The end date for The Captain and the Kids, as cited in my book and elsewhere, is believed to be April 15 1979. The source for that is the distributor itself, United Feature Syndicate. While that may seem to be about as authoritative as you can get, I have found errors in their records before.
I just got an email from a Captain and the Kids fan who owns a piece of original art that seems to defy the UFS records. Here it is:
In case you can't read the date, it is May 13 1979, a month later than the supposed end date.
There is a possibility that UFS cancelled The Captain and the Kids while there was still art waiting in the pipeline. That can happen especially with cartoonists who work far ahead of deadline. I have no idea, though, if John Dirks was one of those people.
The other explanation, obviously, is that UFS has the end date wrong in their records. Unfortunately my own collection and online sources do not shed any light. The latest printed strip I or the owner of this art can find is this episode from March 3 1979:
So can you shed any light on the mystery of the Captain and the Kids end date? Do you have tearsheets in your own collection that go past April 15 1979, or have you found an online source for later episodes? If so, please do let us know!
Both "Captain and the Kids" and "Katzanjammer Kids" evidently lasted a long time; the Comics Kingdom site presently carries reruns of both.
ReplyDeleteAlways wondered how that situation persisted for so long. You'd think that one strip would outdraw and vanquish the other in the marketplace, or some lawyers would sit down and finally make a deal. Wikipedia sez both strips prospered.
Did they bump up against each in merchandising? Did any papers run both strips? Were there any further battles, legal or otherwise?
Hello Allen, DBenson,
ReplyDeleteThe Comics Kingdom site does NOT have any "Captain and the kids" on offer, they can't. C&TK is a United Features-owned property and trade mark, not to be found on a site owned and devoted to rival King Features Syndicate and their properties.
Here's a blog entry from the defunct "Ask The Archivist" blog I used to do there that explains the Katzenjammer/ Captain schism:
https://www.comicskingdom.com/trending/blog/2013/05/15/ask-the-archivist-katzentennial
Both strips existed in the same universe for many years, but they went into decline, the Katzenjammers quite a lot after the demise of HH Knerr in 1949,and 'Capatin' was a second level strip from the 1930s on, and really just gasped along from the 1950s on, and by the 70's, it would be pretty hard to find. The Katzenjammers are still syndicated today, but it's (at least by the time I left the syndicate) down to only a handful of papers in the world. Doubtful that both strips would ever have ran in the same paper, unless maybe they have a sunday comic section on Bongo Island.
Idiot mistake on my part. I just rechecked the website and what they have are a "current" and a "vintage" running simultaneously (the "current" for this and other retired titles being reruns less ancient that the "vintage").
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link!