Syd Hoff (1912–2004) was amongst a hybrid group of authors/comedian artists/humorists; a New Yorker gag cartoonist who created the kids’s e-book characters Danny the Dinosaur, Sammy the Seal and Grizwald, an urbanized bear (see the exhibit right here). Hoff bought his first cartoon to The New Yorker at age 18 and was an everyday contributor all through his life. His items had been ultimately printed in a dozen collections.
Whereas working for mainstream shoppers, he additionally incessantly contributed political gags to the Nineteen Thirties radical left-leaning periodicals, together with The New Plenty (artwork directed by fellow New Yorker cartoonist Mischa Richter) and the Every day Employee, the communist newspaper that was a scourge of the wealthy and highly effective. For his partisan wit he used the nom de crayon A. Redfield (maybe a sly reference to his shade of get together affiliation). In these important occasions it was higher to maintain his bread and butter jobs separate from his extra charged political passions, lest a authorities agent take umbrage.
Amongst my favourite cartoon collections of that period (and there are various), Hoff/Redfield’s 1935 The Ruling Clawss is a witty portrait of the higher crust and the cops that do their bidding. Initially printed within the Every day Employee, the acerbic barbs aimed on the indecently rich may finest be described as Peter Arno (one other grasp at mentioning folly) on steroids. Hoff skillfully captures the Melancholy-era moguls in artfully nuanced slapstick comedy. His photos are a historical past of these occasions.
I nonetheless eagerly paw by means of my fragile unique copy, though it had years in the past change into frayed and tattered. Which is why I’m happy to report that New York Evaluate Comics has printed a brand new reasonably priced paperback of The Ruling Clawss. There’s a sure nostalgia in trying by means of the gags of American the Aristocracy, particularly in comparison with the present grade of smarmy oligarchs, but it surely is also a little bit of undesirable deja vu. The haves and have nots nonetheless have and haven’t, besides the ration is far, a lot, rather more lopsided in the present day.
