Bingville Bugle

A difficult series to come by, it seems. This humor feature was published with the appearance of a front page of a newspaper from a place called Bingville, and included short stories about the imaginary town citizens, with cartoon spots and a comic strip. It was written and drawn by Clyde “ Newton ” Newkirk and E. Strandman. Pleasant enough, but not real material for the comics’ pantheon.

Still, history records that one young Harry Lillis Crosby was born in 1903, and moved with his parents to Spokane in 1905. While still in grade school, he was dubbed by fellow classmate Valentine Hobart with the moniker “Bing from Bingville” -- after “Bingo,” a character with pear-shaped and protruding ears appearing in this comic series, and published in the Spokane Spokesman Review’s Sunday edition, which Bing delivered as a child. Other nicknames the future singer had at some point included The Old Groaner, El Bingo, Le Bing and Der Bingle, but it was of course Bing Crosby that stuck to the greatest crooner of them all.

This example comes from the Boston Sunday Post and is dated July 19, 1914, as dark events were unfolding in Europe.