From 9 To 5

Not to be confused with 9 to 5, a comic strip by Harley Schwadron
From 9 To 5
Author(s) Jo Fischer
Current status / schedule Concluded
Launch date June 17, 1946
End date 1971
Syndicate(s) Field Newspaper Syndicate
Genre(s) comedy, gag-a-day

From 9 To 5 was an American single-panel comic strip series by Chicago comic strip artist Jo Fischer (1900-1987). Distributed by Field Newspaper Syndicate, at its peak the cartoon was carried by 100 newspapers. From 9 to 5 featured shapely secretaries and their lives in and out of the office. It ran for over 30 years from June 17, 1946, to "some time in 1971."[1]

Plot and characters

From 9 To 5 was a gag-a-day single panel strip focusing on a shapely office secretary named Hysteria, her equally fit best friend Deleria, and their daily interactions with life, at the office of Wump Widgets, with Mr. Wump, the boss, at lunch, in the market, after work, and so forth. Boyfriends were mentioned but rarely shown.

The characters were drawn in a cartoony style (men's faces was little more than a group of circles and half circles) but great attention was given to the girls' clothes styles with them wearing a wide variety of designer jackets, sweaters and blouses, all, invariably, over tight-fitting calf-length black skirts with legs faintly outlined. The women were drawn with bat-wing eyelashes and ankle-twisting high-heels.[2]

Style

Fischer drew the strips months ahead but worked with fashion magazines to make certain his characters were not only up-to-date but also in season with their clothes. "He had the talent," his son Joel said, "to match with his drawings what he wanted to say."[3]

Jo Fischer

The long-lived strip was drawn by Jo Fischer, Chicago artist and cartoonist for almost 60 years. "He was the brother of Chicago journalists Leo and Maurice 'Ritz' Fischer, and in 1963 was awarded along with them "Press Vet of the Year" honors by the Chicago Press Veterans Association."[3] Fischer included the names of fans and correspondents in a "From 9 To 5 Club" in signs on the sides of desks[4] and regularly thanked contributors by name and location for gag ideas in the panel margins.

"I would describe him not so much as an artist but as a craftsman who worked hard to do a good job," said his son, Joel. "He really liked the newspaper business and all the glamor of it. He was a very, very hard worker. He had little formal training but went out and did things. His education was more in the form of apprenticing himself to excellent cartoonists."[3]

His first strip, Duets, consisting of two characters whose conversations appeared in alternating balloons above their heads, flopped. But Fischer scored with From 9 to 5. "It portrayed workers in office settings. He had a feel for the events that took place in offices. His cartoons were either universal or picked up on common feeling workers had about bosses and other subjects."[3]

Fischer retired in the 1970s.[3] A lifelong resident of Highland Park, Fischer died Wednesday, 25 March 1987, in a Deerfield nursing home.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Holtz, Alan. "Jo Fischer's From 9 to 5, Stripper's Guide (June 2007).
  2. ↑ "20 ORIGINAL PANEL CARTOONS COMIC ART BY JO FISCHER CHICAGO SYNDICATED ARTIST," WorthPoint. Accessed Nov. 10, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Heise, Kenan. "Jo Fischer, 'From 9 To 5' Cartoonist," Chicago Sun-Times (March 28, 1987).
  4. ↑ Fischer, Jo, "From 9 To 5", San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Tuesday 1 December 1953, Volume LX, Number 79, page 11.
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