Ziff's Magazine, September 1925

 

Cover by Carl Link, The Carnival. Gorgeous. You can read Link's bio here at the National Cowboy and Western  Heritage Museum.

Click  the filename for a mediafire download Ziff's Magazine v04n03 1925-09.Auld (darwin).cbr

I'm working on getting setup at archive.org to give scan readers and downloaders more options as well.  Some of my fellow scanners have made really nice pages there, and it's a fine way for the average citizen of the web to find the magazine they are looking for or to find some good primary sources, etc.  If you get my version here, the scans will have joins and tags, at the IA no joins or tags since their reader operates on split pages and I'll keep the tags to my own copy so you know you where you got it, eh ?

Quite an elegant mag we're investigating today - hot off the presses here at Darwin Scans - Ziff's Magazine, September 1925.  If the Joy Stories I posted recently was a pub that helped give birth to the DC empire, today's magazine was there at the beginning of what would become Ziff Davis and Ziff Communications Company, an outfit that left quite a big imprint on American media, especially on books, magazines, pulps, and comics.  

The magazine was the first publishing venture striking out from the William B. Ziff company, a national advertising firm, after it acquired the E.C. Auld Company, a Chicago publishing house. I'll have to put together an index of covers to figure out the start date and number of issues, but I'm pretty sure Ziff's began in 1924 and that the magazine would see a number of format changes before changing to America's Humor in 1926 (which was edited by Harry Stephen Keeler).  The earlier issues look smaller and a little pulpy but later issues feature some pretty excellent covers and even artwork by world class artists Alberto Vargas and Cheri Herouard.  Mostly jokes, Ziff's is profusely illustrated with some fiction and photographs.  I noticed lots of Russell Patterson, Gus Mager, Charles Livingston Bull, a fantastic Arthur Ferrier, Sid Hix and more.  There's interesting pooch material from Albert Payson Terhune (also the topic of Bull's feature) along with a large number of ads for pet products which seems kind of unique. 

Looks like a pretty key mag to me as far as illustration and cartooning go not to mention as a Chicago pub from the heart of the roaring 20s. I've got the previous issue in the same format in the boxes I'll pull but mean to get to an issue of America's Humor in the meantime to see the magazine in a later phase.  Contents and samples forthcoming:

From Arthur Ferrier, my favorite illo in the issue, the line work just jumps off the page, so sharp, such lovelies!

One last pic, from the Topanga Historical Society, actors reading a copy of Ziff's at the Topanga Post Office