Reader here! Throughout my lifetime, I’m a guy who would always make sure to check out the comic strips in the newspaper everyday.
If I had to pick my two all-time favourite comic strips, it’d be “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side.”
But there were others I always read, such as “For Better or For Worse” and “Garfield.”
What makes all of these strips unique, is that they each featured distinctive, easily identifiable artwork, and fun, interesting, or relatable stories, either told over several strips, like “Calvin and Hobbes” or FBOFW, or in the single panel format, such as “The Far Side.”
But over the years, there was another cartoonist, whose work I was a huge fan of, Alberta’s Dave Elston.
Back in the day, I was exposed to his hilarious sports cartoons in two papers – the Hockey News, and the odd issue of the Calgary Sun.
In one panel, he could find the silliness in the major sports stories of the day, and boil them down to their essence.
Theo Fleury was a favourite target of Elston, mainly due to his vertically-challenged nature. One classic cartoon in particular shows the Flames changing on the fly, with Tim Hunter and Colin Patterson simply hopping over the boards, while Fleury had to scale a ladder to do the same.
Another depicted the sheep from which Don Cherry got the wool for his suits… with plaid-patterned wool.
Lately, I’ve been talking about some of the great finds I’ve come across at thrift stores or garage sales.
Last week, I was at a local thrift store, and found a pair of Elston one-shots, nicely placed in a single frame, for less than 10 bucks, and when I saw it, I hummed and hawed, but decided to leave it be. Then the next day, I decided to go back and see if it was still there. It was, and I decided to take it home.
As a Rider fan, I loved these particular two cartoons, depicted the the “before” and “after” of the 1989 CFL West Final.
Going into the game, the then-Eskimos blitzed through the regular season with a 16-2 record, while the Green and White snuck into the playoffs with a 9-9 record. All the experts expected that Edmonton would pound the Riders into the turf on their way to a Grey Cup title.
Prior to the game, Elston came up with this…
However, the Roughriders shocked everyone (except Rider fans of course), by going on to beat the Eskies 32-21 at Commonwealth Stadium, to advance to the Grey Cup, where Saskatchewan went on to win just the second championship in team history, beating the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 43-40, in what many still consider the greatest Grey Cup game ever played.
After the Riders stunned Edmonton in the West Final, here’s what Elston came up with following that game…
Genius.
So, not only did I want to own that for myself, but when I looked closer, each panel was signed by the artist himself!
Once I saw that, I had to have it!
As I’ve said, Dave Elston is a cartoonist whose work made a big impact on me. He’s one of those guys to which the phrase “if you know, you know” certainly applies. To several generations of sports fans, especially hockey fans, a mention of his name is all you need, to bring a grin.
If you’re not familiar with him, here’s a little more background!
He’s had a few collections of his sports cartoons released in book form, and my brother Ward had a couple of them growing up. I’m going to have to keep an eye out to find copies of my own.
Once again, it pays to keep your eyes open when you go garage saling or hit the second-hand stores. You never know what you might find!
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