I just finished reading the recently published 2013 (republished?) "The Saga of Mary Gold" segment from the 1928-29 run of the comic artist Sidney Smith's newspaper strip "The Gumps" from IDW's Library of American Comic Essentials. The storyline is an early example of a love triangle in a "printed on paper" soap opera happening to the neighbors of the Gump family - Andy, his wife Min and their witch-like sarcastic housekeeper Tilda. The family watches and comments on the daily evolution / devolution of Mary Gold's wobbling romance between "down on his luck" inventor Tom Carr and sneaky banker's son Henry J. Ausstinn. Min and Tilda are fairly open minded and sympathetic in their assessment of the relationship's trials and tribulations. Andy, on the other hand, reacts in the way a mob of villagers greets a Frankenstein's monster. No thought or introspection just bursts of emotional speculation and superficial observations. Tom Carr doesn't have much money so to Andy he must be a loafer / daydreamer while Henry Ausstinn has a bank job so he must be a brilliant financial wizard. These feel like the aside comments one would expect from bit players on Popeye's Thimble Theater and not what you would expect from a popular comic strip's main character.
The word "Gump" is a slang term for an urbanite who is also a rube. Andy is a boastful know-it-all who is smug in the misapprehension that he is always right. An Archie Bunker without remorse or regret. How can a character like this have had a 42 year run in the funny pages? Isn't this a one note burnout type character that would annoy the comics readers after the first few months? There have been a raft of sketchy flim-flam artist characters to appear in the dailies over the decades - Baron Bean was a scoundrel, Mutt and Jeff were slackers, B.O. Plenty was unbalanced, Barney Google was a gambler, J. Wellington Wimpy was an inveterate coward, Polly and Her Pals Paw Perkins was hot tempered, Jiggs was easily henpecked and F Opper's common man was a meek wimp. What they all had in common was remorse, guilt feelings and the ability to admit they were occasionally wrong. The human quality that made them all endearing despite their bad judgement. Homer Simpson's "D'oh" sums this quality up neatly in just one utterance. But Not Andy Gump!
Now this is just one year of published continuity from 1928-29 for a strip that started in 1917 and ran til 1959 so it is possible the other years are filled with well rounding remorse for Andy but this volume doesn't seem to show it. Hopefully there will be other reprintings that will prove Andy less obtuse. Or maybe that is the point of the satire. An unrepentantly gormless character built of emotional teflon whose robotic insensitivity is to remain unsullied into perpetuity. I hope I am wrong in this observation and can have the opportunity to repeal it after future readings of other Gump Sunday and dailys story arcs.
by Brechtbug
Now Random Thoughts on the Mary Gold Story line - spoilers will be involved so be warned.
Oh yeah - there are several characters that I didn't mention above that appear in this strip but don't seem to make much impact on it's story line.
Of some impact are Mary Gold's parents Jeremiah Gold and his unnamed wife Mrs. Gold. Initially pleasant neighbors who lose their life savings and begin to lean on Mary to wed the banker's son Henry Ausstinn for future financial support. Mary's "anything for a laugh" party girl sister Claryce and Joe Carr - Tom Carr's brother - a former bootlegger on the lamb from angry ex employers. These characters serve more in advancing the plot that appearing as well rounded individuals.
The next two are the Gump's children - Chester and Goliath. Chester only appears briefly around Christmas of 1928 - maybe he attends boarding school the rest of the year. Goliath is the baby that creeps around the house like a family pet. Hopefully his character develops into something more in the coming years.
The last two are rich Uncle Bim from Australia and a mysterious detective known only as The Eagle. Uncle Bim phones the family around Christmas time to say he can't come but sends a check for $5000.00 bucks. The Gumps seem to appreciate Bim soley on a monetary level. The Eagle is a weird red herring character that appears around the edges of the strip looking for the fugitive Tom Carr. Several dailies promote the Eagle wandering the desert and catching trains hot on Tom's trail only to end up shot to death cleaning his own gun in a dingy Texas hotel room. Wow, what was the point of that exactly?
Finally the Mary Gold character herself seems to have been designed by Sidney Smith simply as a symbol of lost innocence. She is a wide eye, blank faced China doll with few facial expressions and very little personality beyond her conviction that she loves Tom Carr. Like the first victim in a formulaic murder mystery who is portrayed as unlikable so the audience won't feel to sad for their passing, Mary is left sketchy - a semi blank slate so her demise is mourned in a milder sense than if it had been a major character that had appeared in the strip longer than one years time.
The true romantic victim here is Tom Carr. A handyman, struggling frustrated inventor wrongly accused of a crime to the point of becoming a fugitive and a mistakenly incarcerated long suffering prison inmate. He's the character Sidney Smith seems to most identify with and leaves at the end of the story arc pondering the infinite and his lost romance on a rocky seacoast under the light of a crescent moon.
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