From BETTY AND VERONICA to FUTURAMA: The Timeless Allure of PAPER DOLLS
MORRISON MONDAYS! celebrates OUTFIT OF THE DAY Day! By BILL MORRISON June 30 is OOTD Day, and that stands for “Outfit Of The Day!” So, in honor of this day that encourages us to show off our personal style, I’m thinking about the tradition of paper dolls in comic books and newspaper strips! Since before I started reading comics (or reading anything!) I’ve had a fascination with paper dolls. I remember looking at my older sister’s paper doll books of famous actresses and seeing all the different outfits with paper tabs that she would carefully cut out and place over the figures. At that age, probably three or four, I didn’t know I’d be an artist one day, but I think the artistic impulse was there because the idea of dressing up a cardboard figure with drawings of clothing interested me in a way that plastic dress-up dolls did not (at least, not until G.I. Joe and Captain Action came along!) It was the drawings that fascinated me. When I did start reading comics, specifically Archie Comics, I was always delighted to get a paper dolls page in one of the Archie Giant Series editions. I never cut them out and played with them, but I loved looking at the art (especially the ones drawn by Dan DeCarlo!) I don’t recall seeing paper dolls in Sunday newspaper comics as a kid. I think by the 1960s they must have fallen out of fashion (so to speak) as strips were given less space on the page. At least, the strips that appeared in the paper my parents subscribed to, The Detroit News, didn’t feature them. But as an adult I discovered to my delight that they were ubiquitous in strips from the ’30s and ’40s, like Brenda Starr, Reporter — whose 85th birthday happens to be today — Dixie Dugan, Terry and the Pirates, Flyin’ Jenny, Tillie the Toiler, Blondie and Dagwood, and many more. After paper dolls faded from the Sunday funnies pages, they remained a staple of comic books in titles like Millie the Model, Betty and Veronica, Katy Keene — who just turned 80 — Patsy Walker, and My Little Margie. Any comic that featured pretty females, and even some that didn’t, occasionally had paper dolls, if only as a page filler. Naturally, after I became a...
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