Thursday, January 29, 2015

The Magic of the Sunday Comics-- Part 3: Little Orphan Annie"

"Little Orphan Annie" debuted Nov. 2, 1924, and never aged a day in the nine decades since.  "She never grew up, or gave up, for all that life and her creator Harold Gray put her through.  Which is not to say that tragedy was unknown in the script.

"An archconservative like his employer, Tribune publisher Robert McCormick, Gray detested the New Deal-- making his point by killing off Annie's sometime benefactor, Daddy Warbucks, as a victim of a misguided social revolution that made capitalists obsolete.

"After President Franklin Roosevelt's death, Daddy Warbucks was resurrected, the seeming miracle explained as a missed diagnosis: Warbucks hadn't died, he was just in a coma."

But, Ralphie, in "A Christmas Story" sure was excited about his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring until he deciphered it to find it was just to get him to drink his Ovaltine.

Not One of My favorite Comic Strips.  --Cooter

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