Thick as Thaves – A Centennial Celebration

Frank and Ernest creator Robert Lee (Bob) Thaves was born on Oct. 5, 1924, one hundred years ago today.

As Bob’s National Cartoonists Society mini-autobio card above notes he became a published cartoonist while still a student. The Los Angeles Times obituary says the cartooning affliction began in high school:

As a boy, he knew he wanted to be a cartoonist; he developed his style by studying other comic strips. His cartoons were first published in his high school yearbook, and he drew comics for the student newspaper and the humor magazine at the University of Minnesota.

His college cartoons for U of M’s Ski-U-Mah was collected in This Is Madness!, a 1950 booklet.

Back to The L. A. Times obit:

During World War II, Thaves served in Europe in the Army’s 89th Infantry Division. After the war, he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology …

While working as a psychological consultant who helped companies screen potential employees, Thaves sold an occasional comic strip to the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines.

Among the cartoon markets he sold to during the 1950s and 1960s was Charlton’s Good Humor in 1953:

Marvel Comics’ publisher Martin Goodman issued a number of such magazines and digests during the Fifties and Sixties and Thaves made sales to those. Goodman bought the cartoons with unlimited rights and so would rerun the cartoons over and over, so no certain date can be attached to the following cartoons other than ca. 1950s -1960s.

Then on November 6, 1972 Bob Thaves hit the jackpot.

From Lambiek’s Comiclopedia:

On 6 November 1972, the Newspaper Enterprise Association started syndicating ‘Frank and Ernest’ all over the United States, and abroad. At the height of its circulation, the series ran in nearly 1,300 papers worldwide… Starting on 1 April 1973, a Sunday comic was added.

‘Frank and Ernest’ stars two beggars who roam the world. Frank is the tall one and usually does most of the talking. Ernest is his more soft-spoken sidekick, who occasionally throws in a funny line. Hence their names, alluding to “being frank and being earnest”… Thaves regularly reimagined Frank and Ernest as animals, plants, objects, extraterrestrial aliens or other creations… Most of the comedy is provided by corny puns. Thaves was such a fan of wordplay that The International Save the Pun Foundation named him “Punster of the Year” in 1990.

Comiclopedia lists a number of innovations set by Bob Thaves and Frank and Ernest:

Together with Morrie Brickman’s ‘The Small Society’ (1966-1999), ‘Frank and Ernest’ was the first known American newspaper gag comic where the sequences are told in one long panel. Thaves typically didn’t use panels to separate each individual scene, making ‘Frank and Ernest’ a hybrid between a traditional comic strip and a single-panel cartoon feature. Thaves wasn’t fond of speech balloons either. He preferred writing the dialogue in texts floating above the characters’ heads. To provide lettering, he used a large block print, which suited the light-hearted tone he aimed for. Thaves showed the same innovative spirit when the Internet went public in 1992. ‘Frank and Ernest’ was one of the earliest newspaper comics to become available as a webcomic. Thaves was additionally one of the first cartoonists to launch his own official website [link added] and make his archives searchable by keyword. In 1995, ‘Frank and Ernest’ became one of the first U.S. newspaper comics to use digital coloring for its Sunday pages.

From The Memphis Press-Scimitar a 1982 Michael Donahue profile:

As the above article says by the early 1980s Bob had started another comic panel. Partnering with Rex May they syndicated another daily panel (no Sunday) called Smithereens. It started on November 24, 1980 and lasted over two and a half years, until July 30, 1983. From the Wassau Daily Herald comes the first and last panels:

The panel had an international audience. Some samples from Australia:

Later, still in the 1980s, Bob again teamed with Rex May, and Scott Stantis joined in (first signing the panel on July 31, 1988), to create the King Baloo panel, which took its format inspiration from Frank and Ernest. It ran daily and Sunday for less than a year, from May 23, 1988 to January 7, 1989. The first and last and a random Sunday page from The Pittsburgh Press:

Bob Thaves died on August 1, 2006. A few weeks later former partner Scott Stantis paid tribute to his friend.

As did Darrin Bell.

Bob’s son Tom had been part of the Frank and Ernest team for a decade by the time of Bob’s death and, in a rarity with legacy strips, the standards have been kept high making today’s Frank and Ernest as enjoyable as ever.

One last Frank and Ernest by Bob Thaves from 1974: