Those of us who enjoy the ancient and nearly-dead form of the newspaper comic strip know that the first successful regularly published strip was Bud Fisher’s Mutt & Jeff. It was enormously popular, running from 1907 through 1982, and reprints remain available each day online through various newspapers and through the gocomics.com service. Yes, it’s…
When Milton Caniff broke away from [[[Terry and the Pirates]]] to create (and own) [[[Steve Canyon]]], he began an odyssey that lasted from January 13, 1947 until his death and the strip faded with him on June 4, 1988. Along the way, he populated the strip with friends, family and enemies, bringing a serialized melodrama…
I had all but given up on newspaper comic strips in recent years. My favorites (Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Peanuts, etc.) had disappeared and every new innovative comic appeared online, not in the funny pages. Then a friend pointed me to Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson of the Washington Post. Like many…
After 29 years of For Better or For Worse, Lynn Johnston is ending her long-running newspaper comic strip… and then she’s starting it over again. Say what? In the same week that Nicholas Gurewitch announced that he’ll be moving Perry Bible Fellowship into semi-retirement, Johnston recently announced that she’ll be doing the same — albeit…
On July 16th, United Media (home to Peanuts and Garfield) will launch a new newspaper comic strip with the highly punny name Secret Asian Man. The creation of Tak Toyoshima, the strip tells the story of Osamu Takahashi, a struggling comic strip artist with a wife and son. Osamu – also known as Sam –…
Via Tom Spurgeon, The Tacoma Daily Index’s Todd Matthews examines the current state and status of political and editorial cartoonists, with an emphasis on the Washington state papers. Quotes like "The state of newspaper cartooning nationally is not a happy one" and "Political cartoonists are a dying breed" do not seem to bode well. Similarly,…
