Blowing Rainbows: Paul Bunyan in Gene Ahern's The Squirrel Cage

Gene Ahern's masterpiece, The Squirrel Cage, had several interesting phases throughout its approximate 15-year run from 1937-1952.

From 1942 to 1944, Ahern shifted from his wacky inventors (Ches and Wal Nut, who lost their names when the emigrated from the NEA-owned topper, The Nut Brothers to the Hearst-owned Squirrel Cage) and the little hitch-hiker ("nov shmoz ka pop") to detailing the daily life of Paul Bunyan, who was alive and well in a contemporary comic strip version of small town America. Or, perhaps the character is merely a giant who thinks he is -- or is pretending to be -- Paul Bunyan. 

A late example of the inventors/hitch-hiker phase of THE SQUIRREL CAGE, from March 16, 1941 

The Squirrel Cage is devoid of its signature character, the little hitch-hiker during the Paul Bunyan years, which are filled with Ahern's witty explorations of his imaginary world. In this lyrical episode, from January 3, 1943, we see Bunyan's mysterious super-human powers extend past great strength and massive consumption and labors, as the tall tales depict, when he blows a rainbow.

January 3, 1943 -- from the collection of Carl Linich

From his earliest years, Ahern's work embraced goofy imaginary worlds. With his Paul Bunyan strips, Ahern created a more subtle vision of a screwball world, which relegated wacky Smokey Stover style visual puns for poetic imagery that straddled states of consciousness. At times, The Squirrel Cage seeks to subvert the laws of reality and values of mainstream society in a veiled, symbolic way, as if in a dream. In these strips, we see Ahern developing elements of his Foozland phase, which comes next. The shadow, anxiously disconnected from it's owner, is a prime example of a device that later turns up in Foozland.

Ahern also refined his visual storytelling technique, as we can see in the episode originally published April 11, 1943 (or in the case of this example, in the Saturday edition and therefore on April 10). 

April 11, 1943

Four of the seven panels in the strip are wordless, and funnier because of this.The paucity of words in general in The Squirrel Cage stands in stark contrast to the strip it topped, Room and Board, which features several extremely verbose characters and draws its humor as much from the comic dialogue as from the visual doings. Compare, for example the windy April 11, 1943 Room and Board that ran below the near-wordless  "windmill" episode of the same date.

April 11, 1943

It is worth noting that Ahern  greatly streamlined the torrents of dialogue in Room and Board by 1943, particularly in the Sunday episodes. Compared to earlier strips, and to the cloud banks of dialogue found in his Our Boarding House Sundays , the 1943 epistles of Judge Puffle seem taciturn.

January 26, 1930

The singular Paul Bunyan series (and, as we see above, even certain episodes of Our Boarding House) offers a sly re-imagining and sarcastic commentary on many things, including superhero comics. Paul Bunyan is super-strong and can even fly, covering great distances in a short period of time.The character even has, like a certain dislocated citizen of the planet Krypton, super-vision, as seen in the March 14, 1943 episode, when Bunyan drills a hole through a board simply by "looking sharply at it." This is a far more sophisticated and absrud lampoon of comic book superheroes, which were at a peak of popularity in 1943, than the typical treatment one sees -- and as such, it connects the superhero archetype to the American tall tale in a way that is unique in comics.

March 14, 1943

News! Thanks to Art Spiegelman, The Squirrel Cage will see mainstream circulation for the first time in approximately 65 years. An upcoming issue of Art Forum will include a marvelous 8-page annotated gallery of comics that Art Spiegelman has been reading and pondering. Among these comics are works by Basil Wolverton, Matt Fox, Chester Gould, and our very own Gene Ahern. I was able to able to supply the scan of the Squirrel Cage strip used in the article, and Art Spiegelman kindly included the URL of this blogsite in the caption. 

That is All,
Screwball Paul

All text copyright 2014 Paul Tumey. This article may be re-posted and excerpted if acknowledgement is provided and a rainbow is blown in my direction.

Fat Tum Tum: Laffs Galore in This 1936 Squirrel Cage/Room and Board Color Page!

Here's a lovely full page Sunday comic by Gene Ahern from 1936, featuring The Squirrel Cage and Room and Board, scanned from my own collection.

Here we find Ahern in about the fourth month of production on his two new series.

