Charlie Chaplin's Comedy Capers

Charlie Chaplin's Comedy Capers was an American gag-a-day celebrity comics comic strip by Stuart Carothers and later Elzie C. Segar starring Charlie Chaplin. It ran in syndication from 1915 until 1917. It was one of the earliest comic strips inspired by the popularity of a celebrity.

Background

Charlie Chaplin's Comedy Capers was published in the Chicago Herald.^[1] The comic strip cashed in on the tremendous popularity of the comedian at the time. It was created by Stuart Carothers in March 1915, who drew and wrote the stories until his tragic early death from defenestration. Two cartoonists named Warren and Ramsey took over the series until they were replaced by Elzie C. Segar, at that time still an amateur.^[2] On February 29, 1916 Segar published his first Chaplin strip. The daily version ran until July 15, 1916. His Sunday version ran longer, from March 12, 1916 until September 16, 1917.^[3][4] It was his first professional cartooning job. Contrary to his predecessors, who mostly borrowed ideas from Chaplin's films, Segar thought up his own jokes. He gave Chaplin a tiny sidekick named "Luke the Gook" to act as a straight man to his gags.

Reception

Despite Chaplin's popularity the comic strip wasn't a huge success in the United States, mostly due to the fact that all artists involved were basically amateurs. It fared better in the U.K., where it was published in the weekly comics magazine Funny Wonder for decades.^[5]

References