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Comic History Comic Strips

Short Subjects & Feature Funnies

Published: August 28, 2025 1 minute 5 comments
Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller – July 11, 1949 (or GoComics August 26, 2025)

Hat tip to Nancy and Ernie Bushmiller for today’s headline.

Hi and Lois by Brian and Greg Walker and Eric Reaves

So is Lois now just an ersatz Ed McMahon, a second banana to the rest of the Flagston family?

You youngsters can ask the elders in your family about Ed and the all-knowing Carnac.

While you’re at it ask your grandparents what the movie experience shown in Nancy was about.

The Big Picture by Lennie Peterson – August 27, 2025

The Big Picture by Lennie Peterson was a syndicated newspaper comic strip from November 1999 to August 2004. In 2010 it began reruns on GoComics with occasional new material thrown into the mix. Now Lennie is announcing the return of The Big Picture to all-new status. (Truth be told it has been original material for all of August 2025.) We hope this is the first step for a return of The Big Picture to newspaper syndication.

Speaking of Calvin and Hobbes (see that August 2004 The Big Picture link)…

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson – August 28, 1995 (or GoComics August 25, 2025)

Doesn’t that Calvin and Hobbes from 30 years ago remind you of the infamous billionaires of today.

Also note the original date of the reprint. That means GoComics is in the last four months of Calvin and Hobbes’ original run and around the turning of 2025 to 2026 the reprints will begin anew with the first strips.

World’s Greatest Comics Quiz

cover detail from The World’s Greatest Comics Quiz

Okay, it’s not the world’s greatest comics quiz but Bob Scott asks if you can name all the guests:

Molly and the Bear by Bob Scott – August 27, 2025

Perhaps this Family Circus from 45 years ago by Bil Keane will prove more of a challenge.

The Family Circus by Bil Keane – June 1, 1980

Flash Gordon promo from 1934

The Tournaments of Mongo

Flash Gordon by Dan Schkade – August 25, 2025

Dan Schkade is returning Flash Gordon to one of the highlights of the original run – “The Tournaments of Mongo.” Less than a year since the Sunday comic began in January of 1934 writer Don Moore and artist Alex Raymond staged a battle royale from November 1934 to February 1935. The highlight of this episode is Alex Raymond giving up on the static nine grid arrangement and begins experimenting with panel sizes and layouts. Unfortunately by the end of the story Flash has become a full-page comic strip. This would be a cause for joy except that transformation brings with it a boring eight panel grid – wonderfully large Raymond panels of art, but the layout now is monotonously repetitive.

Flash Gordon by Don Moore and Alex Raymond – December 2, 1934

The Ominous Octopus posts Raymond’s The Tournaments of Mongo sequence in color in two parts:

November 25, 1934 – February 3, 1935 and December 28, 1934 – (the first half of) February 24, 1935.

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Comments 5

  1. I was able to name all but one of the characters in each of the first three sets (no idea on the “tomato soup can hat” next to Batman, #8 in Bob Scott’s group, and the guy after Tumbleweeds in Keane’s “kiddy” collection). Keane’s “older” set was much more difficult (and/or obscure); I could only name six of the fifteen. I’ve always liked H.T. Webster, so it was nice to see Caspar Milquetoast there.

    1. A quick Internet search revealed that the “soup can guy” is probably “Happy Hooligan”.

  2. How can anybody who loves and cares about comics not recognise Happy Hooligan. He was one of the first generation of great comics, an immortal and an archetype of the comics’ perpetual innocent loser. He was penned by Fred Opper, who was already a beloved cartoonist (in Puck magazine) before The Comics came into being, and then switched over to the new medium with Alphonse and Gaston, Maud (the irascible mule), and many others. But Happy was his most famous and most popular character, internationally as well as in the USA. Opper retired in his 60s because of fading eyesight, and when he died in 1937 he was feted in the US’s popular media.
    So there!

    1. Chacun a son gout. I love and care about the comics I grew up with, but I do not feel responsible to read and care about every artist from the early 20th century. Many of those ancient strips have not aged well; just as one example, the parental treatment that the Katzenjammer Kids were subjected to would now be called felony child abuse.

      1. you seem like a fun good natured loving person.

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