Little Lefty

LITTLE LEFTY. The longest-running comic strip in any US Left newspaper, “Little Lefty” featured a tough proletarian kid who shunned “individual violence” for the class struggle. Lefty sported a nifty cap and philosophized steadily about the state of the world and capitalism in particular. Sometimes, though not too often, he saluted the Soviet Union. “Little Lefty” appeared in the Daily Worker in October, 1934, and persisted, with occasional interruptions, until early 1943. When the Worker added a Sunday edition, “Little Lefty on Sundays” made an appearance, 1936-1939, shifting its title to “Buttons” in 1938. During the 1940s, Lefty’s appearance was sometimes titled “Little Lefty’s Cartoonews.”

Most curiously, the artist introduced a lively, eel-looking animal named “Marmaduke” in 1940, offering continuity stories rather than one-day sagas about capitalism’s cruelty. Renamed “The Adventures of Marmaduke,” it foreshadowed by name one of the most beloved comic strip (and animation) characters of all time, introduced artist Brad Anderson in the 1950s as a big friendly dog. The use of an unusual name and the sometime liberal propensities of the later Marmaduke have continued to raise questions, no doubt because so little is known about Maurice del Bourgo, the “Little Lefty” artist himself. The later and hugely popular strip Marmaduke came to life in the work of Anderson, beginning in the mainstream daily press in 1954.

Del Bourgo was, for all his personal obscurity, a highly successful comic artist. He made his living at a variety of companies, including Marvel, with a wide variety of titles from westerns and crime, even romance. The Green Arrow, inspired (according to some accounts) by the Robin Hood legend, was perhaps the most memorable or cryptically political.

Del Bourgo’s work reached a more literate or elevated level with the Classics Illustrated series, from the 1940s to 1950s. He adapted Jack London, Alexandre Dumas, and most notable with its political implications, Friedrich Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell. According to anecdotal evidence, some of these adaptations were most likely written, under various pseudonyms, by the most literate of all Classics writers: the distinguished activist and literary historian Annette Rubinstein. Denied an academic teaching slot because of her gender, and despite a PhD, she was blacklisted from her job as principal of a women’s school and fell into Classics for a few years. Decades later, she would become a central figure in the Marxist School/Brecht Forum.