Collection pays tribute to magazine cartoonist Doug Wright

There's a very nice tribute and review by Montreal cartoonist Terry Aislin in the Montreal Gazette of a book about one of Canada's best and increasingly little known magazine cartoonists, Doug Wright.

One of the reasons for the declining awareness of Wright and other cartoonists is that magazines rarely if ever use satirical cartoons or strips anymore. But at one time they did, and with good reason.

The book, from the Montreal publisher Drawn & Quarterly is The Collected Doug Wright, Volume One, designed by noted Guelph-based cartoonist Seth (George Sprott), with text featuring a biographical essay by writer Brad Mackay, and an introduction is by Lynn Johnston of For Better or For Worse. The first of two planned volumes is $39.95. The two volumes document Wright's life and work including Nipper, a strip that began in the Montreal Standard in 1949 and then in its supplement magazine, which became the national weekend supplement Weekend magazine. When Weekend folded, the strip carried on in its competitor/successor Canadian magazine until it, too. folded. It has to be understood that Nipper preceded the popular strip Peanuts by a year and was, in Canada, even more popular. As Aislin recalls,

Nipper was an imp – a small, hairless boy continually running around getting himself into all sorts of mischief. In the 1950s, Doug Wright and his wife, Phyllis, began raising a family in a modest, brand-new suburban home on 54th Ave. in Lachine. The neighbourhood could have been in any suburb, really, partly explaining the comic strip’s popularity. Apparently, all Doug Wright had to do to get inspiration for Nipper was to watch the shenanigans of the local kids through his front window.

Seen in today's hyper-ironic context Nipper and Wright's other work may seem to some almost too tame. But it has to be remembered that they were in, from and of another time and it was family viewing. And to reiterate that they were seen by several million people every week. And there was no question about the energy and talent that went into them or how much they meant to those magazine readers.

[The panel above appeared in Weekend magazine January 6, 1962. Courtesty Drawn & Quarterly.]

By the way, Drawn & Quarterly publishes an excellent blog on comic art.