Number 1474: The old timer

Edgar “Ed” Wheelan is one of my favorite old-time cartoonists, and I’ve featured his funny artwork and stories several times.

Wheelan had a successful comic strip, “Minute Movies,” which appeared in newspapers during the twenties and thirties. When he went into the comic books he even revived the title for his feature in Flash Comics, one of which I’m showing here.

It’s not within the scope of this blog to feature newspaper comic strips, although I do present their comic book reprints. But I’d like to at least bring attention to Ed Wheelan’s newspaper work, which was sadly neglected after the strip ended in 1935.

There have been some attempts to reprint “Minute Movies,” including this 1977 trade paperback by Hyperion Press:

And this squarebound 40 page “graphic novel” from Malibu Graphics in 1990 doesn’t use the name “Minute Movies” on the covers, but it is a reprint of a 1934 continuity from the comic strip.

These are hard to find nowadays, but if you’re interested they are worth having.

One of the best examples of the the strip was printed in the late Woody Gelman’s Nostalgia Comics, #’s 2 and 3, in 1972. Hairy Green Eyeball posted it in his blog in 2009, and you can find the links beneath the two stories I’m showing today. “Padlock Homes” is from a series in Harvey’s Champ Comics, and is from issue #19 (1942). The “Minute Movies” episode of Jack and the Beanstalk is from Flash Comics #38 (1943).

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Parts one and two of the 1933 continuity, “Serpents of the City,” from Nostalgia Comics. Click on the pictures.






Some comics work by Wheelan featured here last January:

Number 215


Modest maid, stalwart soldier, dastardly duke


Ed Wheelan's Minute Movies was a backup feature in Flash Comics until about 1945, but it began as a syndicated newspaper strip in the 1920s. In that form it ran until 1935. As its formula Minute Movies had a pseudo-movie chapter a day, but it used the same stock characters as stars, just like movie studios of the day. It also kept the silent film style well into the era of talkies. By the time it was revived in Flash Comics, it was nostalgia.

Wheelan was one of the old-timers who showed up in the 1940s to do comic book work. He kept his old-fashioned style long after other artists attempted to enter the contemporary mainstream. He finished his career in comics drawing Fat and Slat, a vaudeville-styled joke strip.

There have been some retrospectives of Minute Movies, the newspaper strip, published over the years. Hyperion Press did Minute Movies 1927-1928 in 1977, eleven years after Wheelan's death.

Before that, Woody Gelman's Nostalgia Comics #2 reprinted part one of the 1933 continuity, "Serpents Of The City." UPDATE: Hairy Green Eyeball posted the whole story in 2009. Here is Part One and here is Part Two.
As far as I know, no one has ever tried to collect Wheelan's comic book work. This particular strip, "Intrigue," is from Flash Comics #35, November, 1942. Wheelan's style was from the 1920s, but still had its appeal, and he didn't try to modernize his technique.