One of my very favorite comics is Percy Crosby's Skippy. The line work is sublime, and the humor is gentle, with an undercurrent of sardonic wisdom, plumbing the well of wise kids and their foibles decades before we met Charlie, Lucy, and Linus. So you can imagine my excitement to find a Perc Crosby strip that I'd never heard mentioned in his biographies, or listed in any comic encyclopedias!

Millie and Her Millions dates back to the spring of 1916, before Crosby's first syndicated strip, The Clancy Kids, would premier. Millie is a forward-thinking and wealthy young woman rendered in a cartoonishly simplified Gibson mode, who is married to a nebbishy fellow who would like to believe he is the head of the family.

Were it not for the signature, you might not recognize this as a Crosby creation. The wild, action-filled line is yet to come, and children are rarely to be found. It's the only Crosby strip I've seen, besides some of his WWI cartooning, to feature an all-adult cast. Children do figure into a couple of strips, as do dogs, and in a couple of strips, you can see shadows of the moppets to come, and the loose style that delineated them.

Since I've found a dearth of information on this strip, I'm fairly confident that this is the first public showing of Millie and Her Millions since 1916. It's a privilege to present this early creation of a comic master. Enjoy!