Perhaps the best works created for children are the ones rife with layers discoverable later in life. That quality encourages intergenerational sharing. It makes the works enduring. Maybe, like me, you’ve read hundreds (or thousands!) of books and generally soaked up a lot of culture in the time since you last visited our spiky-haired boy […]
In 1963 syndicates and newspapers joined forces with cartoonist and comics historian Gordon Campbell to produce an exhibit of pages from Sunday color comic supplements.From the October 13, 1963 New York Sunday News:The show was free as was a tabloid history of comics handed out to visitors. The Phantom Fan has some background on the […]
Well it’s trending on the spots I check in on.In early 1962 Charles Schulz and United Feature Syndicate distributed to newspapers a Sunday format pseudo-Peanuts comic strip promoting the preeminent news source of the time. The promo ran in late January or early February on weekdays in black and white or on Sundays in the […]
Dale Messick and Floyd Norman are the comic artists inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame this year. Known as the “Grand Dame of the Funnies,” Dale Messick … for creating the popular adventure comic strip Brenda Starr, Reporter. Debuting in June of 1940, it was an immediate hit. Each week […]
Everybody remembers Garfield Minus Garfield, where Garfield was edited out of his own comic strip. Now there is a new Garfield meme where a Garfield comic strip is edited by replacing the last panel with one specific shot. As a longtime favorite in the Sunday funny pages, Jim Davis’ Garfield has long been the subject of […]
Robin Moore‘s book about The Green Berets in Vietnam was released in the Spring of 1965 and before that season was over it was hitting best seller lists. Before the years was over Robin Moore had written syndicated newspaper articles about the troops and Vietnam, the book would be issued in a mass market […]
Cartoonist and educator Lynda Barry is a favorite here at Open Culture. We’re always excited to share exercises from her books and intel on her classes at the University of Wisconsin, but nothing beats the warmth and humor of her live instruction… even when it’s delivered virtually. Last week, she took to Instagram to inform the fourteen lucky U of W students enrolled […]
If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of Chester Gould, and I have a number of Dick Tracy originals hanging on my wall. They bring inspiration and a smile to me every day. For my upcoming birthday, my son [Aaron Smith] created a ‘DETECTIVE GRAYSMITH’ comicstrip in the same Dick Tracy style! […]
© Grimmy Inc.The Comics are a visual media, words and images for the eye. But today a number of cartoonists used music to invade our brains. © Creators SyndicateHeathcliff (above) and Mother Goose and Grimm (top) give us a generic sense of sound.But others got more specific.Fittingly the British Andy Capp gave us Queen. © M.G.N. […]
What could be more nonsensical than a MAD parody of a non-existant TV western? How about a second MAD parody of that same non-existant TV show. Tom Richmond and Andrew Secunda take on “Bounty Law” again, this time it will be part of the bonuses in the new hardback novelization of “Once Upon a Time […]
Most comic sites upload the new strips around midnight – GoComics, Comics Kingdom, Arcamax, and the like all do it around that time (give or take depending on your time zone). But Creators Syndicate fairly recently began giving us the next day’s comics around 5pm Eastern (2pm Pacific).For example Tony Cochran references The Lone Ranger […]
From Reed Brennan: Attention ZITS Clients: Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman are taking a two-week vacation.The dailies for the weeks of September 13-18 and September 20-25, 2021, and the Sundays for September 26 and October 3, 2021, are reader favorites that have been personally selected by Jerry and Jim. Thank you, King Features Editorial Jerry […]
Conventional wisdom is that Gene Ahern switched from his Crazy Quilt comic strip to his Our Boarding House panel on September 16, 1921, but the earliest I can find it in a newspaper is September 17, 1921 so I’m celebrating today as the 100th anniversary of the feature.Below are the first three Our Boarding House […]
Once upon a time there was a lonely rich boy whose mother insisted on dragging him away from home to strange lands. Deprived of friends his own age and missing his father, the boy found solace in becoming a collector of all sorts of odds and ends, of coins and stamps, of beer steins and […]
Great Britain’s Royal Mail celebrates Batman and the Justice League on stamps to be issued Sept. 17. Royal Mail, in partnership with Warner Bros. Consumer Products, revealed the images for these 18 DC Comics stamps on Sept. 1. The designs for the stamps were specially commissioned for Royal Mail and illustrated by British comic book […]