Gasoline Alley

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This article is about the comic strip. For other uses, see Gasoline Alley (disambiguation).
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Gasoline Alley

Frank King's Skeezix Out West (Reilly & Lee Co., 1928)
Author(s) Frank King (1918-1959)
Dick Moores (1956-1986)
Jim Scancarelli (1986-present)
Website http://www.comicspage.com/gasoline/gasolinealley.html
Current status / schedule Active
Launch date November 24, 1918
Syndicate(s) Tribune Media Services

Gasoline Alley is a long-running classic comic strip, created by Frank King, that was first published on November 24, 1918.

Contents

[edit] Early Years

The strip's origins lie in the Chicago Tribune, which ran a Sunday page, The Rectangle, where staff artists contributed one-shot panels, continuing plots or themes. One corner of The Rectangle was home to Frank King's Gasoline Alley, where characters Walt, Doc, Avery and Bill held weekly conversations about automobiles. This black-and-white panel slowly gained recognition and eventually the daily Tribune picked up the feature, either on August 25, 1918 or January 1919, according to varied accounts.

It became a daily strip, and the Sunday version moved from The Rectangle to a full-color page of its own. The 1930s Sunday pages did not employ traditional gags but instead presented a gentle view of nature or imaginary daydreaming with expressive art.

The early years were dominated by the character Walt Wallet. The Tribune's editor, Captain Joseph Patterson, wanted to attract women to the strip so it was decided to introduce a baby into it. The only problem was that Walt was a confirmed bachelor. This was overcome when, on the 14th February 1921, he found an abandoned baby on his doorstep.

The baby was called Skeezix (slang for motherless calf) who called his adopted father Uncle Walt. Unlike most strips (like the Katzenjammer Kids) he did not remain a baby or even a little boy for long. In fact, as the years went by, he grew up to manhood, the first occasion where real time continually elapsed in a major comic strip over generations. By the time the US entered World War II, Skeezix was a fully-grown adult, courting girls and serving in the armed forces. He later married and had children. In the late 1960s he faced a typical mid-life crisis.

Walt Wallet himself eventually married Phyllis Blossom and had other children, who grew up and had kids of their own.

During the 70's and 80's, under Moore's authorship, the characters did briefly stop aging - when Scancarelli took over, the natural aging was restored.[1]

[edit] Recent years

The strip is still published in newspapers today. Skeezix has become an octogenarian. Walt's wife Phyllis, aged an estimated 105, died in the April 26, 2004 strip, leaving Walt a widower after nearly eight decades of marriage.

King was succeeded by his former assistants, with Bill Perry taking responsibility for Sunday strips in 1951 and Dick Moores, first hired in 1956, handling other days in 1959. When Perry retired in 1975, Moores took responsibility for Sunday strips as well. Moores died in 1986, and since then, Gasoline Alley has been written and drawn by Jim Scancarelli, formerly assistant to Moores.

The strip and its creator, Frank King, have been recognized with the National Cartoonist Society Humor Strip Award for 1957, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1982 and 1985, plus a 1958 Reuben Award. Scancarelli received the National Cartoonist Society Story Comic Strip Award for 1988 for his work on the strip.

[edit] Reprint collections

Examples of the full page Sunday strip were printed in The Comic Strip Century (1995, reissued in 2004 as 100 Years of Comic Strips), edited by Bill Blackbeard, Dale Crain and James Vance.

Dick Moores' dailies and Sundays have appeared in Comics Revue monthly, as well as the first strips by Jim Scancarelli.

In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative US postage stamps.

In 2003, Spec Productions began a series of soft-covered collections titled Frank King's Gasoline Alley Nostalgia Journal, reprinting the strip from the very first "Rectangle" panel from November 24, 1918. To date, four volumes have appeared:

  • Volume 1, Nov. 24, 1918 to Sept. 22, 1919
  • Volume 2, Sept. 23, 1919 to March 2, 1920
  • Volume 3, March 3, 1920 to July 25, 1920
  • Volume 4, July 26, 1920 to December 31, 1920


In 2005, the first of a series of reprint books, Walt and Skeezix, began, published by Drawn and Quarterly and edited by Chris Ware. The first volume covers 1921–22, beginning when baby Skeezix appears:

In 2007, Sunday Press Books published a collection of Sundays entitled Sundays with Walt and Skeezix, which collects several early Sundays in the original size and color.

[edit] Radio

There were several radio adaptations. Gasoline Alley during the 1930s starred Bill Idelson as Skeezix Wallet with Jean Gillespie as his girlfriend Nina Clock. Jimmy McCallon was Skeezix in the series that ran on NBC from February 17 to April 11, 1941, continuing on the Blue Network from April 28 to May 9 of that same year. The 15-minute series aired weekdays at 5:30pm. Along with Nina (Janice Gilbert), the characters included Skeezix's boss Wumple (Cliff Soubier) and Ling Wee (Junius Matthews), a waiter in a Chinese restaurant. Charles Schenck directed the scripts by Kane Campbell.

The syndicated series of 1948-49 featured a cast of Bill Lipton, Mason Adams and Robert Dryden. Sponsored by Autolite, the 15-minute episodes focused on Skeezix running a gas station and garage, the Wallet and Bobble Garage, with his partner, Wilmer Bobble. In New York this series aired on WOR from July 16, 1948 to January 7, 1949.

[edit] Films

Gasoline Alley was adapted into two feature films, Gasoline Alley (1951) and Corky of Gasoline Alley (1951). At the time these films were in production, it was announced that the Gasoline Alley film series would replace the Blondie film series which came to an end in 1950 with Beware of Blondie.

[edit] Listen to

[edit] External links

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