Penny Wonder

In the running for the most ridiculous thing I’ve yet contributed. From a disintegrating bound edition, very very very incomplete versions of Penny Wonder #3 – #21. These had been scrapbooked extensively (possibly contributor copies as it’s largely the same stuff cut out from each issue) and then over the years shed all sorts of pages, including some that fell apart while scanning. I always scan everything of this age I can lay my hands on as you never know when someone might turn up a half-complete issue needing the pages we have here, but these are not fun to read due to the gaps.

carrying on the original Funny Wonder numbering and Penny Wonder as a new title. Both were modelled on Pearson’s The Big Budget, which was basically a combination comic-story paper, with a 4/12 page cartoon/text split. The former included “Sammy Smite” by G.M. Payne, one panel “Marmaduke Maxim” and “Wild Woolly West” by Sir Bertie Brown, and racial stereotype fun with “Gretchen the Dainty Dutch Darling” (sorry Boutje =/), plus the usual one-off gag strips.

The text stories are the real heavy-hitters – “Lady Turpin” about highwaywoman Galloping Gloria Gale and girl chauffeur Grace Daring of “The Woman At the Wheel!” are both smashing OTT twenties action-melodrama, weird detective story “John Flood the River Tracker” has a spooky cat and art by George “Bill” Wakefield, and “Mascar the Mystic” is about a solicitor who dresses up like a lunatic to trick criminals.

Not sure any editorial have ever been identified. With the female protagonists, the Butterfly art team and the general air of hell-for-leather it feels very Fred Cordwell, though it might be a bit early for him. I know Harold Garrish was Funny Wonder editor a few years later so it might have been him as he was a big influence on Fat Fred. It is likely that whichever one of them it was wrote most of the stories.

Penny Wonder 1912-02-24
Penny Wonder 1912-03-02
Penny Wonder 1912-03-09
Penny Wonder 1912-03-16
Penny Wonder 1912-03-23