The Squirrel Cage has not yet settled into the conflict with the "Nov shmoz ka pop?" hitch-hiker. It centers around the silly inventions theme that launched the series. Some nice screwball background details are evident, including conducting a radio, and a stairway to nowhere.

The protagonist of Room and Board, the Major Hoople clone named Judge Puffle, is much younger and less careworn in this early episode than he would soon become. Nonetheless, the episode is classic Hoople/Puffle as he can't resist braggadocio even in the company of a toddler. Every time I read "fat tum-tum," I crack up.

Gene Ahern's work in 1936 was exceptional, as seen in this example from October 25.
(from the collection of Paul Tumey)

Jove!
Screwball Paul

Dreaming While Awake in The Squirrel Cage (1946)

Gene Ahern Thursday
A new comic every Thursday by the master of comics surrealism!

You have to take a few minutes to savor this amazing example of The Squirrel Cage.  Last week,  in my last Gene Ahern Thursday posting, I discussed  how Ahern put dreams and surrealism into his supposedly "normal" Room and Board comic strip. I said that Room and Board, and its topper, The Squirrel Cage are meant to be read together, as an ongoing conversation about form, fantasy versus reality, and the surprising pliability of linear narrative. 

Today, I am pleased to present the other side of that conversation -- a Squirrel Cage about dreaming while wide awake. This strip is a perfect inversion of the dreams of Judge Puffle. Is the Judge dreaming about Foozland, or is Paul Bunyan (that's the red-suited gnome) dreaming about Puffle's reality? Of course, in Foozland, the only way to stop dreaming is to go to sleep...

A comic like no other - The Squirrel Cage by Gene Ahern (December 15, 1946)

It's no surprise that Ahern ends with a Native American totem pole. He is channeling the icons of the old, weird America and the time before that into this story. The Squirrel Cage sits somewhere between George Herriman's Krazy Kat and E. C. Segar's Popeye. It is a much under-appreciated, and virtually unknown comic that deserves greater attention. I've said this many times, but it's worth saying yet again: Ahern's Foozland continuity may well be one of the last great American newspaper comics sequences to be discovered.

Zzzzzzzzzzz,
Paul Foozemy

A Stunning Squirrel Cage Original in the 1939 Merlin Continuity

Gene Ahern Thursday

As part of our Original Art Week, we present a stunning, large scan of a Gene Ahern original Squirrel Cage. This scan is generously supplied by the owner of the art -- thank you!

This episode is from the 1939 Merlin continuity. Starting January 8, 1939, and continuing through approximately the first half of the year, this sequence was Ahern's first sustained exploration of the possibilities of deriving comedy from magic. A few years later, when he started the 7-year long Foozland continuity, he built an entire world around the tropes of magic and fantasy.

In short, the continuity starts when our two inventors have become so annoyed with the constant presence of the tam-adorned, busy-bearded hitchhiker in their neighborhood that they have begun to plot ways to rid themselves of his presence. A magical wizard, dressed for the part in robe and pointy hat,  knocks on their door and offers his services. Here's the first episode of the Merlin continuity in The Squirrel Cage, from digitized microfilm:

The first Merlin episode of The Squirrel Cage - January 8, 1939

Things do not proceed as planned (of course), as we see in the next episode:

The second Merlin episode of The Squirrel Cage - January 15, 1939

And we're off the races. The Little Hitch-hiker (as the characters refer to him) now has the magic wand and all heck is breaking loose. Ah, but Merlin has another magical resource: a jar of magic sand...

The third Merlin episode of The Squirrel Cage - January 22, 1939

As you might imagine, the Little Hitch-hiker effortlessly triumphs at every turn as Ahern brilliantly spins out this continuity over the next few months. And now, here's our original art piece, from about 6 months later:

Original art for The Squirrel Cage by Gene Ahern - July 16, 1939

This is a particularly brilliant episode, with some choice additional nonsense words from the Hitch-hiker:

Spersk shmal voosh!

Gomma wask!

Spol dooka!

Apparently, Merlin has moved in with the inventors as he tries for months to get his wand and magic sand back from the Little Hitch-hiker. Exhausted and nerve-wracked, he decides to go fishing. On the way out, he hurls an angry insult at the Little Hitch-hiker and suffers the consequences. 

