A Romp Through Rea Irvin's Forgotten Sunday Funnies

"Rea Irvin, the magazine's first art editor, is best known for creating Eustace Tilley, the monocled dandy whose upturned nose has graced our pages for a hundred years. Irvin established the stylish and refined look of The New Yorker, brought in countless new artists, and also penned many early covers that display his graphic mastery."

"Irvin's characters followed the form of "Bringing Up Father," an immensely popular series about an overbearing wife and a put-upon husband written by the master cartoonist George McManus, whose style was itself a tour de force of elegant and well-designed storytelling. In McManus's strip, much of the humor derives from the juxtaposition between the wife's class striving and her husband's contentment with corned beef and cabbage. In Irvin's world, John and Margie Smythe are both driven by their aspirations to appear sophisticated (perhaps not unlike Eustace Tilley)."

"The strips, gorgeously composed, with characters dancing elegantly on the page, chronicle Margie's misguided but ardent worship of her husband. They often deliver gentle punch lines displaying the cartoonist's affection for the couple's follies and foibles. Somewhat unsurprisingly, mocking the hapless rich during the Great Depression did not draw a large audience. After five years, Irvin redirected his attention to characters lower on the social ladder-but to no avail. Eventually, in 1936, he retired the strip."

Rea Irvin created the monocled dandy Eustace Tilley and shaped The New Yorker's early aesthetic while producing many covers and recruiting artists. Beginning in 1930 Irvin produced a Sunday comic page called "The Smythes" for the New York Herald Tribune and other papers, modeled on George McManus's Bringing Up Father. The strip followed John and Margie Smythe, an aspirational couple whose attempts at sophistication provided gentle humor. The panels displayed elegant composition and affectionate punch lines. Poor audience reception during the Depression led Irvin to change focus; after declining interest he retired the strip in 1936.

Read at The New Yorker