Wednesday, December 12, 2012

 

Obscurity of the Day: Looking at Religion


Western Newspaper Union, the syndicate that supplied weekly papers with boilerplate pages of content, went big on panel cartoon series in the late 1940s. One of them was Looking at Religion, from cartoonist Don Moore. This is not the Moore who was writing King Features' Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim, although I thought it might be until Alex Jay set me straight. His Ink-Slinger Profile tomorrow will tell you about this 'other' Don Moore. 

I also thought that it might be 'the' Don Moore because maybe he was only writing the feature --  I noticed that each panel had the code 'M - 8 - R - E' in the art -- I figured that must be a clue to a ghost artist. I came up with possible names like Metairie, May Terry, M.A. Tarry, etc. from this code, until I finally realized that this is simply Moore with the two 'o's stacked atop each other. Duh. 

Looking at Religion began sometime in 1948, probably around September. Moore ran the show until March 30 1950, after which someone named B.W. Ames took over. Ames' version of the feature wasn't nearly as appealing -- art was perfunctory and the factoids were less Believe-It-Or-Not, more Stifle-A-Yawn. The feature ended sometime in the last quarter of 1951.

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