Some Comic Strip Stuff
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Flash Gordon and Dale Arden re-imagined, Tom the Dancing Bug re-imagines Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts; Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem debuts in 1937; also: Sunnyboy Sam from 1937; comic strips from the Museum of Modern Art; Frazz in reruns explained; a couple changes from GoComics; and some Vintage changes at Comics Kingdom.
Who’s Who
Remember that week in late April just past when Flash Gordon and Dale Arden switched bodies?
Well the Flash Gordon: The Girl from Infinity Vol. 1 comic book by Marguerite Bennett and Bev Johnson puts a different twist on that as Flash and Dale remain in their own bodies but their roles are reversed as Arden is the male and Gordon is the female hero.
Re-Imagining Comic Strips
While I enjoy most of Ruben Bolling’s Tom the Dancing Bug comic strips my favorites are his Calvin and Hobbes spoofs starring Donald and John and his Q-Nuts satire re-imagining the Peanuts crew.
Last month we got a Donald and John entry and today we get a hilarious Q-Nuts page.
This Day in Comic Strip History
Jerry Mitchell at Mississippi Today notes that it was on this day in 1937 that:
Jackie Ormes became the first known Black cartoonist whose work was read coast to coast through the major black publication, the Pittsburgh Courier.
Her cartoon told the story of Torchy Brown, a Mississippi teenager who sang and danced her way from Mississippi to New York City, mirroring the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans trekked from the South to the North, Midwest and West.
Since they don’t show the Torchy Brown – “Dixie to Harlem” by Zelda Jackson (Jackie) Ormes along with the added bonus of Sunnyboy Sam by Wilbert L. Holloway from the March 1, 1937 Pittsburg Courier
But is it art?
In 2019, when the first installment of Drawn to MoMA appeared on Magazine, the concept was simple: We asked our favorite comics artists, cartoonists, and illustrators to create a story about what a visit to MoMA might look like. In the ensuing six years, it became something we didn’t anticipate. We’ve published science fiction about speculative futures, stories about the lives of artists both real and fictional, meditations on breakups and dating, even a graphic diary about what it felt like to live in Ukraine in the lead-up to full-scale war. In short, Drawn to MoMA has become a series about how art helps us make sense of our lives.
MoMA presents a collection of their Drawn to MoMA comic strips between hardcovers. Their promotional story features selected samples by November Garcia, Ali Fitzgerald, Roz Chast, Walter Scott, Patrick Keck, and Weng Pixin, while their order the book page has a few more samples. Drawn to MoMA: Comics Inspired by Modern Art is edited by Alex Halberstadt and Arlette Hernandez.
Rerun Status Extended
Frazz is going into a longer-than-expected rerun time period. Cartoonist Jef Mallett explains:
And here it is: The beginning of a couple weeks of reruns. It was supposed to be just one week of reruns, starting next week. It was supposed to be a vacation week while my wife and I checked out the Grand Canyon. But it starts this week to cover the cartoons I didn’t do while I was awaiting and then recovering from surgery to put my leg back together after I landed just wrong on a pothole. Never did make it to the Grand Canyon. The great big huge hole in the ground got canceled out by a comparatively microscopic hole in the ground.
A couple minor GoComics changes
It may be a one time occurrence but I would love if the staff at GoComics would include the original appearance data on all their “classic” comics – Peanuts Begins, Skippy, The Academia Waltz, Calvin and Hobbes, Stone Soup, and all the rest of the rerun strips. Probably way too labor intensive, but it’d be nice.
Also: Andrews McMeel Syndication has added The Lockhorns en Español to their syndicated offerings.
A big change to Comics Kingdom
Comics Kingdom has added 16 “vintage” comic strips to their A-Z page. No, not 16 new comics, these are the vintage comics they were already running but only now listed on their All Comics page.
Those microscopic locks next to the Vintage comics mean they are only available to “Premium” subscribers. I don’t know if this premium-only thing is new or it has been this way since The Big Reboot 14 months ago. But those padlocks next to the vintage strips first appeared today.
What is new is that the “vintage” label it being pasted onto the current versions of the strips that have vintage counterparts. Check the upper right corner of these strips with a release date of today:
and these spots for the current run of the comic strips.
All I know is it messed up my viewing of “favorites.” Most of the actual vintage strips didn’t load today.
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