Stripper's Guide

This is a half-page of gag panels from the McClure comics section of May 18 1902, and Herriman contributes only a single cartoon. From top left clockwise, we have two Mark Fenderson gags, an unsigned panel that I would guess to be another Fenderson production, then the Herriman, a Carl Anderson gag, and a final unsigned one that looks like it just might be Ed Carey, who had just started with McClure at this time.Also of some slight note on this gag panel collection is that the McClure colourist certainly wasted no thought on it -- those yellow daubs are thrown in practically at random.

Labels: Herriman One-Shots

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

In 1995 we lost 4 additional papers, three of them merging with other papers which included the Lincoln Star (August 4), Evening Sun (Baltimore, MD) (September 15) and Times-Advocate (Escondido, CA) (December 2). The fourth paper, the Vidette Messenger (Valparaiso, IN) is not archived past July 31, 1995. The paper itself would only last another four years before its demise. So, this survey is down to 255 papers.

As with last year’s survey when Far Side ended, a major upheaval has again happened in the daily paper. That was the end of Calvin and Hobbes, which in the last survey had 213 papers, the 3rd highest total of any feature. As mentioned in Winners and Losers yesterday, the strip that reaped the most of its clients was Dilbert, which added 69 papers. So it comes as no surprise that Dilbert enters the 100 paper club and tied in 11th place with B.C. Other big moves are Cathy moving up 3 places to number 7, Fox Trot also moving up 3 places to number 15. Blondie rising back to the number 3 spot and For Better or For Worse moving up 2 spots to number 4. Andy Capp continues its downward spin falling from #25 to 29. I’m betting it will fall off the Top 30 by next year’s survey.

It is notable that the top ten strips got no benefit from the end of Calvin & Hobbes -- they barely moved. That would seem to show that these features were either already appearing in most of the papers that ran Calvin, or that newspaper editors were almost unanimously looking to add newer, fresher features to their pages.

Also making it into the top 30 along with Dilbert are three additional features. Mallard Fillmore at #24, Non Sequitur at #25 and Baby Blues at #27.  The three strips that fell out this year are Funky Winkerbean, Crankshaft and Rex Morgan, which all failed to capture papers in the post-Calvin bonanza. With Rex Morgan falling out that leaves Mary Worth as the only continuity strip in the Top 30.

Another huge event comes this year -- Peanuts has been #1 on all these surveys for 18 years, but we now have a tie for first place. Garfield added one paper to its total and now is in a tie for the number 1 spot. Will Garfield take over the number 1 spot next year?

 E&P Survey vs. Stripper's Guide The 300 Survey

Now let's check in with a comparison of my two surveys for 1996; the current one and the one I did for Editor & Publisher back in the day; the E&P survey was of the top 100 papers in the US, by circulation. There’s an important difference in the criteria for the two polls – in the E&P survey strips got ranked with Sunday papers included; in other words if a given daily or Sunday paper ran Peanuts, that paper got counted. This allowed Sunday-only strips and strips with more popular Sundays than dailies, to get in the running. The 300 poll covers daily features only.

As with last year we can compare what I researched for Editor and Publisher in 1996. Most of the information turns out to be basically the same with a few minor changes in the Top 10, mostly due to skewing based on the popularity of Sunday versions. All the newer strips were moving up the chart in both surveys, and the same rookies had big debuts.

 Universal Comics Page

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.The Universal Comic Section is a measure of how many papers run the most popular strips. 

With the ending of Calvin and Hobbes the universal comic section had its biggest drop, with papers opting to try out newer features instead of just plugging in a member of the popular old guard. However,  we have one paper that uses the top 26 strips and that is the Colorado Springs Gazette. 

The average number of comic strips per paper moves up to 17.33, a small increase.

