens back to an earlier time, one that Rogers was more familiar with. It was still a great comic by a great talent, but to a post-war reader, it wasn’t what they wanted to read.

In early 1950, with April cover dates, the eleventh issue of Babe and the third issue of Dudley were published, both for the last time.

For the next few years, Rogers cartooned off and on but never did return to comic books or comic strips. In his later years he ran an art supply store. He said he earned more money there than he ever did as a cartoonist. In 1984, Rogers self published his own autobiography called Homeless Bound. In it, he recounts the many adventures in his life, from his high school days and his experiences at art school in Chicago to his stint in the army during World War II. After reading the book, one can easily see where his humor and drawing style comes from. The man translated so perfectly his own life energy into his art that it’s hard to separate one from the other. Reading the book is like reading a Boody Rogers comic book, only without pictures.

In the forward to his book, Rogers writes, “They say that truth is stranger than fiction. I don’t know about that, but most of my truths were funny to me and made me laugh, and I hope they’ll make you laugh, too.”

 

(NOTE: The text below refers to the comics that were reprinted along with this article in THE COMICS JOURNAL #275.)

 

About the strips reprinted herein

 

So that the reader can experience all three of the major creations of Boody Rogers, I have chosen stories from Sparky Watts, Babe and Dudley to be reprinted. As far as I know, there has been only one Rogers story reprinted since the comic books were originally published in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Art Spiegelman reprinted a Babe story in his anthology, Raw vol.2 #2.

The first story comes from Sparky Watts #7 which was published in 1948. I chose this particular story because it recounts Sparky’s origin. His origin was previously reprinted in issue #4, but it was reprints from the daily strip. Rogers’s art and command of the comic book language had grown considerably since that time, his line more assured and expressive.

The next two stories come from Babe #5 also from 1948. The two stories are part of a larger narrative in which Babe thinks she has to get married or be shot by the U.S. Marshall. Included are the fist and third stories from that issue.

Finally, the last story is from Dudley #3. This was the last issue of the short-lived title and was published in 1950. This story is typical of the title. Milt Magee, Dudley’s “friend”, tries to outwit Dudley and make him look like an ass in front of everyone.

From the years 1942 through 1950, Boody Rogers’s art can be found in 9 issues of Sparky Watts, 11 issues of Babe, 3 issues of Dudley and issues 14-104 of Big Shot Comics.  

 

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