Morrie Brickman

Comic artist and creator of the syndicated comic strip The Small Society.

Morrie Brickman was born July 17, 1917 in Chicago, and grew up in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. After high school, Brickman pursued his interest in art, taking courses at the Chicago Art Institute and the American Academy of Art when he could afford to do so. He worked selling shoes, cleaning up for John Groth (illustrator and editor for Esquire), designing shoe ads for Kling Studio, and helping out in his father’s shoe repair shop.

Brickman entered the U.S. Army in 1941 and was stationed in North Africa and Italy as a member of a topographic company. Upon his discharge, he returned to Chicago and married Shirley Kronenthal in 1945. They had a daughter, Harriet, and a son.

Brickman created several features before The Small Society, including Pic-Trix, Maximillian, The Senator, Crosscut, and Blue Chips. Brickman also served as the vice-president for National Newspaper Syndicate and continued to do freelance commercial work.

Brickman introduced The Small Society in 1966. It was syndicated by King Features and distributed to over three hundred newspapers around the world. It won first prize at the 9th International Salon of Cartoons and the Illinois House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring Brickman for innovative journalism.

In 1984, Brickman sold the strip to King Features where it continued until 1998 under the hand of Bill Yates. Brickman then completed the script for Coming of Age, his play about retirement. He died in March of 1994.

… comic strips have been deemed overly political by some readers (usually the ones who disagree). But here's a strip that's blatantly and openly political, but with practically no readers in its 30+ years demanding it be shunted off to the editorial page.

Maybe that's because its gags tended to be along the lines of this: "The president says the budget deficit is outrageous. And he should know." Or this: "I don't know how I feel about the latest scandal. I'm running out of reactions." Glib one-liners, in other words, designed to elicit a not-too-merry smirk about those darned politicians, but not to express opinions with any great likelihood of stirring up controversy.

The cartoonist behind the small society (note lack of capitals) was Morrie Brickman, whose previous strips, Pic-Trix, Crosscut and Blue Chips, each lasted between five and seven years. With this one, tho, he had a winner. King Features Syndicate distributed it from May 2, 1966 to February 27, 1999.

The basic idea was a faux editorial cartoon, not too topical (tho the title is a reference to one of President Lyndon Johnson's catch-phrases, "The Great Society"), with the general theme of exasperation, sarcasm, resignation, or some other generally negative but not very intense response to the world at large (politics wasn't its exclusive subject). Like the later Frank & Ernest, it was the same shape as a regular comic strip, but consisted of only one long panel. One to three talking figures occupied the center, and the ends contained a lot of white space. The characters (who had names according to the syndicate's publicity materials, tho their names were seldom if ever mentioned in the strip itself) represented ordinary people, commenting on things they couldn't control. Outdoor scenes often depicted Washington DC landmarks in the background.

Brickman handled it on his own for a couple of decades, then brought in another cartoonist, Floyd Buford "Bill" Yates (Little Iodine, Professor Phumble, Redeye) as a partner in 1986. They signed it jointly until 1989, when Yates took over completely. Yates retired in 1999, and the strip ended.