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AMERICAS FIRST AND MOSTINFLUENTIAL MAGAZINE OFCOLOR POLITICAL CARTOONS

MICHAEL ALEXANDER KAHN

AND RICHARD SAMUEL WEST

FOREWORD BY BILL WATTERSON

THE STORY OF

PUCK


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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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WhatFools

TheseMortals

Be!MICHAEL ALEXANDER KAHN

AND RICHARD SAMUEL WEST

THE STORY OF PUCK

AMERICAS FIRST AND MOST

INFLUENTIAL MAGAZINE OF

COLOR POLITICAL CARTOONS


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BOOKDESIGN BY

Lorraine Turner and Dean Mullaney

THEL IBRARY OF AMERICANCOMICS

Dean Mullaney/Creative Director and EditorBruce Canwell/Associate Editor

Lorraine Turner/Art Director

Beau Smith/Marketing Director

ISBN: 978-1-63140-046-9First Printing, October 2014

Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors1-410-560-7100

Published by:IDW Publishinga Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC

5080 Santa Fe StreetSan Diego, CA 92109www.idwpublishing.com

Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/PublisherGreg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/PresidentRobbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic ArtistChris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-ChiefMatthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial OfficerAlan Payne, VP of SalesDirk Wood, VP of MarketingLorelei 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 ofAmerican 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 anyinformation and retrieval system, without permission in writing fromthe publisher. Printed in Korea.

This page: Standard illustration supplied by Keppler

and Schwarzmann to serve as a frontispiece for

issues of Puckgathered into bound volumes.

Dustjacket front: Elements from Pucks Review ofthe Past Year (centerspread by Joseph Keppler,

December 31, 1884).

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.


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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 loe. R.S.W.


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oreword

Today, as the mass media atomizes, newspapers struggle, and political cartoonists lose their jobs, its strange to look

at 19th Century publications likePuck, 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 Nasts cartoons of just a few years earlier. e new lithography technology permitted

sensuous lines, an immense range of halones, andwhat must have been absolutely eye-popping in those days

full color. e cartoonists ofPuckwere 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 its given some

encouragement and open territory.

e Internet seems to reduce everything to niche markets of dubious protability, 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 artisticexpansion is here again. Perhaps thePuck cartoons reprinted in this beautiful book will remind us of the power,

scope, and artistic possibilities weve 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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11

Puckwas Americas rst successful humor magazine. It was

the most inuential American humor magazine ever published. It

was the rst 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 countrys most talented cartoonists.

As David Sloane has said inAmerican Humor Magazine and Comic

Periodicals,Puck created a genre and established a tradition,

spawning dozens of imitators. It also led the way for that greatAmerican institution, the comics.

Stephen Hess, in his history of American political cartooning,

e Ungentlemanly Art, said, It is hard to overestimate the political

inuence ofPuckduring 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 third-

term ambitions of Ulysses Grant in 1880 and electing Grover

Cleveland to the presidency in 1884.

e rst issue ofPuck, 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 aer the colorful political

cartoon weeklies of continental Europe,Puckwas indeed

something of a surprise to American readers brought up on the

black-and-white woodcuts of Harpers Weekly and the various

inconsequential American humor magazines published in the

same format.

Pucks 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 upacting 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 Leslies Publishing

House. It was there that he met Adolph Schwarzmann, foreman of

the printing department for the German language edition ofFrank

Leslies Illustrated Newspaper.

Schwarzmann, Kepplers contemporary, had emigrated

from his native Germany in 1858. Aer more than a decade

working under Frank Leslie, he established his own printing rm

in 1875. e following year he convinced Keppler to join him in

publishingPuck Illustrirte Humoristiches Wochenblatt, a cartoon

weekly for German-speaking Americans, which rst appeared in

September of 1876. When it proved successful, they launched

Puck in English the following March.

istory of Puck MagazineCHAPTER ONE


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12

RIGHT: The three men most responsible for

Puck's successJoseph 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

magazines production.


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13

Pucks rst editor was Sydney Rosenfeld, a young New York

playwright who had attracted Keppler and Schwarzmanns 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 editorcultured

but not effete, sentimental without being cloying, prolic and clever.

He would guidePucks black-and-white content for nearly twenty

years, until his untimely death in 1896.

Puckwas 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),

andKikeriki (Vienna) thrived. e American magazines, such as

Yankee Doodle, theNew York Picayune, e Lantern,Frank Leslies

Budget of Fun, and Vanity Fair(all of New York) did not. ButPuck

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 aer the famous character in

ShakespearesA Midsummer Nights Dream and used his rst daughter

as the model for the forest sprite.Pucktook as its motto What fools

these mortals be to underscore its intent to expose folly and puncture

pretension. It soon became clear thatPuckmeant business.

For most of its runPuckwas a journal of reform. It crusaded

against political corruption, the undue inuence 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 dominatedPucks

pages more than one hundred years ago continue to dominate the

political debate today.

Pucks most distinctive feature was its sharp focus on

presidential politics and its stinging satirical portrayal of Americas

political leadership. roughout the decadesPuckwas a supporter

of the Democratic Party and stood with it through every

presidential campaign, except when the nominee was William

Jennings Bryan, whomPuck could not stomach. From its earliest

daysPuck brilliantly lampooned some of the most prominent

Republicans of the dayRoscoe Conkling, Ulysses Grant, James

G. Blaine, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, omas Reed,

eodore Roosevelt, William H. Ta, Joseph Cannon, and more.

