Certainly a good deal of the writing on Ella Cinders was tongue in cheek. The strip was a hit with the public almost immediately from it's launch in 1925. A feature length film was adapted from the strip in 1926 starring Colleen Moore (who was a very big star in her day) and a popular song about the character followed in 1927 (check around youtube for examples).
We've got a nice sampling of the strip here at Comic Book Plus including a run of the first twenty plus months of the strip.
Check 'em out.