Boots and Her Buddies
Encyclopedia
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
by Edgar Everett ("Abe") Martin
Edgar Martin
Edgar Everett Martin , known to his family and friends as Abe Martin, was an American cartoonist, who kept his comic strip, Boots and Her Buddies, running for decades, eventually reaching an audience of 60,000,000 readers.Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the youth moved with his family to Nashville,...
. Syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association
United Media
United Media is a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by The E.W. Scripps Company. It syndicates 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core business is the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association...
, it ran from 1924 to 1969. Some newspapers ran the strip under the shortened title Boots. The character of Boots was variously labeled the "Sweetheart of the Comics", the "Sweetheart of America" and "Everybody's Sweetheart".
Edgar Martin grew up in Monmouth, Illinois
Monmouth, Illinois
Monmouth is a city in and the county seat of Warren County in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is the home of Monmouth College and contains Monmouth Park, Harmon Park, North Park, Warfield Park, West Park, South Park, Garwood Park, Buster White Park and the Citizens Lake & Campground. It is the host...
where his father, George Martin, was a Monmouth College
Monmouth College
Monmouth College is a four-year coeducational private liberal arts college located in Monmouth, Illinois, United States.-History:Monmouth College was founded on April 18, 1853 by the Second Presbytery of Illinois, a frontier arm of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church...
biology professor, and he spent three years attending Monmouth College, leaving his junior year to study at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and joining NEA in 1921 as a cartoonist. Martin found work in 1921 in the NEA art department, and that same year he launched his strip, Girls, which had a character named Boots. Girls became Boots and Her Buddies on February 18, 1924, although some newspapers continued to use the first title.
Collegiate origins
The Sunday strip began as a topper, positioned above Our Boarding House
Our Boarding House
Our Boarding House was a long-running, American gag-panel comic strip created by Gene Ahern in 1921 and syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association. Set in a boarding house run by the sensible Mrs...
from 1926 to 1931. Because the strip had a large readership of college and high school students, Martin kept Boots in college for a very long time. With the strip's emphasis on fashion and beauty, Martin was sometimes invited to judge beauty contests. Paper doll cutouts with fashionable garments were a part of the Sunday pages well into the early 1960s. Associated topper strips were The Gooneys, Babe 'n Horace (started March 19, 1939) and Bootkins: the Little China Doll (April 26, 1936 to March 13, 1938). Interviewed in 1952, Martin gave some background on the strip and the way he felt about his characters:
- Five weeks before Boots' friends read of her activities in their local paper, Mr. Martin has drawn her actions for that day and mailed them to NEA (Newspaper Enterprise Association) for distribution to 700 papers which carry the feature daily. This is almost an anniversary for the cartoon which was first read on July 1, 1921. At that time Boots was in college, and was a pacesetter for fashions of the day... Her creator said that either he or Boots must have been pretty dumb because it took her a number of years to graduate. Partly, he said, this was because he hated to marry her to anyone, and partly because during the 1920s she was a symbol of taste in clothes and fashion, and having her married might cramp her style as "Everybody's Sweetheart." Friends know, however, that she is now married and has a small son. The son, Mr. Martin says, is his only pal, as he himself has three daughters, all of them married, and a granddaughter. Actually, he says, the characters in a comic strip become a part of their creator's own family. Each has individuality and is bounded by propriety in things that can and cannot be done, the same as any individual. Of one thing the cartoonist is sure, and that is that a comic strip misses its point unless it deals with human things in a human manner. The best feeling of all, he thinks, is to read a strip and say, "Why that same thing happened to me last week!" What but a domestic situation with everyday people could last for more than 30 years and still have a circulation numbered in the millions?" Some fans are really avid. Recently Mr. Martin received word of one reader who has at least 30 scrapbooks filled with the activities of Boots, from 1921-1951, inclusive.
Characters and story
- Boots Ruggles, "Sweetheart of America"
- Rod Ruggles, Boots' husband
- Davey Ruggles, Boots' son
- Bill, Boots' brother
- Dory, the maid
- Pug High
- J.X. "Bettem" High, Pug's father
- Eager Weaver, youth with crush on Pug
- Professor Stephen Tutt
- Cora Tutt, Boots' friend
- Opal
- Ferdie
- Willie
In 1949, Editor & Publisher
Editor & Publisher
Editor & Publisher is a monthly magazine covering the North American newspaper industry. It is based in New York City. E&P calls itself "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry" and describes itself on its website as "the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North...
summarized situations in the strip:
- In 1926, after monied brother Bill gave her a trip to New York, she got a new haircut, the "Boots Bob," which clicked nationally with hairdressers. She was, in 1939, honored guest, in sketch form, at the Yale junior prom, and her glamour brought artist Martin several assignments as judge of beauty contests. Boots picked up a chum, Babe in these days, and they had a strong following among the students. But as the original audience grew older, Boots matured. She was courted by numerous swains. It's like ticking off calendars to recall their names—Ronald Ross, Prince Franz of Grandalia, Jonathon Marlsboro Jones, Handy Andrews, the wealthy Cecil Livingston and Rod Ruggles. Boots' audience had apparently reached a new stage when Ruggles appeared on the scene. They liked him. They sent a cascade of letters asking for wedding bells, and Boots and Rod went to the altar, October 2, 1945.
In addition to keeping Boots in college for years, Martin also delayed her marriage for two decades. After Boots and Rod Ruggles married in 1945, their son Davey was born July 4, 1946. Another central character was Boots' close friend Cora, who was married to Professor Stephen Tutt. In 1937, Boots brought Pug to live with the Tutts after Pug's father, J.X. "Bettem" High mysteriously disappeared. Pug later became a member of the Ruggles family. Boots was also friends with Babe and Horace, the characters in the Sunday topper strip
Topper (comic strip)
A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.Toppers usually were drawn...
, Babe 'n Horace.
Scripts
During the 1950s, the strip was written by University of Missouri student and English instructor Thomas B. Harris, who married Mary Martin, Edgar Martin's daughter. Harris submitted story synopses to Martin who passed them on to the syndicate. Not until NEA gave a go-ahead did Harris write the full scripts with dialogue. At the University of Missouri-Columbia, Harris was promoted from administrative assistant to assistant dean to associate dean of the College of Arts and Science from (1954-84). An advisor to the Provost's Office (1984-88) until his 1988 retirement, Harris died in 1992.After Martin died in Clearwater, Florida
Clearwater, Florida
Clearwater is a city located in Pinellas County, Florida, US, nearly due west of Tampa and northwest of St. Petersburg. In the west of Clearwater lies the Gulf of Mexico and in the east lies Tampa Bay. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 108,787. It is the county seat of...
on August 31, 1960, the daily strip was discontinued after October 15, 1960. The Sunday page ran unsigned until June 6, 1965 when the signature of his assistant, Les Carroll, appeared. Carroll drew the strip until October 6, 1968.
Books
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
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