Status Updates From Little Orphan Annie, Volume...

Interestingly, there haven't been many racial caricatures. A servile black porter with minstrelsy appearance and dialect made a one-off appearance a few pages ago, serving her food on the train. There was a malevolent mahout at the circus where Annie worked: he's in a lot of strips. I mostly found him to be a jerk and a cad rather than ethnically offensive, but others might find him more egregious.

Now she's off to boarding school, where the school head Miss Brussels is a super snobby super butch with a spoiled Persian cat. That's not me reading projecting, BTW: quoth Annie, "Hm-m-m- Never saw anybody just like that before - dresses lots like a man, doesn't she, Sandy?" She looks like Al Capone.

Extended paralysis plotline (accident leaves Annie first quadriplegic, then with use of her arms sans the use of her lower body) going on and on in a very one note, depressing way, with grown-ass adults repeatedly lamenting that she'd be better off dead than unable to walk. I mean MULTIPLE pages, equating multiple weeks RL, of these histrionics. Wonder how wheelchair or bedbound readers of the time responded.

Hi Annie, just checking in. You're an awfully swell kid and I'm sorry I've been such a negligent reader.

I also feel like there needs to be a drinking game for all the panels that show her eavesdropping on people. At three strips to a printed side, a body'd get drunk in about five pages.

Not that this relates to the current plot (she's working in a circus and making pals with all the animals), but I get a kick out of how hard-boiled Annie is. She has the mentality and vocabulary of a tiny gangster - it's all, "Back where I'd come from I'd have a word with my gang and then I'd go out of town for a few days" kind of thing. You know, in addition to the brawling and decking and socking.

...weirdly compelling.