Have you ever heard of a strip that is called "Ed Bean" or something similar with the name Bean in it that had a character named Blondie? It would have run in the early to mid 1900's.

There was a comic strip called "Baron Bean" that ran from 1916 to 1919. It centered around a mooching aristocrat who had a servant named Grimes, and a wife named Lucinda ("barren bean" and "loose in the bean," get it?), but I'm afraid I don't know the names of any of the other supporting characters. It was written and drawn by George Herriman, who is better remembered as the creator of "Krazy Kat." Could this be the strip you're thinking of? If not, please let me know, and I'll continue to search.

Hello again. Grandma remembered the name of the cartoon and artist. The strip was called Roger Bean by Chic Jackson. I haven't been able to find very much about it. Have you ever seen it? It ran around 1915.

Wow... this sure is a tough one. I checked over a half dozen reference books on comic strip history, and all I could find was this one sentence from Jerry Robinson's 1974 book, The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art: "Roger Bean by Chic Jackson, one of the first comic strip families to age, had started back in 1913." There are also brief mentions on the web at http://www.indianahistory.org/edu/exhibitions/cartoons.html and http://www.lib.msu.edu/comics/rri/jrri/jackson.htm but I can find no pictures of Roger Bean or Chic Jackson anywhere. (In fact, I was surprised that I could not find ANY cartoonists named Jackson! You'd think there would have been at least three or four in the past century!)
Sorry about that, but thanks for giving me a good bit of obscure comics history to chew on!

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© 2003 Robert A. Buethe