This week marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the comic strip Little Orphan Annie– a prodigious cultural achievement that lasted over 40 years. Such milestones should not pass by unnoticed.
The creator, Harold Gray, was a combination of Charles Dickens, Raymond Chandler and Scheherazade. His gritty, spellbinding tales of life during the Depression and World War II kept a huge segment of the population transfixed; his characters inflamed the emotions of his readers as he led them through one winding story after another.
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| Gray was a consummate storyteller |
Gray’s weird art was the perfect complement to his stories. Viewed in a vacuum, his linework might seem crude but his drawings were exactly what the art form called for. His overworked cross hatching, distorted figures and heavy line would later serve as a precedent for popular artists such as R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Chester Brown, but in my view Gray was better than all of them.
His political views sometimes bordered on loony, but that only contributed to the powerful noir feel of his strip, and the ominous tone that pervaded many of his stories.
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| More prescience from Gray, 80 years ago |
Mr. Gray, I salute your accomplishment and your marvelous contribution to American culture.