When Fontaine Fox first pitched his new strip, Toonerville Folks, in 1908, his wasn't a new comics concept. Initially, he wanted to chronicle the pranks and pratfalls of a band of kids. Of course, by then, this was already well-trod territory. With strips like Katzenjammer Kids, Little Jimmy and Buster Brown already saturating the market, the market was skeptical.

So what did Fox do to differentiate his Folks? Well, first, he stretched the premise by shifting the focus from children to a whole farm town filled with colorful characters of varying ages. Then, he gave the strip a rather unique illustration style. He drew his cast and landscape with a subtly aerial perspective, so that it always seemed that the reader was looking down at the events of each tale.

From this panoramic perspective, readers could fully absorb the antics of town regulars like The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang, The Powerful Katrinka, Little Woo-Woo Wortle and The Skipper. And the popularity of this quirky crew was almost immediate.

The strip, which expanded its circulation from a few papers to hundreds between 1915 and the mid 1920s, spawned several merchandising efforts including cartoon books, cracker boxes, magic picture folders, paper masks, gum wrappers, bisques and cutout sheets.

The strip also made its way to the silver screen in both live action and animated forms. During the '20s, a series of two-reel live action comedies were produced, and in 1936, Burt Gillett produced cartoon shorts based on the fine folks of Toonerville.

Because the infamous town trolley, which sped menacingly through the street and caused passengers to feer for their lives, was so large a thread in the fabric of the strip, some papers ran the feature as Toonerville Trolley.

By either name, Fontaine Fox scored gold with his slice-of-life stories and interesting style of drawing. The strip ran for over 40 years and was also honored in a 1995 U.S. stamp series.

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