?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
KEN KLING (1895-1970) Group of his "Joe and Asbestos" horseracing strips. 52 items. Ink on board, 23 boards approximately 7x23 inches; 14 boards approximately 7x16 inches or smaller; 12 boards approximately 6x16 inches or smaller. Some signed, some with dates but no years. Generally minor to moderate wear. One with an undated New York Mirror engraving order tipped to verso. Some with blank initial panels excised. One with manuscript delivery instructions on verso. One with an ink-stamped date tag (1954). [New York], circa 1950.
Ken Kling's "Joe and Asbestos" (also "Joe Quince" in its early days) was a daily strip about the travails of a horse trainer, his stable boy Asbestos, and his star horse Shrimpie. The artist Kling was also a respected racing columnist and handicapper; the cartoons sometimes contained cryptic references to Kling's top picks for the day's races. The cartoon ran in the New York Mirror, New York Daily News and other newspapers from 1923 to 1968.
The first panel of these 12 Joe and Asbestos strips is left blank, presumably for the insertion of last-minute horse tips in the daily newspapers. The 13th of these strips appears to be for a different Kling project, possibly his "Windy Riley" or "Those Folks"; quite worn on the left edge, it features different characters and does not have a blank first panel.
