flappers

Yes, it’s true: at one time, there was indeed a comic strip called “Petting Patty” that appeared in the “legit” press, although, from the title alone, it was not clear who was doing the titular petting. (Definition of “tituler”: denoting a person or thing from whom or which the name of an artistic work or similar is taken.) The strip first showed up in 1928, in the waning days of the Jazz Age, and its flapper heroine must have quickly seemed anachronistic, post-Crash, and it ended in 1930. And so Petting Patty is forgotten today.

Jefferson Machamer, the strip’s artist and writer, became an artist of some note, although he never penned a truly successful and long-running comic strip.