on Freckles and His Friends. Cartoonist Edgar Martin joined the NEA in 1921 as a cartoonist. While working in NEA's art department, Martin experimented with several strips: Efficiency Ed, Fables of 1921, Taken from Life, and Girls. In 1924, NEA was looking for a "girl strip," and several artists who had previously submitted strips were asked to resubmit them. Martin's sample was unsigned. When an editor examined Martin's strip and asked, "How soon can we get this artist?", the art director responded, "In one minute. He works here." Thus, Girls became Boots and Her Buddies on February 18, 1924, although some newspapers continued to use the first title. NEA became a successful distributor of newspaper comics in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1921 Gene Ahern introduced the Nut Brothers, Ches and Wal, in the new strip Crazy Quilt. That same year, NEA General Manager Frank Rostock suggested to Ahern that he use a boarding house for a setting. Our Boarding House began September 16, 1921, scoring a huge success with readers after the January 1922 arrival of the fustian Major Hoople. The Nut Bros: Ches and Wal ran as a topper strip above Our Boarding House. Other long-running NEA strips that launched during the 1920s included Martin's Boots and Her Buddies, Roy Crane's Wash Tubbs, Ethel Hays' Flapper Fanny Says, and J. R. Williams' Out Our Way. Popular NEA strips that originated in the 1930s include V. T. Hamlin's Alley Oop, Crane's Captain Easy , and Stephen Slesinger & Fred Harman's Red Ryder. Bela Zaboly started at NEA as an office boy and eventually was a staff cartoonist. During the early 1930s he created the Sunday strip Otto Honk about moon-faced, dim-bulb Otto, who was variously employed as a private eye, movie stunt man and football player. Otto Honk lasted until 1936. Zaboly was an assistant to Roy Crane on Wash Tubbs. Cartoonist Herb Block ("Herblock") moved to Cleveland in 1933 to become a staff cartoonist for the NEA, which distributed his cartoons nationally. While there, he won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1942 for "British Plane". Dell Publishing's ongoing comic book series The Funnies (launched 1936) utilized a number of NEA strips to start out, including Alley Oop and Captain Easy. By 1936 Gene Ahern was making an annual $35,000 at NEA, and King Features Syndicate offered to double that figure. Ahern left NEA in March 1936 for King