happy anne-iversary

Today Little Orphan Annie turns a hundred. 

The story behind Annie is not much of a story as far as Harold Gray is concerned. He was an assistant on the (great) soap opera/comedy strip The Gumps who submitted a strip idea about a little orphan boy to the editor of the New York News who said 'great, but make him a girl', and the rest, as they say, is the ongoing century-long story of Little Orphan Annie. 

What I didn't know, and this is a great example of a pop culture phenomenon that overshadows the reference which inspired it, was that 'Little Orphan Annie' was already a thing, or at least, a trope that people recognised. Read this:

Imagine someone labouring over that doggerel and putting their name to it and it being famous the world over for a long time, one more reason to thank god yet again for the phenomenon of pop music. According to wikipedia, not only was this poem originally called 'The Elf Child' when published in 1885, it got a reprint in 1889 in which the typesetter (always to blame) changed 'Little Orphant Allie' to 'Little Orphant Annie' because, you know, everything happens for a reason (seems 'Annie' is still a boy though). 

Riley was dead, and so was the typesetter too probably, and certainly also so was Mary Alice Gray who was the original inspiration for Annie - she died 7 March 1924 and ARGH her last name was GRAY) when the 'real' ('modern', 'present day') Little Orphan Annie came into being. 

This, apparently, is the debut, which sets stuff up but is hardly auspicious. No real fanfare and they even printed it crooked. 

But already it's clear that Gray is a superlative black and white artist, and I could look at his drawing all day long. He's remarkable and in some ways even more satisfying than the more acclaimed greats because he doesn't look away from any detail (though the images are definitely arranged set-ups to convey eg frame 3, an arduous but satisfying process). It's not long before Annie is doing what she does best, that is, dishing out justice:

I particularly love once again the kinetic 'process' in this strip. The boy running towards us at the front left could also be the boy running away from us at the far right, it's discombobulating and conveys the shock and awe of the upset. The only thing that doesn't quite convince is Annie's 'fist', which looks more like an open-handed slap but is clearly meant to be a wallop judging by the way it's laying that central boy out. I imagine Gray wasn't quite at the point of showing us a fully feisty Annie yet.

Richard Marschall writes in Maurice Horn's World Encyclopedia of Comics (Avon, New York, 1976 p. 459):

...Gray's tales were morality plays. They were parables, folk tales, told with Bunyan-like simplicity, allegory and characterisation.

    Thus Gray wrote tales that gripped, that were at once fanciful and glaringly real. Characters were easily identified by their names: Warbucks was originally a munitions manufactuer; Mrs. Bleating-Hart a hypocritical do-gooder; Fred Free a wandering kindly soul; J. Preston Slime a cynical two-faced reformer...

Gray's art is not to be overlooked and is as important a factor as his writing: his drawings are simply as dramatic - and as suspenseful and pregnant - as the text. In his reserved, heavy lines, Gray created a world that was his own. Seldom have plot and art been so perfectly fused as in the integrated, very personal statement that was Little Orphan Annie.