Stripper's Guide

"Boots" Repeti is reported to have broken the world eating record (whatever that might be). He did so with an oddly timed mid-winter Thanksgiving dinner. At the Washington Navy Yard, Mr. Repeti sat down for a refreshing repast of the following:

9 pound roast turkey

1 quart cranberries

3 quarts sauerkraut

1 loaf bread

1/2 pint olive oil

1/2 gallon raw oysters

1 pint ketchup

12 stalks celery

2 gallons beer

4 glasses water

Isn't it amazing how far we've progressed in a hundred years? Isn't this pretty much the same list as the McDonald's Super-Size Meal #6? Well, with Mountain Dew instead of beer, of course.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Rock Island Youth Hunts Interesting Things to Sketch

Richard Steenburgh, youthful Rock Island artist who resides at 102 Sala apartments and who has been drawing, sketching and modeling ever since he has been old enough to hold a pencil in his hands, has just one ambition: sketching and illustrating. He thinks the essentials of cartoon and caricature are finding outstanding characteristics of a person and transcribing them on a piece of paper. “You don’t have to go far away to find interesting things to sketch,” he said. “There’s a life’s work right in the tri-city' area, and I find a lot of my material in Bettendorf.” Asked what he looks for when he begins a caricature of a person, he replied: “Outstanding facial differences, teeth, the way the hair is combed, the nose and the chin. Take a look at President Roosevelt, that chin of his calls attention of the cartoonist, and with Calvin Coolidge, it was his nose.”

… Fletcher’s mother is the former B. Elizabeth Pletscher of Burlington. An aunt, Mrs. Mary Lenhart, lives across the street at 2900 division. 

Fletcher became interested in art through the efforts of his mother, has done various kinds of art work for a number of years, and has been connected with comic strips for about 15 years. … 

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 6:00 AM 4 comments

In this survey we did not lose any papers over the last year, but out of the remaining 286 papers, the information for January 1984 was not available online for seven papers, making this survey coverage only 279 papers.

Starting with this year we are going to look at the development of what I call the Universal Comic Section. Over the past 80 years when you picked up a paper from another town or city in most cases you would read some of the strips that appeared in your local paper but mostly you would see strips that you have never seen before. By the 1980s, with the slow demise of newspapers beginning and less papers around to compete for features, more papers had the opportunity to buy strips that were not available to them before. This could lead to more variety from one paper to another, but instead, the editors of these papers would do the opposite and just pick the most popular strips. As this way of filling a comics page became more and more prevalent, you would now see many of the same comics in every paper. In future articles, we will keep a watch on this process. 

Let’s start this year by examining how many of the most popular strips appear in each paper. In our 1984 survey, out of the 279 papers 162 ran the top 2 strips. 141 ran the top 3 strips. 106 ran the top 4 strips. 63 ran the top 5 strips. 29 ran the top 6 strips. 18 ran the top 7 strips. 10 ran the top 8 strips. 8 ran the top 9 strips. 3 ran the top 10 & 11 strips. One paper, the Austin American Statesman, ran the top 14 strips. The Austin paper ran 27 strips in its paper, so over half were the most popular overall.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the Top 30 for 1984, Blondie joined the 200 paper club, making it the second strip do to this. B.C. and Hi and Lois gained enough papers to enter the 100 paper club. That now makes  10 strips that are in 100 papers or more. The powerhouse Walker family can now boast having two strips that appear in over 100 papers. Marvin, Berry’s World and Heathcliff entered the Top 30 while Amazing Spider-Man, Alley Oop, Dick Tracy and Eek and Meek fell out the top 30. (Last year we had 31 strips in the Top 30 because there was a tie at 30). Bloom County made a big move in the Top 30 going from 26 to 18 while Nancy had the biggest drop, from 22 to 29 – apparently Jerry Scott taking over was a signal to jump ship.

Here are the top 30 features:

And here are the rest of the rankings:

As always, if you would like the long form of The 300, a list of each paper that used each strip, send Allan Holtz an email with your request. He will send you a Word document with the data.

