The Simpsons Comic Strip Cavalcade (and a side of MUTTS)
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The Simpsons first appeared on TV in 1987 and a few years later became a long-running (still-running) weekly animated sit-com. As was the custom in the 1990s popular cartoon shows became fodder for syndicates to develop them as newspaper comic strips – think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Rugrats). By 1999 was so popular King Features Universal Press Syndicate and Matt Groening and Bongo Comics’ Bill Morrison got together and created a newspaper comic starring the characters.
The rotating crew of cartoonists were rounded up from the Bongo Comics comic books with no continuing creators except at the very beginning and the very end which prompted Allan Holtz to remark that “those who took an interest in such things quickly came to see that the writers, pencillers and inkers (most of whom also worked on the comic book series) changed practically every week. While the quality control of the art was high — I never noticed a single panel with off-model characters — the writing has to be considered less than stellar.”
Among the cartooning names that ring a bell with me are Tim Harkins, Stephanie Gladden, Phil Ortiz, Bill Morrison, Dave McKean, Barry Dutter, Gail Simone, John Costanza, and Dan DeCarlo. The last five months were scripted by Patric M. Verrone and drawn by Jason Ho & Mike Rote. As far as I know the entire run was edited by Bill Morrison, the editor of The Simpsons Bongo comic books at the time.
The aforementioned Allan Holtz has a complete list of the host of comics people that contributed to the strip. The strip itself ran from September 5, 1999 – August 27, 2000 in U.S. newspapers at a strange two-thirds page size. It ran reruns for another five months after that last August 2000 edition.
And then, after taking a year off and rethinking the concept, returned with a reconfigured comic strip (a regular third or half-page format) on January 13, 2002.
This re-imagined Simpsons comic strip ran in U.S. newspapers for two years, until December 28, 2003.
It always struck as a little strange that as popular as they are that the comic strip was never collected in a book (there were rumors that it was being undertaken in 2004 or 5, but that never materialized). Now Abrams Comic Art is issuing a hardcover with the title from that long ago rumored collection: The Simpsons Comic Strip Cavalcade.
The description includes the running dates including the (again) rumored short run in England:
Originally syndicated by Bongo Comics via King Features from 1999 to 2004, 126 of these full-color comic strips are being collected for the first time. The Simpsons newspaper strips were written by notable creators from the world of comics, young adult fiction, and television, and illustrated by classic comics artists. Topics range from Simpson family adventures, history lessons, how-tos, pop culture, and Springfield retellings of classic nursery rhymes. Now, for the first time, readers can finally enjoy the complete run of the Simpsons Sunday funnies—and they won’t even get ink on their hands!
I don’t know how they are fitting “the complete run” of 155 U.S. strips from 1999-2002 in a 144 page book. We’ll see.
Full color, 144 pages, 12″ x 9″ and scheduled for October 6, 2026.
Post Script:
Also from Abrams Comic Art and also due in October is MUTTS Sunday Funnies volumes 1 and 2.
Sunday Funnies is the first-ever collection of the Sunday MUTTS comic strip that are complete, in color, and reprinted one per page and in chronological order. Included are all of the full-color title panels (which many newspapers drop for space constraints), along with a “Title Panel Tribute Guide” by McDonnell at the back of each volume, in which he shares his sources of inspiration for the first time.
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