Top 2 – 204 (Up 2)
Top 3 – 174 (Down 10)
Top 4 – 149 (Down 12)
Top 5 – 122 (Down 7)
Top 6 – 92 (Down 12)
Top 7 – 76 (Down 3)
Top 8 – 58 (Down 2)
Top 9 – 46 (Down 3)
Top 10 – 30 (Down 12)
Top 11 – 23 (Down 4)
Top 12 – 12 (Down 12)
Top 13 – 10 (Up 1)
Top 14 – 2 (Down 4)
Top 15 – 1 (Down 1)
Top 16 – 1 (Down 1)
Top 17 – 1 (Same)
Top 18 – 1 (Up 1)
Top 19 – 1 (Up 1)
Top 20 – 1 (Up 1)
Top 21 – 1 (Up 1)
Top 22 – 1 (Up 1)
Top 23 – 1 (Up 1)
Top 24 – 1 (Up 1)
Top 25 – 1 (Up 1)
Top 26 – 1 (Up 1) 

Here are the number of papers per feature, the rest beyond the top thirty:

36 - Rex Morgan (-2)

35 – Crankshaft (-2)

34 - Funky Winkerbean (-3)

32 - Rose Is Rose (+5)

31 - Alley Oop (0), Lockhorns (-1)

28 – Marvin (-3), Rubes (-4)

27 – Curtis (+3), Jump Start (+3), Luann (0)

25 - Gasoline Alley (-1), Grizzwells (-1), In The Bleachers (+2), Real Life Adventures (0)

23 - Kit N' Carlyle (+1)

22 – Geech (-2), Tank McNamara (-2)

21 – Mutts (+13)

20 – Bizarro (0), Eek & Meek (-4), Judge Parker (-2)

19 - Berry's World (-5)

18 – Heathcliff (-3), One Big Happy (+10), Overboard (-2)

17 - Beattie Blvd. (-6), Farcus (-3)

16 – Ernie (-2), Over The Hedge (R), Robotman (-3)

15 - Fred Basset (+1), Mixed Media (-5), Nancy (0), Sylvia (0)

14 – Pickles (+3), Pluggers (0)

13 – Adam (-3), Amazing Spider-Man (-2), Drabble (+1), Tiger (+1)

12 - Mark Trail (0)

11 - Apartment 3-G (-3), Betty (+4), Big Nate (-7), Bound & Gagged (+4), Dave (0), Mr. Boffo (+4), Phantom (-1), Us & Them (R)

10 - Dick Tracy (0), Rhymes With Orange (R)

9 - Crabby Road (R), Dunagin’s People (-5), Herb and Jamaal (-2), Middletons (0), Speed Bump (+3), Zippy (+1)

8 - Brenda Starr (0), Buckets (-1), Chaos (-9), Gil Thorp (0), Hocus-Focus (+1), Kudzu (-1), Sherman’s Lagoon (+3), Stone Soup (R)

7 - Against The Grain (NR), Archie (0), Duplex (0), Fusco Brothers (-1), Ralph (R), Thatch (+1), They’ll Do It Every Time (0)

6 - Grin and Bear It (0), Momma (-1), Safe Havens (-2), Terry and The Pirates (R), Tumbleweeds (-3)

5 - Citizen Dog (R), Comic For Kids (+1), Committed (-1), Donald Duck (-1), Ghost Story Club (R), Horrorscope (-3), Motley’s Crew (0), That’s Jake (0)

4 - Broom Hilda, New Breed, 9 Chickweed Lane, Quigmans, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Willy ‘N Ethel

3 - Agatha Crumm, Ballard Street, Bent Offering, Crock, I Need Help, Mickey Mouse, Off The Mark, On The Fastrack, Rip Kirby, Wit of The World

2 - Animal Crackers, Better Half, Bottom Liners, Chubb & Chauncey, Culture Shock, Hazel, Little Orphan Annie, Love Is, Outcasts, Out of Bounds, Reality Check, Redeye, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Tundra, Two Toes, Walnut Cove, Winnie Winkle, Word for Word

1 - At The Zu, Belvedere, Bent Halos, Ben Wicks, Best Years, Between Friends, Don’t You Just, Family Business, Flintstones, Francie, Good Life, Graffiti, Ick, Lack of Focus, Laffbreak, Meet Mr. Lucky, Modesty Blaise, Moose Lake, Moose Miller, Our Fascinating Earth, Penmen, Pete & Clete, Playing Better Golf with Jack Nicklaus, Rural Rootz, Single Slices, Small Society, Sports Hall of Shame, Suburban Cowgirls, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tribune Toon, Trudy, Twins, What A Guy, Wild Life 

As always, if you would like the more detailed version of this list, which includes which papers run each feature, just email strippersguide@gmail.com, and do include which years of the detailed list you would like.

