Birmingham Historical Comic Strips -- Birmingham Post, Original Page
The Post was born as a third Birmingham newspaper in 1921, competing with the Age-Herald as a morning paper. It seems to have competed without any particular political or philosophical bent -- the initial issue had a good bit of what I would think of as conservative content (the opening front page, for example, used about half of its real estate on stories on national trends in blue laws, the city's new movie "inspector" who didn't care for the term "censor", and a story headline "Girl Bathers to Carry Own Hose", which falls into that category of things that never would have even occured to me, as the manager of the swimming area at a local park lake had decided to stop selling stockings to be worn under bathing suits), but the subsequent issues seemed to cover the news in the same manner as the two existing papers did.
Unlike the longer-running papers who had to decide when to start this new-fangled comics page business, the Post ran a full page of comics from the very first issue on January 21, 1921. The lineup was fairly strong:
The Duffs,Allman,none listed
"Home, Sweet Home",H. J. Tuthill,Mail & Express Co.
Freckles and His Friends,Blosser,none listed
Untitled (Fontaine Fox),Fontaine Fox,Fontaine Fox
Betty and Her Beau,Parks,none listed
Everett True,Condo,none listed
The Duffs was a Bringing-Up-Father-style slice of life. Home, Sweet Home was the same, but better; it went on to be retitled The Bungle Family when it hit full national syndicate in 1925 and is often cited as a major influence. Freckles and His Friends would become a long-running teen precursor to Archie, but the kids had not yet fully aged in 1921 and were probably still ten years old or so. The Fontaine Fox panel would later develop into Toonerville Folks, which is described in the Age-Herald pages. Betty and Her Beau was an utterly forgettable gag strip about the obliviousness of young love. Perhaps the most interesting entry was Everett True, which basically featured a daily dose of society's mildly annoying getting thrashed for their lack of manners.
The next Monday, January 24, 1921, the Post picked up a couple of panels, which I'll go ahead and include here. The Old Home Town has been described in the Age-Herald pages; it's a daily huge panel with a street scene showing all the quirks of then-modern life. The Great American Home was also by Allman; it's similar to The Old Home Town, and I've been able to find nothing at all else about it online.
The Great American Home,Allman,none listed
The Old Home Town,Stanley,none listed
Last Updated: June 4, 2010