Rhea Irwinthe magazine's first art editor, best known for creating Eustace Tillya dandy in a monocle whose upturned nose has graced our pages for a hundred years. Irwin created a stylish and sophisticated look New Yorkerattracted countless new artists and also produced many early covers that showcased his graphic prowess.
A new book edited by New Yorker artist R. Kikuo Johnson and cartoonist Dash Shaw reintroduces one of Irvine's lesser-known activities: “The Smiths“, a Sunday comics page published in New York. Herald Tribune and several other newspapers since 1930. Irwin's characters had the shape of “Raising a Father“, a hugely popular series about an overbearing wife and a resentful husband, written by master cartoonist George McManus, whose style was itself a model of elegant and well-crafted storytelling. In McManus's strip, much of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of the wife's class aspirations and her husband's satisfaction with corned beef and cabbage. In Irwin's world, John and Margie Smythe are both driven by their aspirations to appear sophisticated. (perhaps not unlike Eustace Tilly).
The beautifully composed strips, with characters dancing elegantly across the page, reflect Margie's misguided but fervent worship of her husband. They often contain tender punchlines that demonstrate the cartoonist's affection for the couple's follies and foibles. Not surprisingly, ridiculing the hapless rich during the Great Depression failed to attract much of an audience. After five years, Irwin turned his attention to characters lower on the social ladder, but to no avail. He eventually removed the strip in 1936. Until now it remains in obscurity. In the excerpt below, selected pages offer a playfully ironic and tender portrait of married life in society.
