Stripper's Guide

 

May 19 1910 -- Halley's Comet is now passing close to Earth, and some people are blaming it for all sorts of imagined effects.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

 

After stints at a number of papers in San Francisco and Chicago, including the Chicago Tribune, Pete Llanuza seems to have had a short stop-over at the Trib's sister paper, the New York Daily News. His only known cartoon series for them is the awkwardly titled Slang How It Looks, a small panel cartoon illustrating slang phrases taken literally. It only ran in the Sunday paper, and even then seems to have missed the occasional week. It ran from May 1 to July 10 1921.

If this was actually done while Llanuza was on staff at the Trib, it does not seem to have been used in the flagship paper.

Labels: Obscurities

 This year no papers that we surveyed went out of business or merged with another paper, but we still have some missing information on 5 papers making the total for this survey is 268.

In the Top 30 spots,  Calvin and Hobbes continued its climb moving one spot from number 5 to number 4 knocking Beetle Bailey down one spot to 5. This is the second time since we started this survey that Beetle Bailey has moved down one slot. Cathy had the biggest movement, up 3 spots from 15 to 12. This year no new strip entered the Top 30.

Title	Place	Movement	+/- Papers	Total Papers
Peanuts	1	Same	1	218
Blondie	2	Same	0	212
Garfield	3	Same	0	211
Calvin and Hobbes	4	Up 1	23	198
Beetle Bailey	5	Down 1	2	189
Far Side	6	Same	13	176
Hagar The Horrible	7	Same	7	167
Doonesbury	8	Same	1	149
Family Circus	9	Same	1	144
For Better or For Worse	10	Same	8	137
Wizard of Id	11	Same	-3	124
Cathy	12	Up 3	12	121
Shoe	13	Down 1	-2	114
B.C.	14	Down 1	-2	108
Frank and Ernest	15	Down 2	-3	107
Hi and Lois	15	Up 1	1	107
Born Loser	17	Same	3	95
Dennis the Menace	18	Same	-2	86
Andy Capp	19	Same	-4	69
Marmaduke	20	Same	-3	67
Herman	21	Up 1	-1	57
Mary Worth	21	Same	-2	57
Mother Goose and Grimm	23	Same	1	56
Ziggy	24	Up 1	2	55
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith	25	Down 1	-3	51
Sally Forth	26	Up 2	5	48
Rex Morgan	27	Down 1	-3	46
Marvin	28	Down 1	-2	43
Arlo and Janis	29	Same	0	41
Funky Winkerbean	30	Down 1	-1	40

 Again this year the Universal Comic Strip is getting stronger. The biggest movements are the top 4 to top 8 strips appearing in more papers. This year's Universal Comics winner is the Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswick, NJ) which ran the Top 16 strips.

Top 2 – 185 (Up 1)
Top 3 – 164 (Up 1)
Top 4 – 148 (Up 14)
Top 5 – 124 (Up 16)
Top 6 – 100 (Up 16)
Top 7 – 78 (Up 12)
Top 8 – 62 (Up 19)
Top 9 – 48 (Up 5)
Top 10 – 37 (Up 3)
Top 11 – 26 (0)
Top 12 – 21 (0)
Top 13 – 17 (0)
Top 14 – 15 (Up 10)
Top 15 – 12 (Up 7)
Top 15 – 1 (Down 4)

Here are the remaining strips that appeared in the Top 300 papers, ranked by newspaper count and noting increase/decrease:

39 – Gasoline Alley (0), Winthorp (-1)
36 – Fox Trot (+1)
35 – Alley Oop (-2)
33 – Heathcliff (+1), The Lockhorns (-1)
32 – Eek and Meek (-3), Grizzwells (+3), Tank McNamara (-4)
28 – Geech (0), Judge Parker (+1)
26 – Dick Tracy (+4), Rose is Rose (0), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (R)
23 – Berry’s World (-3), Kit N Carlyle (-2), Nancy (0)
22 – Snafu (-3)
21 – Crankshaft (0), In The Bleachers (-5), Robotman (+16)
19 – Curtis (-1), Pogo (-13)
18 – Amazing Spider-Man (0)
17 – Luann (-2)
16 – Apartment 3-G (-7), Phantom (+2), Tiger (-5), Tumbleweeds (-1)
15 – Broom Hilda (-1), Fred Basset (0), Mark Trail (0)
13 – Jump Start (+7), Kuduz (0), When I Was Short (R)
12 – Adam (+1), Archie (0), Drabble (0), Dunagin’s People (+2), Ernie (-6)
11 – Donald Duck (+1), Mr. Boffo (-2), Safe Havens (0), Willy N’ Ethel (+1)
10 – Bizarro (0), Brenda Starr (-1), Crock (0), Gil Thorp (0), Rubes (+4), Steve Roper and Mike Nomad (0)
9 – Hazel (0), Herb and Jamaal (+1), Mickey Mouse (+7)
8 – Baby Blues (R), Hocus-Focus (+1), Momma (0), Zippy (0)
7 – Batman (-8), Middletons (-2), Suburban Cowgirls (R), They’ll Do It Every Time (-1)
 

6 - Animal Crackers (-1), Fusco Brothers (+1), Horrorscope (R), Little Orphan Annie (-1), One Big Happy (+2), Phipps (-5), Redeye (-1), Sports Hall of Shame (+5), Sylvia (+1)
 

5 - Bent Offerings (0), Dilbert (+1), Duffy (+2), Francie (-1), Grin and Bear It (-1), Love Is (+1), Motley’s Crew (-1), New Breed (-2), Off The Leash (-1), On The Fastrack (-2), Overboard (R), That’s Jake (-1), Trudy (0), Word For Word (-3)

4 - Moose Miller, Rip Kirby, Small Society
3 - Agatha Crumm, Better Half, Catfish, Chubb & Chauncey, Counter Culture, Dillon, Heart of Juliet Jones, Long Overdue, Miss Peach, Our Fascinating Earth, Pickles, Play Better Golf With Jack Nicklaus, Ryatts, Smith Family, Stanley Family, What A Guy, Winnie Winkle

2 – Airwaves, Alex, Ben Wicks, Boner's Ark, Bringing Up Father, Flash Gordon, Flintstones, Good News Bad News, Graffiti, Ophelia & Jake, Pavlov, Phoebe’s Place, Popeye, Queen of the Universe, Quigmans, Sibling Revelry, Single Slices, Warp Factor, Wit of The World

1 – Belvedere, Dad’s-Eye-View, Defunitions, Family Business, Ferd’Nand, Henry, Jasper, Kaleb, Laff-A-Day, Laffbreak, Modesty Blaise, Moon Mullins, Normal, Outcasts, Out of Bounds, Pop’s Place, Potluck, Pot-Shots, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Sam and Silo, Stan Smith’s Tennis Class, Strahle’s Bailiwick, Tom and Jerry, Wild Life, Willie, Yecch Is

You may request Jeffrey Lindenblatt's complete list, in DOC format, of every paper that ran every feature mentioned in this set of posts. Just write to strippersuide@gmail.com and let me know what year(s) you want.

Labels: Paper Trends

You could call 1990 a throwback year, or say it continues  the status quo. First the status quo: Calvin and Hobbes continued its growth, adding 23 papers, making it the biggest winner of the year. Another big gainer was The Far Side with 13 added papers and Cathy with 12. With the end of NEA's Bugs Bunny strip on the last day in 1989, we also had a newer NEA strip, Robotman, gaining papers.
 

As for the throwbacks, in 1955 some King Features sitcoms strips abandoned the light continuituy format and became just gag a day strips. One of these strips was more of an adventure comedy strip and became a gag a day strip. In 1990 the strip decided to return to its root and became an adventure comedy strip again, though not every day. What they did was run a 3-to-4-week adventure story and then run a week of gag strips. This new format gained them 7 new papers that year. The strip was Mickey Mouse.

Here are the strips that gained 5 or more papers:

Calvin and Hobbes – 23
Robotman - 16
Far Side – 13
Cathy – 12
For Better or For Worse – 8
Hagar The Horrible – 7
Jump Start – 7
Mickey Mouse – 7
Sally Forth – 5
Sports Hall of Shame – 5

As in previous years the big rookies from last year followed that up with big losses the next year: Pogo with 13 and Batman with 8. Also, we have a big drop for a soap strip; Apartment 3-G lost 7 papers.