Here is the page panel by panel, with larger scans of the art. In this format, you can clearly see Ahern's penciling under-layer in blue. For those that don't know, this shade of blue was not picked up in the printing process, and so many artists drew in "non-repro blue" to save themselves the chose of erasing their pencils. As we see here, it appears that Ahern didn't stray much at all from his original penciled conception, although he adds a great deal of fun detail in his inking.

Here we see the logo of the strip is pasted in from a photostat -- a very common practice. There are discolorations from the glue or tape used.

What an insult -- and what stupidity! The Little Hitch-hiker has both the magic wand and the jar of magic sand. One ought not to mess with a hitchiker who has magical powers!

I love the ungainly flying bird in this panel...

The tree/mushroom and the jar in this panel are Herrimanesque...

The next 3 panels are wordless and beautifully depicted as a visual sequence. We are "hooked" as we wonder what the Little Hitch-hiker is up to. Love dat old-style diving suit.

\

It slays me that we get a blurble of the Hitch-hiker's mysterious language underwater. Look at how Ahern draws the speech bubble as bubbles... a sort of in-joke.

In this panel you can clearly see the "slug," which is the pre-printed copyright strip pasted in. The glue used to paste it in has yellowed over the years.

The brilliant meta payoff and Ahern reminds us that comics are just lines on paper... "is there no end to it?"

And... bingo... a return back to the eternally baffling and funny catchphrase -- so great!

 I hope you enjoyed this wonderful opportunity to savor the original art of a screwball master!

Spersk va gomma,
Tall Pumey

Gene Ahern's Gimmick in The Squirrel Cage (1945)

Gene Ahern Thursday

A New Comic By The Master of The Squirrel Cage Every Thursday!

By 1945, Gene Ahern's surreal screwball epic, The Squirrel Cage delivered a comic gem practically every Sunday. Today's Gene Ahern Thursday offering, a page from the approximately 7-year long Foozland continuity, was pulled at random from my archives. A word about my archives... I live in a small apartment in Seattle and after 50 years of hoard--- um, I mean accumulating, I have a slight problem. I seem to have lost the path to my front door. I had a pretty good path cleared out in the hallways that are lined floor to ceiling with old comics, magazines, newspapers, and my vintage Kleen-Ex collection. However, a few nights ago, in the middle of the night, a piled collapsed, causing a domino effect that has basically created a cave-in. I'd really like to find my front door, because I need to get to my mailbox as I know several new orders of old comic strips have come in. In fact, I am usually much too busy tracking my auctions on eBay to have the time to re-stack my piles and open up the path to my front door. Anyway, I mention this because my food supply is dwindling, and if this blog suddenly cuts off, you'll know what happened.

A photo of my well-organized bathroom

Okay -- I'm pulling your leg -- in case you haven't figured that out already. Actually, my archives are neatly organized and stored in a walk-in closet and under my bed. I have about 5,000 strips and sunday pages that require only a few square feet of my living space. Clipped comic strips are actually very easy to store and do not require much space at all. In the drawer of the desk at which I presently working are a few hundred choice George Herrimans, Ving Fuller, and Jimmy Swinnertons, plus a run of Dinky Dinkerton -- just to give you a flavor. The above digression was merely a gimmick to entertain myself and my readers. Speaking of gimmicks, today's Squirrel Cage features an entertaining gimmick, as well -- but a bird of a different feather, as it were:

The Squirrel Cage by Gene Ahern - October 14, 1945

There are many great details to savor in this episode, which in some odd way seems to anticipate Chuck Jones' Roadrunner cartoons (which are also set in the surreal Herriman-like landscape). To cite just a few of my favorite details -- I love that a gimmick tastes like ham on rye. I also plan to use the line "Excuse me, I have to go take my fife lesson," at the next possible opportunity. Ahern always included some strange object with the Little Hitchhiker. In this episode, our tam-adorned mystery man has with him a large flower wreath, arranged to spell "suksess." I'm smiling and shaking my head...

And now, you must excuse me. I have to go take my fife lesson...

