Some Strip News, Some Strips Old
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Charles M. Schultz won it for Peanuts. Al Capp won it for L’l Abner. Gary Trudeau won it for Doonesbury.
It’s the Reuben Award.
The Oscar of the cartooning world.
And Gloucester’s Mark Parisi says that when he learned in a letter that he was one of six nominees named for it, “I thought they must have the wrong Mark.”
Joann Mackenzie for the Gloucester Daily Times talks to local cartoonist Mark Parisi (or here), nominated for the National Cartoonists Society’s 2024 Cartoonist of the Year aka The Reuben Award.
Now in its 38th year and distributed daily by United Press Syndicate [sic] to some 100 newspapers, “Off The Mark” [link added] has been described as “a world of scheming pets, evil computers, and talking plants that puts an ironic, absurd or just plain silly spin on everyday life.”
Jim Davis, creator of Garfield, has his Reuben but was in the news lately because of an anniversary:
On May 30, 1990, the world received a new Garfield comic strip. This isn’t a big deal. We’ve been getting daily Garfield comic strips since 1978. We got a new one today! But 35 years ago, a single Garfield comic strip became one of the most infamous in the franchise’s history because a lot of people thought it depicted the lazy cat’s owner drinking dog semen.
Zack Zwiezen for Kotaku reports on what Jim Davis claims is a misunderstanding.
I’m inclined to believe Davis, though it’s still wild to me that nobody involved with the Garfield strip pointed out to the creator how the comic could be misinterpreted. I also find it strange that Davis would assume…
Not quite as popular as Jim Davis’ Garfield is Joe Sutliff’s Dunderman.
From back in the day… the 1980s that is. A superhero parody comic strip.
Self-published, Joe gave me his last copy. I scanned it and will give the original to the Library of Congress.
But you can read it here at the Internet Archive.
Before we get too far away from the first day of this month.
Of course I had to look for examples and found A Dispensable List of Comic Book Lists entry.
Another Reuben Award-winning cartoonist and yet…
The Far Side was originally published in 1979 and ran through the mid-’90s. As most older readers know, a lot of comedic material from this period of time has not exactly aged well. Sometimes it’s because of negative depictions of marginalized groups, while other times it’s because social mores have changed. Comedy is a very ‘of the time’ genre and the truth is that a lot of material from this period simply hasn’t aged well, and even The Far Side isn’t immune.
Justin Epps at ScreenRant highlights some Gary Larson Far Side cartoons that wouldn’t pass muster these days.
But even The Far Side, for all the good humor it provided, would occasionally do something that’s a bit cringy to look back on. Native Americans, for example, are almost always depicted in an Old West, ‘cowboys and Indians’-style role.
Don Glut, Sheldon Mayer to Receive 2025 Bill Finger Award
Don Glut and Sheldon Mayer have been selected to receive the 2025 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was once again unanimous.
“As usual, the judges considered a long list of names, but these two jumped out at us,” Evanier remarked. “They’re two men who made important contributions to the comic book industry and artform and who haven’t received proper recognition and maybe not proper compensation.”
Neither of the men are are know for comic strip work – imagine a Don Glut and Jesse Santos Dr. Spektor strip! Or a Sugar and Spike daily newspaper comic by Sheldon Mayer. Well that last was a possibility.
Mayer did get to be the cartoonist of a syndicated comic back in his younger days. From July to October of 1937 he took over the Bobby Thatcher strip from George Storm. Mayer was employed by McClure Syndicate at the time and was given the opportunity to continue Bobby Thatcher after Storm quit it.
And how can we leave June 6 without a nod to Snoopy‘s adventures on the beaches of France.
Today marks the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the historic Normandy invasions that led to the end of World War II. In tribute, we share a week’s worth of Peanuts strips that Schulz created in 1994 for the 50th anniversary of the pivotal event.
The Charles M. Schulz Museum posts a six strip Peanuts sequence in honor of D-Day.
feature image from Off the Mark by Mark Parisi
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