Napoleon and Uncle Elby

Napoleon and Uncle Elby was a popular syndicated newspaper comic strip created by Clifford McBride. Over a span of 29 years it was distributed by three different syndicates to both American and foreign newspapers. By the mid-1940s, the strip was carried by 80 newspapers.

While drawing such features as McBride's Cartoon (1927) and Clifford McBride's Pantomime Comic (1932), McBride introduced Elby, a character based on his uncle, Wisconsin lumberman Henry Elba Eastman. He soon began to add situations involving Elby's dog, Napoleon.

For a minor syndicate, LaFave Newspaper Features, McBride began Napoleon as a daily strip on June 6, 1932, reaching a wider audience once he connected with the McNaught Syndicate. His Sunday strip was added in 1933, and the following year, the title was changed to Napoleon and Uncle Elby.

Comics historian Don Markstein described the characters:

Napoleon became a spokesdog during the 1940s for Red Heart Dog Food. Merchandising included a stuffed toy of Napoleon. Although Napoleon was an Irish Wolfhound, McBride's own dog was Ace, a 190-pound St. Bernard, who sometimes was used for promotional purposes with McBride, including two short films, Unusual Occupations (1941) and Artist's Antics (1946).

McBride's assistant on the strip was former Disney artist Roger Armstrong (1917–2007). After McBride's 1951 death in Altadena, California, his second wife, Margot Fischer McBride, wrote the strip, and she hired Armstrong as the illustrator. In 1952, the team switched to the Mirror Enterprises Syndicate in Los Angeles, keeping the strip going for the next eight years.

Joseph Messerli drew the strip from 1953 to 1956. Another artist who worked on Napoleon was Ed Nofziger. The strip ended in 1961.

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