Yours in Screwball Suksess,
Paul Tumey

Foozland 1952: 1000 Zinkas to Goofonia

There's so much we don't know yet about Gene Ahern's screwball masterpiece, The Squirrel Cage. For example, we don't know when the strip ended. We know it started June 19, 1936, and it's thought to have continued until at least 1953, but we really don't know for sure. Later examples of the strip are difficult to find, as it was carried by very few papers at the end, perhaps because many editors lacked the sense of absurd needed to fully appreciate the mysteries of Foozland. Did Ahern end the strip with any ceremony, such as the explosion of Foozland? We don't yet know.

Here's a rare example from 1952 that shows we are still in Foozland. Although Paul Bunyan is gone from the continuity (another question -- did he finally find his way out?). The strip appears to have returned full circle back to the seemingly impossible challenge of getting rid of the Little Hitchhiker.

The Squirrel Cage by Gene Ahern - March 2, 1952

Nov shmoz ka pop?

Paul Tumey

Comic Strips Are Frozen Words: A Full Page of 1937 Ahern Screwball Goodness

Here's a double-trouble Gene Ahern post, all about the power of words. William Burroughs said "language is a virus," and I think it's quite possible that he and Gene Ahern would have had a fascinating conversation, had they ever met.

Today, we offer you, Dear Reader, two for the price of one. Or, more precisely, the considerably richer sum of the parts -- rather than just one part. Presenting what collectors call a "full." Here's the whole page of Ahern screwball madness from January 17, 1937, with The Squirrel Cage at the top, and Room and Board at the bottom.

This arrangement, with a half page devoted to each comic, is how Ahern intended his Sundays to be published. Sadly, The Squirrel Cage was often dropped to make room for advertising. In the 1940s, newspaper editors felt free to chop the page up and publish Ahern's two comics pages apart. What's worse, after 1941, nearly all newspapers published The Squirrel Cage as a two-tier "third," instead of a three-tier half-page, as Ahern appears to have drawn it throughout the run. Whenever you can find a Squirrel Cage original from the 1940s, it's always a three-tier half-page. This means that, even if one could manage to collect the entire published run of The Squirrel Cage, it would still be missing roughly a third of the original intended work.

Knowing the sad fate of Ahern's best work in the 1940s makes a page like the one below all the sweeter to behold. Taking it from the top, we begin with a predictably nutty Squirrel Cage take on ventriloquism. Next, the Room and Board presents us with choice episode of Judge Puffle's tall-tale adventures. On this date, Room and Board exceeds The Squirrel Cage in sheer nuttiness and surreal screwballism. The idea of the Judge's words being frozen and only audible some time later, when they thaw out, is pretty swell. Ahern's stiff drawing style somehow adds to the humor. Art Spiegelman has observed that Ahern's humor "explodes against the rigidity of his visual style."

Taken on their own, each of these strips is pure fun. When seen together in their intended context, however, we begin to sense a resonance in theme. In this case, Ahern is exploring the idea of language. The Squirrel Cage considers how easy it is to misunderstand words out of their context and divorced from their true speaker. Judge Puffle's fantastic scenario is a visual metaphor for how the words the utter can have a delayed effect. Each on of those icicles is a comic strip -- composed weeks before they will be read by the public.

I don't mean to imply that Ahern consciously embedded a semiotic essay into the Sunday funnies. More likely, he was able to tap into his creative consciousness and emerged with these gems. Enjoy!

A page of Gene Ahern at his finest - January 17, 1937

Screwily Yours,
Paul Tumey

The Squirrel Cage - Inspired by Goldberg, Herriman, and Segar

Here's one of my all-time favorite Squirrel Cage pages by Gene Ahern. It takes place about one year into the Foozland continuity, when the tall, super-powerful Paul Bunyan has been transformed into a short, white-bearded, beach-ball shaped gnome -- a sort of echo of the "Li'l Hitch-Hiker" (as Ahern spelled it).

For about five years, the gnome makes his way, from left to right, through Foozland and environs (such as Goomia). In this period, each episode reveals another funny, screwball aspect to this magical land. My friend and fellow comics scholar Frank Young recently observed that the Foozland continuity is like watching a five-year long train go by, where you can look into each passing boxcar and see something pleasantly baffling.

The Squirrel Cage, and in particular the Foozland story, is a rich reading experience, in part because Ahern is able to climb the rocky hills of his hidden sub-conscious, creating multiple resonances and meanings within a seemingly simple cartoon. In today's comic, we get a rib-tickling parable about the unknown effects our actions have on others. We also wonder about the sanity of the never-seen engineers of Foozland...

A sublime Squirrel Cage by Gene Ahern - Sept 15, 1946
(from the collection of Paul Tumey)

More than one comics colleague has observed that The Squirrel Cage contains elements of George Herriman's Krazy Kat and E.C. Segar's Thimble Theatre. Today's classic Squirrel Cage episode reminds me of the the unforgettable Krazy Kat page that depicts the clapping mittens of Monument Valley.

Was this deliberate on Ahern's part? It's impossible to say for sure, but one wonders if he kept a collection of Herriman and Segar comics in his backyard studio workshop, from which to draw inspiration.

We can add the influence of Rube Goldberg on Ahern, as well. Ahern came into newspaper comics about 10 years after Rube Goldberg, and it seems evident that he modeled his first works and his general approach on Goldberg. Ahern even drew some "crazy invention" comics very much like Rube's.

Gene Ahern does Rube Goldberg in 1915
(courtesy of Carl Linich) 

Thirty years of growth as a cartoonist later, Ahern is able to concoct Goldberg's goofy inventions, Segar's knack for eccentric characters, and Herriman's landscape into his own masterful brew. In today's Gene Ahern Thursday post, we see a sublime example of the Ahern recipe for screwball.

Don't miss tomorrow's Smokey Stover Friday!

Till then, make sure you don't pull the road lever -- 

Screwily Yours,

Paul Tumey

A Visit to the Foozland Zoo: Squirrel Cage by Gene Ahern

Gene Ahern Thursday

When he introduced Foozland into The Squirrel Cage, Gene Ahern found a perfect balance of comedy and surrealism. Sometimes the episodes lacked a punch-line and instead were picaresque glimpses of a bizarre alternate reality that followed its own, unfathomable rules.

Today's offering is a visit to the Foozland zoo where -- as you might expect -- you can see animals quite unlike anything in our reality. Like Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and Dr. Seuss, Ahern delighted in inventing bizarre new creatures. His Room and Board strips sometimes featured screwball animals (see my post on the weird fish creations in Room and Board).

In the strip below, we are treated to some particularly weird animals -- love that balloon pig! The body-less rolling cow head is a haunting image. The Little Hitch-hiker makes an appearance in the last panel, as Ahern tosses in a Nut Brothers style rimshot joke.

The Squirrel Cage by Gene Ahern - May 13, 1945

Stuck on the Enchanted Flypaper - Snapshots of Foozland

Gene Ahern Thursday

New Ahern screwball comics masterpieces posted every Thursday!

Here are seven new mind-boggling episodes from the Gene Ahern's Squirrel Cage -- a masterpiece of screwballism that is ripe for re-discovery.

In brief, Ahern started The Squirrel Cage in 1936 as a Sunday topper to his "main" comic Room and Board. As far as I can tell, there are three chapters to this strip, which appears to have run for about 16-17 years. For the first few years, in Chapter One (1936-41), The Squirrel Cage was built around the idea of two nutty inventors and a mysterious little hitch-hiker. Towards the end of this period, Ahern introduced elements of magic and fantasy into his witty, humorous framework. The result was something quite extraordinary at times, as can be seen in this episode, which presents us with advertising on invisible walls and the unforgettable octopaintus:

By 1939, The Squirrel Cage had evolved from a nutty gag strip into a  surreal playground
(March 12, 1939 - from the collection of Paul Tumey

In Chapter Two (1942-44) of the SC saga, Ahern brought in a new character, Paul Bunyan. Yes, you read that correctly -- the giant lumberjack from American tall tales became the main character of The Squirrel Cage. Ahern's version of Bunyan is unique, and nothing like what you might expect. Here's one from towards the tail end of this phase:

Gene Ahern's Squirrel Cage featured Paul Bunyan in the early 1940s - March 26, 1944
(from the collection of Paul Tumey)

Carl Linich has posted a hefty selection of the rare Paul Bunyan episodes at his Squirrel Cage blog. In the episode above, it appears that Paul has entered Foozland. One of the burning questions in my own research concerns how Paul Bunyan entered Foozland. In any case, somehow -- probably at the hands of a pissed off witch -- Paul Bunyan is reduced in size to a round little gnomish fellow, initiating Chapter Three (February, 1945-circa 1953).

