I hesitated about doing a post about Lucy and Sophie Say Good Bye because it seemed too obvious. Then I thought, obvious to whom? Surely a comic from 1905 can’t be all that widely recognized, a century hence. Besides, there’s a cool little bonus: the mystery surrounding the artist of this strip.

Some think that this mystery has been solved. Case in point, in 2021, the intrepid Eddie Campbell and Ron Evry of Mister Ron’s Basement made great use of their eagle eyes and spotted the similarity between Lucy and Sophie Say Goodbye and Cholly Cashcaller, both strips running almost concurrently in The Chicago Tribune. When Campbell pinged Barnacle Press, its sleuthing team (after some tracking down signatures, styles, and historical details) decided that the heretofore anonymous author was Robert James Campbell (1873-1938)*. Read the story here.

Chapter closed? Not quite. Kevin Cooley argues (and quite persuasively**) that this was a hasty and incorrect assumption, and that the artist is actually George O. Frink (1874? – 1932). Given that people far more erudite than I have spent years studying this topic, I’m resolutely staying away from having an opinion on the subject, but it’s all rather fascinating. Suffice it to say that Cooley has written a highly perceptive analysis of this strip and I highly recommend reading it (here)…. but that I tend to trust Campbell’s judgment, given that he’s not only an excellent cartoonist, but also a comics historian.

Has this strip gained traction and garnered interest in recent years because lay people (as opposed to comic historians) are titillated by the idea of two women kissing in a newspaper strip from the very early 20th century? That goes without saying. Yet this historical importance doesn’t take anything away from the art or humour of this strip. Besides, most people will be able to relate to the feeling of being s̶o̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶l̶o̶v̶e̶ such close friends that the outside world fades into nonsignificance, even as horses collide, waves crash, and a crowd gathers.

I picked some of my favourites, but you can see more of these over at Barnacle Press.

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As you may have noticed, Lucy is often bodily torn away from her companion by some passing contraption, be it a boat or a montgolfière . As mentioned earlier, Cooley wrote a detailed analysis on the subject, from which I will now quote:

« Lucy and Sophie’s fears are not in vain. One of these threats is ultimately carried out, and it cannot be dodged, ignored, or avoided. In the strip’s final installment on October 15^th, 1905, the lovers are carted off by sinister mustachioed men in brown trench coats. “Say we got two crazy ones send the wagon,” says one. The women are wrestled into separate streetcars and held apart as they say their final goodbye. A young man in typical newsboy hat, papers and bell tucked under his arm, says “Gee dats der finish.” »

~ ds

* I don’t know how many Campbells are running around this world, but presumably quite a few.

** Speaking of being persuasive, I’d be remiss in not including part of Campbell’s rebuttal, at least in part — read the full thing in the comments section of The Lucy and Sophie Cartoonist – Another Look (Updated with Part Two – A George Frink Profile). Co-admin RG (himself a cartoonist) has often argued that artists have a different, deeper perception of other artists (as compared to those not at all versed in the craft/art of comics), enabling them to recognize someone’s style, even if it’s, say, subtle pencils buried under someone else’s forceful inking. Campbell’s point is similar, I think.

« I’ve been thinking about this strange affair today and it occurs to me now that K. Cooley doesn’t understand that there are some who are well versed in the study of cartoon art who can recognize an artist’s voice, or personality, by looking at a comic, the way one recognizes a friend’s voice on the telephone. Being told a more or less persuasive story doesn’t change the situation that the Frink comic he shows, with its depth of field and crackly angles and energy, all typical of Frink, is incompatible with the balloony lines and easy-going patterns of the Lucy and Sophie compositions. There are two distinct artistic personalities at work, one of whom is Frink and the other of whom shares a multitude of qualities with Robert Campbell, who drew many pretty ladies adorning the Sunday magazine pages of the same issues of the newspaper, all of whom had a tendency to look exactly like Lucy and Sophie. “One” does not ascribe works according to artists’ complicated backstories, or at least not until the primary issue of the looks of things have been analyzed. »