Monday, July 26, 2021

 

News of Yore 1984: New Strip Dick and Jane Announced

 

Newspaper Readers Watching 'Dick and Jane' Run 

(from Editor and Publisher, March 24 1984)


 

 "Dick and Jane," a comic featuring the characters many American schoolchildren learned to read with, was introduced by the Register and Tribune Syndicate (RTS) earlier this month.

Charter newspapers for Chuck Roth's new strip include the Philadelphia Inquirer, Orlando Sentinel, Dallas Times Herald, Detroit News and Baltimore Evening Sun.

One Sunday episode reads, "See Dick eating a vanilla ice cream cone," "See Jane eating a chocolate ice cream cone," "See Sally eating a strawberry ice cream cone," then the dog Spot zooms by and swipes the ice cream from each of the three cones. The last panel states, "See Spot eating a Neapolitan ice cream cone."

"Even though the comic strip may be classified as adult-level humor, I have tried never to lose sight of the pure, simplistic approach," said Roth. "Actually, as the strip progressed, I felt like one of the kids! I guess emotionally there's still a child somewhere in all of us."

RTS president Dennis R. Allen found Roth after a more than seven-year search for the right  "Dick and Jane" cartoonist.

Roth is president and founder of the California-based Roth International. The design company works with over 200 firms worldwide under licensing contracts to apply Roth designs to products in more than 100 categories. Prior to that, he headed the Roth Greeting Card Company.

The cartoonist traces his artistic beginnings back to the third grade in Toronto, where he entered the Ontario Safety League poster contest and won second prize over thousands of other entrants. Roth later completed the art course at Central Technical School in Toronto, and, after moving to the U.S., attended the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles.


 Thanks to John Lund for sending the article. John, your email address is not working, my emails are bouncing back.

 

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Comments:
So... Scott Foresman (or whoever by then owned the no longer used "Dick & Jane" books and characters) officially licensed this strip?
 
Very simple and very cute!
 
Hello Allan-
I myself was once taught with the aid of Dick and Jane,and their baby sister Sally. Though the adventures on offer were so imperceptible as to border on Zen, all these years later, are still vividly recalled. Don't believe "Dick and Jane" were a copyrighted trade mark as you can't control common forenames. The once familiar early readers were discontinued as their teaching method (Sight-Say) was abandoned in favor of more pop-fashionable theories (phonics). The short-lived Dick and Jane strip came along years after their schoolastic inspirations vanished from kiddies' sight.
Denny Allen missed the mark many times in the last yearsof the R&T, and if memory serves, this was one of the titles that was often thrown back at him as an example of his poor judgement.
 
I have a collection of the entire run of "Dick And Jane" from newspaper clippings and photocopies, and actually remember every gag, even down to their original publication dates. I have scanned all of them on my computer before, but consider making newer and bigger scans. Even though the "Dick And Jane" comic strip is not quite as strong in my mind nowadays, it still very much plays a big influence in my tastes for humor and characters today. When I first read this comic strip back in 1984, that was when I first discovered that I adore cute characters. I also draw comics as a hobby, and have drawn mainly adult male characters for years. But I am currently in a cute and gentle - and toning down - phase and now enjoy drawing small children. I began doing such a comic strip series in 2020. An old comic strip series that I worked on for years is now taking a back seat to this new comic strip series.
 
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