Comic History Comic Strips

The Comic Strip Week That Was

Comic Strip News and Revues.

Now and Then

I seem to bringing up Caroline Cash’s Nancy on a regular basis since she took over the strip this year, but she keeps reminding me of Bushmiller‘s Nancy. Especially early Ernie endeavors:

Fritzi Ritz by Ernie Bushmiller – January 26, 1938

There was more Bushmilleresque Nancy from Cash Monday.

Speaking of synchronicity separated by decades. i read my Comics Kingdom feed first this morning which featured the below Apartment 3-G in the “vintage” section today.

Then in the GoComics feed was today’s Off the Mark:

History

Of course as we all know Goofy was not the character’s name at birth:

Mickey Mouse by De Maris, Gottfredson and Thwaites – October 9, 1933

It has been 46 years, two months, and 21 days since the debut so Screen Rant has decide to celebrate the publishing of the first The Far Side panel. Then proceeds to extol the wonder of the second The Far Side panel. From Ambrose Tardive (“the internet’s foremost authority on The Far Side”):

The first Far Side cartoon features a couple of crabs hanging out on the beach, watching as two human toddlers build a sandcastle nearby. In the caption, one crab comments how, “[humans are] quite strange during the larval phase.” What makes this a prototypical Far Side, and the perfect first panel? It all starts with its use of perspective.

That was Then…

25 years, 8 months, and 11 days after Andrew Pepoy introduced a new look for (Little Orphan) Annie

… the cartoonist, now more famous for Simone & Ajax, has announced a personal new look.

Say hello to Margeaux Pepoy.

Cartoony Things in This Week’s Funny Pages

Thursday seemed to be guest-star day in comics.

Flash Gordon and Mutt and Jeff in Slylock Fox, Ghost Rider in Palurdeano, and the original creators of Brevity, Rodd Perry and Guy Endore-Kaiser, are name-checked by successor Dan Thompson there. While Hi and Lois feature a budding caricaturist and Bizarro (is Wayno paying TDC for all this promotion?) has cartooning FAQs. All on Thursday.

New and Improved Archives and A New Character

The GoComics newsletter informs us of improved Garfield archives:

Garfield fans, your archives just got a glow-up! 

We dug through our files and restored more than 16 years of classic strips, from 1978 through the end of 1994. The old versions were small and had too-bright hues. The new ones are bigger and truer to the original colors, just as they were meant to be seen. Dive in!

Cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy on creating a new character, presumably for her Between Friends comic strip:

I’m trying to create a little girl character. I like the one on the top left because I think her face portrays a certain sensitivity and vulnerability. Not so sure about the hair though. I think it’s too fluffy and the feathery ends will probably be a pain to keep drawing…

Infinite

My biggest disappoint this week, proving it was a pretty good week, was Mason not adding a word balloon and a barely visible rectangle in that cave wall art making it a true infinity panel.

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Comments 3

  1. That improvement to the Garfield archives is of course only available to those who are willing to pay GoComics the weekly fee that was imposed when they relaunched the website. Since that relaunch also eliminated the dialog search feature that was so useful in the old website, I’ll pass.

  2. I notice the artist credit on Believe It Or Not keeps changing from DeJoy to Aquino… do we know why?

    1. I have been unable to find why the switching between artists (a >wild< guess would be they were given short notice and so split the duties to catch up - which wouldn't explain why they didn't continue with Graziano reruns a bit longer). I also haven't been able to find complete names for DeJoy or Aquino or their official status. My curiosity is further piqued by the cartoonists' Saturday to Friday runs of late rather than the Monday to Saturday runs usually associated with comic strip gigs.

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