More Comic Strip Stuff
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We got Big Nate, Bazooka Joe, The Family Circus, Channel Chuckles, FurBabies, The Ducktown Weekly. The Comics Paper, B.C., New Adventures of Queen Victoria, and Doonesbury.
Missed it by two days.
Big Nate debuted in newspapers on January 6, 1991 and Lincoln Peirce celebrates at GoComics Blog by ignoring the original core cast, instead profiling a baker’s dozen of subsequent characters with their original appearances and and current status. Lincoln Peirce Dishes on “Big Nate’s” Supporting Cast.
So what are you reminded of when reading today’s Big Nate?
For me it was Bazooka Joe’s friend Mort.
The Longview News-Journal stopped including the Sunday Funnies this year.
Jo Lee Ferguson answers the question (or here) “Where did the Sunday comics go?”
Here’s what our owners, Carpenter Media Group, said about this:
“We would like to inform you of upcoming changes to our print publication beginning in January 2026. Due to decisions by our suppliers, printed Sunday color comics and weekly coupon inserts will no longer be available. However, Sunday color comics will continue to be offered in the e-Edition, as our partners have agreed to maintain the digital version.”
Carpenter Media bought the M. Roberts Media Group in December 2024.
As far as can be determined the daily comics page remains.
In the comments section of Wednesday’s The Family Circus the question was asked, “Why does that woman have a TV antenna on her head?” I was somewhat perplexed when no one answered the question.
Aunt Tenna was a recurring character in Bil Keane’s Channel Chuckles panel that ran, uh, checking Allan Holtz, 1954 to 1977.
Nancy Beiman reveals that her GoComics comic strip FurBabies will be collected in book form this Spring.
In the meantime, there is this book…
It came about by accident, just like the original FurBabies strip. Here’s how it happened…
2025 was [TellWell Press‘s] first time at the [Word on the Street] festival, and they had a contest: they would award a basic publishing package to the best entry. I filled out a little form describing what I wanted: a collection of my FurBabies comics from 2023 and 2024. I sent links to the GoComics Furbabies page and my own website.
I won the prize…
It is 204 pages long and there are 519 daily and Sunday strips. There are exactly four pages of text. I edited out 91 strips that I thought were either not in character or not as well drawn as later ones…
More comic strips in print.
William Schwartz reviews the comic “newspapers” The Ducktown Weekly and The Comics News for TCJ.
A new print newspaper, the Ducktown Weekly, headquartered in Washington state, is taking a bet on the idea that comics do not actually need to be timely
Thumbing through an issue of the Ducktown Weekly, I found the experience a surprisingly zen one. There’s something nice about being able to focus on these little newspaper extras without the distractions of devices or, for that matter, more generally depressing news. Maybe don’t take that as too much of a compliment though. Much of the stagnancy that affects regular newspapers still affects the Ducktown Weekly.
I can’t exactly pretend to be thrilled to see unkillable dinosaur strips like Garfield and Blondie syndicated in yet another location. Even the “edgier” comics like Pearls Before Swine and Brewster Rockit: Space Guy were edgy fifteen years ago when I saw them in Toons.
The layout is excellent regardless of what’s in it. A full week of syndicated strips like Dustin, Red & Rover and Big Nate are well-paced and displayed, broken up further by bird facts, Shakespeare quotes, and crossword puzzles.
Schwartz does note that The Ducktown Weekly has reduced the price from the prohibitively high initial cost.
Then there’s The Comics News from Santa Cruz…
The Comics News does have bigger comics, though, as well as more newsprint. Five big comics a page, arranged butterfly style. The real highlight though is the News of the Weird, a syndicated feature.
Whatever their subjective quality, there’s no denying that these comics just look and feel better in print. The whole format was designed with print in mind.
Also at The Comics Journal is Frank M. Young reviewing Mort Walker’s Beetle Bailey: 75 Years of Smiles.
Spoiler alert: He’s more taken with the first couple decades of Beetle than the latter ones.
Comic I Don’t Understand.
If there is a joke in yesterday’s B.C. I’m not getting it.
It says here that the New Adventures of Queen Victoria by Pab Sungenis will return Monday January 12.
It seems that it has been The Boston Globe’s habit for a long time to print the six panel version of the Sunday Doonesbury rather than the full nine panels. Dan Kennedy at Media Nation explains to those unaware of the vagaries of the Sunday Funnies that the newspaper isn’t deleting parts because of content.
Unexplained is why it is so hard to find the Sunday Doonesbury title panel online that same day.
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