Comic Strip News and Reviews
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Comic Strip Roll Call: Dick Tracy, Molly and the Bear, Gil Thorp, Nancy, The Phantom, The New Adventures of Queen Vitoria, The Gumps, Mutt and Jeff, Gasoline Alley, Ignatz Mouse and Krazy Kat, Happy Hooligan, and The Yellow Kid in Hogan’s Alley.
With Matthew K. Manning and Howie Noel‘s six week turn as guest creators on the Dick Tracy comic strip coming to an end the writer, Manning, has revealed the clues leading up to solving the identity of The Mirror.
Bob Scott has in his Molly and the Bear strip for the past few days portrayed Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson as near destitute. I would guess that the royalties from the books, where Calvin and Hobbes consistently makes up a fifth of the Amazon Best Sellers in Comic Strips list, the GoComics rerun monies, and the foreign markets where Calvin and Hobbes still runs in newspapers keeps the Wattersons well above the poverty level.
Just a quick note for the record that from February 2-7(?), 2026 Louie Chin is filling for Rachel Merrill this week on Gil Thorp as Rachel finishes up some projects after returning from her honeymoon.
Caroline Cash is bringing in more Ernie Bushmiller tropes (here, here, here) into the Nancy comic strip than her predecessor ever did but not in the syrupy sweet way that Caroline’s predecessor’s predecessor did.
The Phantom writer Tony DePaul shares some thoughts (scroll down) as his and Jeff Weigel’s Sunday chronicle expansion of The Phantom’s origin story begins.
If you were marooned on a foreign shore, you’d try to get home, wouldn’t you? In Lee Falk’s day, our shipwrecked sailor never gave it a passing thought. He accepts his fate and settles in for life. He battles greed, cruelty, injustice, and passes the mantle to his son. So it goes, on down through the generations.
In the story Jeff’s drawing now, Kit’s determined to get home for just about the entirety of the tale. Along the way…
And Tony digresses into the state of the syndicated newspaper comic strip:
I can’t help but see it this way, given that the business model in syndicated newspaper comics remains newspaper-based even as newspapers go all but extinct. Yes, we’re published online (in newspaper format), but we’re mostly viewed online for free. The ruin of the newspaper business (a major part of it, anyway) was determined early on when the tech titans behind the internet got away with establishing the popular expectation that everything should be free: news, music, comics… It’s not like people actually work to bring us these things, is it?
By far, most of the people snarking on the website every day are free riders. Or so I gather by the fact there are almost no comments posted on the seven advance strips you get to see if you buy a paid subscription…
Did we mention that The New Adventures of Queen Victoria has returned after a five year absence with occasional (very occasional) appearances since February 2021? Yes we did.
Pab Sungenis has dropped his Queen Victoria into a multiverse one of which is populated by the original gang of comic strip characters. All public domain now. And you know me…
Which reminds us that in less than ten days Skeezix will celebrate his 105th “birth” day, making Walt…???
Too many like images for me to even attempt to find the sources for Ignatz Mouse and Krazy Kat. And I am disappointed Pab went with an animated shot of Happy Hooligan rather than a comic strip panel.
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