Here are the big losers this year:

Pogo – 13
Batman - 8
Apartment 3-G – 7
Ernie - 6
In The Bleachers – 5
Tiger – 5
Phipps – 5
Good News Bad News – 5

With the introduction of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the return of Mickey Mouse, the adventure strip category has its first gain in over 10 years with an 18.3 % gain from last year.


Alley Oop – 35 (-2)
Dick Tracy – 26 (4)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 26 (26)
Amazing Spider-Man – 18 (0)
Phantom – 16 (2)
Mark Trail – 15 (0)
Brenda Starr – 10 (-1)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 10 (0)
Mickey Mouse – 9 (9)
Batman – 7 (-8)
Little Orphan Annie – 6 (-1)
Rip Kirby – 4 (0)
Flash Gordon – 2 (0)
Popeye – 2 (0)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Secret Agent – 0
Tim Tyler’s Luck - 0

The soap strip category had a drop of 6.8% mainly because of papers dropping Apartment 3-G:

Mary Worth – 57 (-2)
Rex Morgan – 46 (-3)
Judge Parker – 28 (1)
Apartment 3-G – 16 (-7)
Gil Thorp – 10 (0)
Heart of Juliet Jones – 3 (0)
Winnie Winkle – 3 (0)

Labels: Paper Trends

 Last year Creators Syndicate premiered the new version of the comic strip Batman, piggybacking on the  successful movie series. That strip  debuted in second place in our rookie survey from last year. Well, this year Creators tried again and this time they did even better, giving the syndicate its first rookie win. The strip was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with 26 papers. This is also the first time since 1979 that a story strip was the top rookie strip --  the last was Star Wars.

Syndicates and newspapers think that these sorts of strips will bring in more kids to reading newspapers. With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles they upped the ante by encouraging reader participation; first having the Sundays and later Saturday daily strips displaying reader submitted drawings of their favorite Turtles. This may have helped the strip a little bit, but it only lasted for six years before going into reruns, which lasted at least another 5 years.

Coming in second with 13 papers is When I Was Short, by Michael Fry and Guy Vasilovich and syndicated by King Features. This strip would only last 2 years. Fry would have greater success with the strip Over the Hedge which will start 5 years later.

Creators also takes the third spot with Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman’s Baby Blues, which debuts with 8 papers.

Here are the rest of the rookies from this year:

Suburban Cowgirls – 7
Horrorscope – 6
Overboard – 5
Pickles – 3
The Stanley Family – 3
Airwaves – 2
Alex's – 2
Phoebe’s Place – 2
Queen of the Universe – 2
Warp Factor – 2
Wit of The World – 2
Dad’s-Eye-View, Family Business, Jasper, Normal, Potluck, Strahle’s Bailiwick, Wild Life – 1

Let’s take a look at the top five strips of 1991 that debuted in past decades:

Before 1950:

Blondie (1930) – 217
Mary Worth (1934) – 57
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (1919) - 51
Rex Morgan (1948) – 46
Gasoline Alley (1918) – 39

1950s:

Peanuts (1950) – 218
Beetle Bailey (1950) – 189
B.C. (1958) – 108
Hi and Lois (1954) - 107    
Dennis the Menace (1951) – 86

1960s:

Family Circus (1960) – 144
Wizard of Id (1964) – 124
Born Loser (1965) – 95    
Winthrop (1966) - 39
Eek and Meek (1965) – 32

1970s:

Garfield (1978) – 211
Far Side (1979) – 176
Hagar the Horrible (1973) – 167
Doonesbury (1970) – 149
For Better or For Worse (1979) - 137

1980s:

Calvin and Hobbes (1985) – 198
Mother Goose and Grimm (1984) - 56
Sally Forth (1982) – 48
Marvin (1982) – 43
Arlo and Janis (1985) - 41

Interesting that over thirty years later, only four of these top 5 features have ended (not counting those in reruns)!

Labels: Paper Trends

 

Here's another Out Our Way postcard published by the Standley-May concern. This one is coded Series 1 W524. 

Although I think I get A gag here, the one I'm reading depends on readers being familiar with the Buddhist/Hindu belief in reincarnation. That seems somehow less than likely, for the readers or the cowboys in the cartoon. So is that THE gag, or just one I misinterpreted?

Labels: Wish You Were Here