Friday, January 27, 2023

 

Obscurity of the Day: Howie

 


Howie Schneider's claim to fame is the popular NEA comic strip Eek and Meek, which ran from 1965 to 2000. But Schneider made other attempts to get into the newspaper strip hall of fame, least successfully with the self-titled strip, Howie

United Feature Syndicate, the big brother of NEA, took the strip on despite finding very few clients, evidently feeling that the popularity might build over time. It didn't, but you have to give them points for giving it a try. Howie is a quasi-autobiographical daily only comic strip about a cartoonist interacting with family and friends, or just waxing philosophical. The strip was very well-drawn, using a more detailed, less cartoony version of Schneider's normal style. Theoretically the strip followed his life day by day (the strip was sometimes subtitled A Comic Journal), so not too surpringly it often portrayed him sitting at his drawing board trying to come up with ideas for his comic strip.

Perhaps newspaper editors couldn't see readers identifying with a cartoonist, or maybe they just saw it as a too-egocentric exercise. In any case, Schneider and UFS gave it a year to catch on, and it didn't. The strip began on November 12 1984 and ended on December 2 1985*.

* Source: United Feature Syndicate internal records

Labels:


Comments:
Big fan of Howie Schneider. Had no idea this strip existed (loved "Eek & Meek" and "Bimbo's Circus", tho). Art is definitely more detailed than his other work, but it's very much him.
 
He did a strip about pensioners after this, that was very well done as well. He remained as funny in his later life as he had always been, but his gags got deeper as well. A true giant. His early correspondence with his agent Toni Mendez at the Billy Ireland Museum. Lots if early efforts at selling cartoon features to magazines as well.

 
Post a Comment

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to
Posts [Atom]

View mobile version