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''Boots and Her Buddies'' was an American comic strip by Edgar Martin that ran from 1924 to 1969, syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Some newspapers presented the strip under the shortened title ''Boots''. The character of Boots was variously labeled the "Sweetheart of the Comics", the "Sweetheart of America" and "Everybody's Sweetheart". Martin grew up in Monmouth, Illinois where his father, George Martin, was a Monmouth College biology professor, and he spent three years attending Monmouth College, leaving his junior year to study at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and joining NEA in 1921 as a cartoonist.〔(University of Missouri: MU Libraries Special Collections )〕〔(Reynolds, Moira Davidson. ''Comic Strip Artists in American Newspapers, 1945-1980''. McFarland, 2003. )〕 Martin found work in 1921 in the NEA art department, and that same year he launched his strip, ''Girls'', which had a character named Boots. ''Girls'' became ''Boots and Her Buddies'' on February 18, 1924, although some newspapers continued to use the first title.〔(''Boots and Her Buddies'' ) at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. (Archived ) from the original on March 20, 2012.〕 ==Collegiate origins== When the strip began, the shapely, attractive Boots was attending college and boarding at the home of a professor and his wife. The "buddies" in the title originally referred to her college boy friends. The college in the strip was based on Monmouth College; Boots sometimes carried a banner with the letter "M". The town in the strip had numerous parallels with Monmouth, Illinois, occasionally displaying real locations, such as Sandy Mitchell's pool hall.〔Monmouth College: "Popular comic strip had MC roots".〕 The Sunday strip began as a topper, positioned above ''Our Boarding House'' from 1926 to 1931. Because the strip had a large readership of college and high school students, Martin kept Boots in college for a very long time.〔〔 With the strip's emphasis on fashion and beauty, Martin was sometimes invited to judge beauty contests. Paper doll cutouts with fashionable garments were a part of the Sunday pages well into the early 1960s. Associated topper strips were ''The Gooneys'', ''Babe 'n Horace'' (started March 19, 1939) and ''Bootkins: the Little China Doll'' (April 26, 1936 to March 13, 1938).〔〔 Interviewed in 1952, Martin gave some background on the strip and the way he felt about his characters: :Five weeks before Boots' friends read of her activities in their local paper, Mr. Martin has drawn her actions for that day and mailed them to NEA (Newspaper Enterprise Association) for distribution to 700 papers which carry the feature daily. This is almost an anniversary for the cartoon which was first read on July 1, 1921. At that time Boots was in college, and was a pacesetter for fashions of the day... Her creator said that either he or Boots must have been pretty dumb because it took her a number of years to graduate. Partly, he said, this was because he hated to marry her to anyone, and partly because during the 1920s she was a symbol of taste in clothes and fashion, and having her married might cramp her style as "Everybody's Sweetheart." Friends know, however, that she is now married and has a small son. The son, Mr. Martin says, is his only pal, as he himself has three daughters, all of them married, and a granddaughter. Actually, he says, the characters in a comic strip become a part of their creator's own family. Each has individuality and is bounded by propriety in things that can and cannot be done, the same as any individual. Of one thing the cartoonist is sure, and that is that a comic strip misses its point unless it deals with human things in a human manner. The best feeling of all, he thinks, is to read a strip and say, "Why that same thing happened to me last week!" What but a domestic situation with everyday people could last for more than 30 years and still have a circulation numbered in the millions?" Some fans are really avid. Recently Mr. Martin received word of one reader who has at least 30 scrapbooks filled with the activities of Boots, from 1921-1951, inclusive.〔Hallam, Charles E. ''Rock Island Argus'', July 4, 1952.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Boots and Her Buddies」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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