A fellow Squirrel Cage fan recently pointed out to me that the potted plant in panels four and six of the March 12 episode (above) is very Herriman-like, and I totally agree. Ahern came up through the ranks as a second generation newspaper cartoonist, first publishing in 1914. He rubbed elbows in Cleveland and New York with the early greats: Winsor McCay, George Herriman, George McManus, and his artistic father, Rube Goldberg. The constantly shifting backgrounds in The Squirrel Cage, much-lauded in Herriman's Krazy Kat, is an essential element of his surreal screwballism. Where Coconino County is filled with start desert landscapes and majestic rock formations, Foozland and environs is a place of grassy foothills and dirt roads. It reminds me of the same mental images I get reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Come to think of it, the costumes of Foozland are vaguely Medieval.

Whanne that April with his shoures sote
The droughte of March hath perced to the rote.
(illustration from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales)

Foozland is a place where the laws of nature are quite different than in our own world. It has its own internal logic. Part of the fun of reading the Foozland comics is discovering new aspects to this fanciful, nutty world. And that's the primary set-up of most of the Foozland strips. Paul Bunyan is an unwilling tourist in a strange land. There's usually a sense of left-to-right movement and often a road that Paul is walking down. In the first years, he is frequently trying to find the way out of this bizarre place.

The Foozland episodes are a picaresque journey - this episode offers us the Enchanted Flypaper
(February 25, 1945 - from the collection of Paul Tumey)

In Foozland, the things you say can shift your reality. When Paul says he will stick around, he suddenly has to deal with being trapped on the "enchanted flypaper." In the best screwball tradition, Ahern's device is both absurdly funny and a wise comment on how the universe works.

You'll notice that in the episode above, the Little Hitch-hiker from the early years is now thumbing a ride in Foozland. Obviously, Ahern knew he had a good thing with the hitch-hiker character and found a way to keep him as an primary element in the comic.

Although Ahern frequently drops the common gag/punch-line structure of most funny comic strips, he offers a more understated style of humor, based in equal measures on screwball situations, fantastic phenomena, and human foibles. It's Dr. Seuss combined with Rube Goldberg (Ahern's early mentor and template). But that sells it short. The Squirrel Cage is unique and represents a significant work in American comics. It is hard to believe that it is virtually unknown.

In this next episode, we see the 106-year old King of Foozland, a glorious and glorified fool who wears his crown in the bathtub. Funny hats are a big part of The Squirrel Cage.

The Squirrel Cage September 30, 1945
(from the collection of Paul Tumey)

The "bag of wind" seems appropriate in a stream-of-consciousness way to the meaningless pomp of royalty. Aside from the funny drawings, there is so much here that is fantastic and funny. Not the least of which is the truncated "BANG" sound effect in panel 8:

In this next strip, we have probably the closest summary to Ahern's concept to appear in the strip: "this country is where you have dreams while awake."

Foozland is filled with doors, openings, and cave mouths by the side of the road - July 1, 1945
(from the collection of Paul Tumey)

 Here's another "magic door" episode. In panel two, we see another characteristic of Foozland, which is that inanimate objects speak and have personalities. Even more creepy and wonderful, you can sometimes become separated from your shadow. The way Ahern does the shadow business here is pretty neat. Paul doesn't notice it, but we -- of course -- do see it. This puts us in complicity with Ahern. "Yep, this is Foozland alright!"

The harder Paul Buyan looks for an exit from Foozland, the more lost he becomes - May 5, 1946
(from the collection of Paul Tumey)

I mentioned earlier that the laws of physics are different in Foozland. I'll end this post with an example of this that made me and Frank Young go "WTF!?!"

The mail telescope - just one of hundreds of delightful, wacky inventions in The Squirrel Cage
December 16, 1945 -  (from the collection of Paul Tumey)

See Also:

Nov Shmoz Ka Pop? Gene Ahern's Mysterious Foozland

Gene Ahern's First Squirrel Cages and the Birth of the Little Hitch-Hiker

From Little Aherns Grow Mighty Jokes - The Nut Brothers

Spa Dooshly Yours,
Paul Tumey