page_title: Canadian comics
section_title: Age of comic strips (1920s–1930s)
hierarchical_section_title: Canadian comics / History / English Canada / Age of comic strips (1920s–1930s)
caption_attribution_description: English: Undated Birdseye Center comic strip by Jimmy Frise (1891–1948)
context_page_description: Canadian comics refers to comics and cartooning by citizens of Canada or permanent residents of Canada regardless of residence. Canada has two official languages, and distinct comics cultures have developed in English and French Canada. The English tends to follow American trends, and the French Franco-Belgian ones, with little crossover between the two cultures. Canadian comics run the gamut of comics forms, including editorial cartooning, comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, and webcomics, and are published in newspapers, magazines, books, and online. They have received attention in international comics communities and have received support from the federal and provincial governments, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. There are comics publishers throughout the country, as well as large small press, self-publishing, and minicomics communities.
  In English Canada many cartoonists, from Hal Foster to Todd McFarlane, have sought to further their careers by moving to the United States; since the late 20th century increasing numbers have gained international attention while staying in Canada.
context_section_description: Canadian cartoonists often found it hard to succeed in the field of comic strips without moving to the US, but in 1921, Jimmy Frise, one of Ernest Hemingway's drinking buddies during the journalist's days in Toronto, sold Life's Little Comedies to the Toronto Star's Star Weekly.  This strip was later retitled Birdseye Center, and became the longest-running strip in English Canadian history.  In 1947, Frise brought the strip to the Montreal Standard, where it was renamed Juniper Junction.  Nova Scotia-born artist J. R. Williams single-panel strip about rural and small-town life, Out Our Way, began in 1922 and was syndicated in 700 newspapers at its peak.
  Two new comic strips appeared on the same day in 1929 in American newspapers and fed the public's desire for escapist entertainment at the dawn of the Great Depression.  They were the first non-humorous adventure strips, and both were adaptations.  One was Buck Rogers; the other, Tarzan, by Halifax native Hal Foster, who had worked as illustrator for catalogues from Eaton's and the Hudson's Bay Company before moving to the US in his late 20s.  Other adventure strips soon followed and paved the way for the genre diversity that was seen in comic strips in the 1930s.  In 1937, Foster began his own strip, Prince Valiant, which has become his best-known work for Foster's dextrous, realistic artwork.  After struggling to support himself at various Toronto-based publications, Richard Taylor, under the pen name "Ric", became a regular at The New Yorker and relocated to the US, where the pay and opportunities for cartoonists were better.
  The Toronto Telegram began to run Men of the Mounted in 1933, the first home-grown adventure strip, written by Ted McCall and drawn by Harry Hall.  McCall later penned the strip Robin Hood and Company, which made its appearance in comic books when McCall founded Anglo-American Publishing in 1941.
caption: Jimmy Frise's Birdseye Center (later Juniper Junction) was the longest-running strip in English Canada
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