The Squinkies?

Afternoon,

Myself and buddy Eamonn Clarke have been throwing ourselves into the next research project for the next NIA podcast. As always, it’s a joy to learn about an area of comics and swap facts, anecdotes, art and comics from that topic’s period. This week it’s been the man described as ‘Britain’s finest cartoonist’, Mr Ronald William Fordham Searle. As part of the lead-in to our discussion I took a chance on EBay and bought some issues of Lilliput Magazine. A monthly magazine full of fiction, articles, cartoons and out of date opinions and bad jokes that ran between the thirties and 1960 when it was Hatch, Matched and Despatched into Men Only! (see the totally out of order cover for one issue below). Not too much of a stretch when you see some of the ‘tasteful nudes’ it was displaying in 1949.

As well as being often about as tasteful as ‘Carry on Emmanuelle‘ Lilliput often featured a lot of early work from Searle himself. He’s not featured in every release but of the four I bought randomly three struck lucky with some early St Trinians gags by the master.

I mention all the above as pure background as to why I found what I’m about to talk about. Because, whilst reading Vol.25 No.4 from October 1949 I came across the following article on the rise of the American Comic Book or ‘The Squinkies’ as it referred to them. (The whole article is below by the way, if you want to skip my BS).

I’ll get onto the strange, funny and prophetic comments made in the article shortly but I’ve had a dig about online and with friends about the possible origins of ‘Squinkie’. It’s not something I had heard before.

The Boise Idaho Statesman newspaper that was published shortly after this issue of Lilliput was released uses the term but only in reference to Oden and Olivia Meeker’s article. An article on Bleeding Cool also makes reference to the term but refers back to the Idaho Statesman once again. I’ve also consulted a number of the names in UK Comics who would/should have heard of this term. Still with nothing concrete. Research does discover that Oden and Olivia were long time writers for both this periodical and elsewhere. The magazine was pretty well known for jokes on their readers.

‘Like may other American enterprises Squinkies are produced on the assembly line. An anonymous artist does the lettering, others the drawing, inking and erasing. Scripts are bought from freelance writers…’

I began to suspect that the term was all part of an elaborate prank from the forties.

When you dig into the article itself it is full of hilariously cynical rants that could well have come from one of my ancestors. I suppose that without people on social media to laugh at they had to go searching in the real world.

On the adverts in ‘Squinkies’, Oden and/or Olivia mentioned:

‘Each of these magazines carries half a dozen pages of ads exhorting the small fry to learn the rhumba, Get Along With Girls, remove ugly blackheads without cost, invest in ju-jitsu, Dynamic Tension and luminous neckties inscribed “Will you kiss me in the dark, Baby?” ‘

Or on the characters found in these US Squinkies:

‘The super-kids display a decided schizophrenia: ‘GINNY SPEARS LEADS A DOUBLE LIFE. BY DAY SHE’S THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S SECRETARY. BY NIGHT THE VEILED AVENGERS, EXOTIC ENEMY OF EVIL’

On those exotic female characters…

‘Black Venus is apparently covered in nothing more than a coat of paint. In their street clothes the squinkie girls are addicted to skin-tight red dresses and plunging necklines. Perhaps it is their uncanny resemblance to trollops that gets them into so much trouble.’

Good lord!

And in the conclusions section…

‘In our opinion, the inhabitants of the squinkie world are inherently stuff…The girls look like chorus ponies with perhaps an unusually small allotment of brains…Love making and wit are taboo. The super-boys are not interested in the squinkie heroines. They are too busy adjusting their dominoes, capuchin hoods and gladiator helmets.’

(What exactly are you saying…???)

If this is a wind-up then it’s a good one. It had me typing and calling round for some of this morning. Nicely done 1949! If it’s not then please let me know.

Maybe it’s a bit like a colleague of mine who once tried to tell us that “Jack the Biscuit” was a cool thing to say?

Or maybe not.

Or just maybe…I’m pulling your plonker.

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading.

UPDATE INCOMING…

Update – Thanks to Simon Russell for reaching out. The post had got him curious. We’d both seen that Robert Crumb had made reference to the term but Simon followed the breadcrumbs to a character called Gershon Legman – a man of varied talents and tastes (you may need to clear your cookies – do it now) who was also active in the forties and may have mentioned/written about something called the ‘Horror-Squinty’.

A science fiction, horror and comics writer at the time, and owner of a brilliant name, Manly Wade Wellman also appears to have used the term ‘Squinkies’ regarding his Captain Marvel authored comics. Interesting as the Lilliput article clearly evidences that Oden and Olivia Meeker had read some Captain Marvel. They also reference Mary Marvel as well as the pulp ‘Weird Tales‘ that Wellman had also written for. It is more than likely that Wellman used the term in the forties as that was when he was writing Captain Marvel. Is it possible that the Meekers grabbed the phrase from a letters page or had they even been in contact with someone in US comics? (Strange but true after they had savaged the business?) What came first? Had Wellman read Lilliput or vice versa?

We can also guess at the etymology of the term. Chatting to Eamonn Clarke he mentioned that there is the inclusion of ‘ink’ just sitting there in the middle of this invented word. Ink is the lifeblood of the comic artist. Especially in the hardworking smoke-filled studios of the Golden Age. Is it too early for a combination of ‘Sequential’ and ‘Inky’? It feels a little too early for that more academic combination? Maybe they were being ‘Squeezed’ hard into ‘Inking’ by unscrupulous money-bags publishers and this was a minor revolt?

Hopefully more to come.

In any case – I am calling on you to bring ‘Squinkies’ back into comics conversations! It’s a ridiculously stupid word at a time when we need ridiculous and stupid! Although, let’s stay away from Emmanuelle and ‘trollops’.

What would Jack the Biscuit do?