Labels: Paper Trends

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

 As mentioned in yesterday’s post, on December 31, 1995 Calvin and Hobbes ended its run. On the last survey Calvin appeared in 213 papers in our survey. This is the highest circulation for a strip we’ve seen come to an end. So which strips gained the most from Calvin ending? Well, the big winner is Dilbert by Scott Adams, which added a whopping 69 papers to its total. Other big winners were For Better or For Worse with 28 papers, Mallard Fillmore with 25 papers and Fox Trot with 21 papers.

Non Sequitur in 1995 started offering the strip in two formats, one as a regular daily comic strip and as a new daily panel version. In the process Non Sequitur added 13 papers. 15 papers either added the new panel format or decided to switch from the daily strip format to the single panel format. Mutts also gained 13 papers. Cathy and One Big Happy also gained 10 or more papers. Here is the breakdown of the strips that have gained 5 or more papers since last year.

Dilbert - 69
For Better or For Worse – 28
Mallard Fillmore - 25
Fox Trot – 21
Non Sequitur – 13
Mutts - 13
Cathy – 11
One Big Happy - 10
Baby Blues – 9
Rose Is Rose - 5

The losers of 1996 are generally new strips or long running panels. The biggest losers were the panel strip Chaos with a loss of 9 papers; the feature will end in a year. The next big loser was Big Nate, down by 7 papers; it had just gained 13 papers last year mainly because of the end of Winthrop. Here are the rest of the big losers for this year.

Chaos - 9
Big Nate - 7
Beattie Blvd. – 6
Walnut Cove – 6
Ziggy – 5
Berry’s World – 5
Mixed Media – 5
Dunagin’s People – 5
Ballard Street – 5

Adventure and Soap Strips
Soaps were down a big 9.1 percent from last year. With The Baltimore Evening Sun ending we have lost the last paper on this survey to run The Heart of Juliet Jones with about 5 years to go on that strip before it ended in 2000. Heart of Juliet Jones joins Secret Agent Corrigan and Tim Tyler’s Luck where we do not have an internet source (newspapers.com, Newspaper Archives, Genealogy Bank, Proquest and Google News) for this story strip in 1995. On The adventure strip front we have a rare increase of 2.8 percent. This is because of the debut of Terry and the Pirates and Ghost Story Club, which will surely set us up for a big drop next year. Notice in the list below they are the only adventure strips to post gains. Here is the breakdown:

Adventure (+3) (+2.8%)
Alley Oop – 31 (0)
Amazing Spider-Man – 13 (-2)
Mark Trail – 12 (0)
Phantom – 11 (-1)
Dick Tracy – 10 (0)
Brenda Starr – 8 (0)
Terry and The Pirates – 6 (+6)
Ghost Story Club – 5 (+5)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 4 (-2)
Mickey Mouse – 3 (-2)
Rip Kirby – 3 (+1)
Little Orphan Annie – 2 (-1)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 1 (-1)


Soap (-12) – (-9.1 %)
Mary Worth – 43 (-4)
Rex Morgan – 36 (-2)
Judge Parker – 20 (-2)
Apartment 3-G – 11 (-3)
Gil Thorp – 8 (0)
Winnie Winkle – 2 (0)
Heart of Juliet Jones – 0 (-1)

Let’s look at the Top 5 features of each decade as they stand in 1996.

Pre 1950
Blondie (1930) – 205
Mary Worth (1934/1940) – 43
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (1919) – 39    
Rex Morgan (1948) – 36
Alley Oop (1932) - 31

1950- 1959
Peanuts (1950) – 220
Beetle Bailey (1950) – 177
B.C. (1958) – 105
Hi and Lois (1954) – 101
Dennis The Menace (1951) - 80

1960-1969
Family Circus (1960) – 148
Wizard of Id (1964) – 106
Born Loser (1965) – 88
Andy Capp (1963) – 38
Eek and Meek (1965) - 20

1970 – 1979
Garfield (1978) – 220
For Better or For Worse (1979) – 197
Hagar The Horrible (1973) – 155
Cathy (1976) – 154
Doonesbury (1970) – 144

1980-89
Dilbert (1989) – 105
Fox Trot (1988) – 91
Mother Goose and Grimm (1984) – 60
Sally Forth (1982) – 57
Arlo and Janis (1985) - 37

1990 – 1996
Close To Home (1992) – 54
Mallard Fillmore (1993) – 49
Non Sequitur (1992) – 46
Baby Blues (1990) - 39    
Real Life Adventures (1991) – 25

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 5:29 AM 0 comments

 As with last year’s rookies we will be having a few strips that debut in the first week of 1996 because of the end of Calvin and Hobbies back on the last day of 1995. 

Our top rookie this year is Over The Hedge by Michael Fry and Thomas Lewis, which debuted in 16 papers. Coming in second place with 11 papers is  Us & Them by Wiley Miller and Susan Dewar. This was a strip that these two cartoonists did on alternating days. One day you would get the male perspective on a subject done by Miller and the next day you’d get the woman’s perspective by Dewar. Miller would leave the strip two years later to spend more time on his more successful strip Non Sequitur which was getting a boost this year by being offered as a panel as well as a strip. 

Coming in third is Rhymes with Orange by Hilary B. Price with 10 papers. Price was touted as the youngest cartoonist to ever get a national syndicated comic strip, but at age 25 she did not actually deserve that title – Ernie Bushmiller, for instance, was only 21 when he took over Fritzi Ritz. Aaron ("Adventures of Aaron") Warner was also syndicated starting in 1995 and was the same age as Price.

Other rookies that started with good numbers are Crabby Road with 9 papers and Stone Soup with 8. Also, we have a rarity – two new adventure strips began, both coming in with respectable numbers:  Terry and the Pirates with 6 and Ghost Story Club 5. Both of these strips would fail to hold client interest, though and have short lifves. Here is the complete list. 

Over The Hedge – 16
Us & Them – 11
Rhymes With Orange – 10
Crabby Road – 9 – Debuted in the first week of 1995, now an official Rookie.
Stone Soup – 8
Against The Grain – 7 – Debut in the first week of 1996
Ralph – 7 - Debuted in the first week of 1995, now an official Rookie.
Terry and the Pirates – 6
Citizen Dog – 5
Ghost Story Club – 5
I Need Help – 3 - Debut in the First week of 1996.
Culture Shock – 2
Reality Check – 2
At The Zu, Bent Halos, The Best Years (local feature), Don’t You Just, The Good Life, Ick, Penmen, Rural Rootz (local feature), Twins – 1

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 1 comments

In the modern era of newspaper comics a local strip, drawn for a particular newspaper, is very rarely run in the Sunday colour comics section. Why? Because the production of those sections is (for reasons I admittedly do not comprehend) usually farmed out to big companies like Eastern Color Printing and Greater Buffalo Press. When newspapers do that, I'm guessing, the logistics of having these companies insert custom material like a local strip is either costly or just impractical. (Anyone in the newspaper production biz care to weigh in on this?)

So in 1975, when the Arizona Star placed a historical epic strip titled The Old Pueblo on the cover of the Sunday comics section, that was a very unusual occurrence and one to be highly commended. The strip ran for 52 weekly installments, from January 5 to December 28, telling the history of Tucson from prehistoric times to the present. The creator was Johnny Bain, a Tucson history buff and cartoonist. 

Bain's strip unfortunately suffers from production problems, worst in the early episodes like those above. Colouring is a bit of a mess, and the art doesn't seem like it was quite production-ready. But credit to Bain and the Star, they stuck with it for the entire year's worth of strips, improving as they went along, and even issued the completed series in booklet form at its conclusion. 

Bain seems to have kept up his art career at least until the mid-80s when I lose track of him. However, as far as I know he never did another newspaper strip.

Labels: Obscurities

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

Here's our next Little Nemo card. If the anonymous artist who created this is playing true to the strip, this must be a scene from 1906 I think -- Dr. Pill's very patriotic colour scheme later was changed to a palette of muted blues. 

Can you find the source panel? Or is our anonymous artist coming up with his own scene?

Labels: Wish You Were Here

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