Kepplers work dominated the pages ofPuck 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 erasPuck 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 ONeill, J. S. Pughe,


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Art Young, Hy Mayer, Rube Goldberg , and R alph Barton,

among many.

e high-water mark ofPucks 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.Pucks success prompted its owners to create a small but

highly protable publishing empire that included such spin-off

titles asPucks Annual(1880-1887),Puck on Wheels(1880-1884,1886),Pickings om Puck (1883-1916), andPucks Library

(1887-1915); Puck Press, a publishing arm that reprinted stories

and drawings fromPucks pages in book form; as well as a few

original periodicals, such asFiction(1881-1882) and Um Die

Welt(1882-1885).

AsPucks inuence increased the magazine became a

lightning rod for criticism. During the 1884 campaign the

Republican weeklyJudge spent more time attackingPuckand

Harpers Weekly than it did advocating for its candidate, James G.

Blaine. Aer the election, Blaine, so incensed byPucks 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 yearsPuckwas frequently the

target of boycotts by interest groups and was banned from public

libraries, YMCA reading rooms, and by foreign governments.

In 1893,Puckwent to the Worlds Fair in Chicago. e

fair, also known as the Worlds Columbian Exposition to mark

the 400th anniversary of the voyages of Columbus, was the major

event of the year andPucks 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 faircould witness rsthand the amazing chromolithographic printing

process employed to printPuck. For the duration of the fair, from

May 1 to October 30, Keppler and Schwarzmann published a

special on-site Worlds Fair Puckwhile simultaneously publishing

the regularPuck in New York.

Although political humor always played an important role

inPucks pages, the magazine also devoted considerable space to

lampooning social and cultural trends of the day.Pucks pages are

lled 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-the-

century Americans.

Kepplers death in 1894 and Bunners in 1896 ended

twenty years of stability inPucks leadership. Adolph Schwarzmann

14

RIGHT: Illustrations from March 2, 1887

illustrated supplement that helped explain

the chromolithography process.


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15

consolidated control of the magazine in his own hands and tilted the

magazine rightward, espousing conservative economic and foreign

policy positions. Upon Schwarzmanns 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 bePucks

last dalliance with the right. From 1905 onPuck returned to itsprogressive roots, embracing socialist themes about economic

inequity and the evils of the trusts. But this didnt promptPuck to

renew its support for Roosevelt. e magazine had become tired of

what it viewed as his insatiable ego and dangerous militarist streak.

Puck ew 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 inPucks weekly fare.

In January 1914 Keppler and Schwarzmann sold the

magazine to Nathan Straus Jr., the son of the department store

magnate. By then,Pucks 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,

LAssiette au Beurre and Simplicissimus. To this end he hired the

cosmopolitan cartoonist Hy Mayer as art director, introduced a

number of European artists toPucks pages, and emphasized social

satire and coverage of the arts. He didnt have time to realize his

dream before the advent of the First World War crippled his plans.

In March 1917Puck, which now described itself as Americas

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 humiliatingcomedown from his initial vision of the magazine. Though many

new talents were contributing toPuck, 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

vilied Hearst and his brand of journalism. Under Hearst's

management the newPuck emphasized covers with patriotic

themes. Most notable during this period was a series of scathing anti-

German cartoons it published by the great Dutch cartoonist Louis

Raemaekers. Hearst convertedPuck 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 careerPuckpublished 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 ne estate, it has le no successor.


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16

PUCKS FIRST DEBUT

Puckbegan 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.

ARTIST: JOSEPH KEPPLER

German edition, September [27], 1876,

Vol. 1, No. 1, cover.

1


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17

A STIR IN THE ROOST

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 Harpers Weekly. Frank

Leslie, Keppler and Schwarzmann's former employer,

is the fat hen on the left, firmly in control of his brood.


English edition, March 14, 1877,

Vol. 1, No. 1, cover.

2


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18

PUCK SENDS HIS COMPLIMENTS TO

MR. NAST ONCE MORE!

Puckenjoyed needling Thomas Nast. Wales perfectly

mimicked Nast's style in this back cover spoof that

skewered the famous Harper's Weeklycartoonist for

his labored drawing technique and painful use of puns.

ARTIST: JAMES A. WALES

June 4, 1879, Vol. 5, No. 117, back cover.

3


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A MID-SUMMER DAYS DREAM

While our artist sleeps, his favorite subjects are left to do justice to themselves, and to correct his conceptions.

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.


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

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PUCKS ANNUAL

Pucks Annual, an elaborate almanac for the year,

was published from 1880 to 1887.

5


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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."

6


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PICKINGS FROM PUCK

The success of Puck's Annualand 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 Puckbecame a quarterly in 1891

and continued to be published into the teens.

7


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PUCKS 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 Magazinein

1905 and continued to be published for another decade.

8


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THE RETURN OF "THE PRODIGAL FATHER" TO THE PUCK OFFICE

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.


October 10, 1883, Vol. 14, No. 344, centerspread.

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PUCKS POLITICAL HUNTING-GROUND HOW HE HAS MADE GAME OF THE POLITICIANS

Pucks 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 Puckthe 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.


January 14, 1885, Vol. 16, No. 410, centerspread.

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