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

The strips that were gaining papers the year before are still moving up this year. Garfield gained the most again with 30 papers, followed by Bloom County with 22 additions and Family Circus with 19. Here are the top gainers.

Garfield – 30

Bloom County – 22

Family Circus – 19

Cathy – 11

For Better or For Worse – 9

Marvin – 9

Far Side – 8

Berry’s World – 7

Hagar the Horrible – 7

Shoe – 7

Beetle Bailey – 7

The losers this year were all old-timers, except for the top loser, The Muppets:

The Muppets – 13

Dick Tracy – 7

Andy Capp – 6

Archie – 6

Captain Easy – 6

Heart of Juliet Jones – 5

Phantom – 5

Winthrop – 5

 Adventures strips, like the previous years continue to lose papers consistently – not one gainer. With Latigo and Kerry Drake ending, freeing up a whopping 31 adventure strip spots, it appears that most or all of those spots went to non-adventure:

Alley Oop – 43 (-1)

Amazing Spider-Man – 41 (-4)

Dick Tracy – 37 (-7)

Buz Sawyer – 28 (-1)

Steve Canyon – 26 (-4)

Captain Easy – 22 (-6)

Mark Trail – 22 (0)

Phantom – 22 (-5)

Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 16 (-3)

Little Orphan Annie – 13 (0)

Brenda Starr – 11 (-1)

Rip Kirby – 10 (-2)

Joe Palooka – 8 (0)

Star Wars – 7 (-1)

Flash Gordon – 4 (0)

Lone Ranger – 3 (-1)

Mandrake the Magician – 2 (0)

Popeye – 2 (0)

Brick Bradford – 1 (0)

Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)

Secret Agent Corrigan – 1 (0)

Superman – 0 (-1)

Tim Tyler’s Luck – 0 (0)

Adventure strips that Ended:

Latigo – 18

Kerry Drake – 13

Star Trek – 3

Buck Rogers – 2

Sergeant Preston – 1

The total spots for adventures strips for 1983 was 320, way down from 392 last year. That is an 18.3 percent decline,  more than double the drop in the prior year.

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 2 comments

In past years we had many strips that debuted with a big client list in their first year, then  the client list dropped and the features get cancelled in a few years. Other strips have a less impressive debut, and over time gain papers to become highly successful strips. In 1983, on the other hand, we have no really impressive rookie debuts – the best is 18 papers by the strip Mister Men and Little Miss by Paul Sellers and Roger Hargreaves. This seemingly impressive debut owes a lot to it being an NEA replacement strip. This strip replaced Priscilla’s Pop, which in its last year on the survey had 39 papers. So less than half of the papers decided to replace Priscilla’s Pop with Mister Men and Little Miss. The strip would only last for four years.

 None of the rookie strips of 1983 would have a real impact in the comic section, in fact most of them would not survive past the end of the decade. Here is the list, with number of survey papers in which they ran. :

Mister Men and Little Miss – 18 (NEA Syndicate)

Fenton – 12 (Field Enterprises)

Captain Vincible – 10 (King Features)

Elwood – 8 (Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate)

Clout Street – 6 (Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate)

McGonigle of the Chronicle – 5 (Field Enterprises)

Bears In Love – 3 (Universal Press Syndicate)

 The rest of the new strips – Outtakes (2), Balderdash (1), Ernie’s World (1)*, Pig Newton (1), Rudy (1), Silent Partners (1), Speed Walker (1), Wilbur (1)*

 Top 5 Strips for 1984 that began in 1977-1983, with number of papers this year:

Garfield (1978) – 172

Shoe (1977) - 93

For Better or For Worse (1979) – 75

Bloom County (1980) – 66

Marvin (1982) – 48  

 * local strips

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Here's a later Walter Wellman postcard, from the linen era, this one probably circa 1930s. No manufacturer is credited, but there is numbering; this one is 230.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments