Daily Comics

I grew up surrounded by daily comics. My dad had boxes full of Wizard of Id by Brant Parker and Johnny Hart, Beetle Bailey by Mort Walker, The Family Circus by Bill Keane, Dennis the Menace by Hank Ketcham, and Andy Capp by Reg Smythe, along with tons of other paperback collections. Of those, The Wizard of Id and Dennis the Menace hold up the best, but I still have a soft spot for the rest.

He also had some Peanuts books. Charles Schulz' strip was one that seemed to have transcended the medium. Beyond the daily strips and the animated specials, there was Peanuts merchandise everywhere when I was a kid. I had a friend who loved anything with Snoopy in his aviator gear. The luminous Mrs. V's mom got her a Peanuts lunchbox. There was even a Peanuts telephone. It was only as an adult that I learned how much the strip had drifted from a somewhat bleaker setup to what it became in the seventies with its emphasis on Snoopy.

the first Peanuts

At the same time, newspapers printed comics daily, and on Sundays there were whole comics sections, printed in glorious color. In my house, that meant the Staten Island Advance and the New York Daily News. Mostly, there were funny strips like the ones above, some soap opera strips such as Mary Worth, and a few lingering-on adventure strips like Brenda Starr and Steve Roper and Mike Nomad. I devoured those daily strips for decades. 

Daily humor strips tend to be three- and four-panel gag-a-day strips. Continuity, back then, except in the broadest sense, was not a thing. Characters had a shtick and stuck with it. Decades, and decades (and decades) later, most of these strips haven't changed very much. A lot of them weren't the work of a single artist, but a dedicated team of artists, draftsmen, and gag writers. Most of them slipped into irrelevance a long time ago, and it speaks well of later artists who knew when it was time to close up shop, no matter how successful they were.

My dad also had a large collection of magazine cartoon collections, including most of Charles Addams' books. There were also numerous books filled with ones from The New Yorker, Look Magazine, and assorted artists like Peter Arno and William Steig. These are a very different sort of beast and would require their own article. Suffice it to say, though, I grew up surrounded by cartoons, from the idiotic to the sublime.

William Steig's Small Fry: juvenile urban warfare

When I started college in 1984, I started buying my own collections. That was right in the midst of a daily comics renaissance. Bloom County and The Far Side started in 1980, and, for me, more importantly, Calvin and Hobbes debuted in 1985. I saw my first Far Side comic taped to the side of a cash register in Jim Hanley's Universe. Looking back on it some forty years later, I think it was up there as much because it was funny as because there was a guy who worked there who till this day greets people with "Howdy, howdy, howdy." Still, it made me laugh, and it still does. Walking a line between traditional and outrageousness (see the one with a daycare center built next door to a dingo ranch)

Calvin and Hobbes, though, was something else. For the uninitiated, the strip's conceit is a boy and his stuffed tiger have adventures. The boy, Calvin, is self-centered, reckless, and insanely imaginative. In his eyes, his tiger, Hobbes, isn't a stuffed toy, but a fully alive companion. Hobbes, is the realist of the pair, with a jaundiced view of humanity, seemingly justified by Calvin's actions.

the first Calvin and Hobbes, 11/18/85

As the strip went on, becoming increasingly popular, Calvin and Hobbes evolved into something wondrous. Inspired by classic newspaper strips like Little Nemo, the Sunday comics became elaborate and wilder than anything else. When the newspapers began reducing the space for comics, he refused to back down and let some papers drop the strip instead.  He also rejected almost any merchandising of his creation save a few calendars and a book for teachers. All those pissing Calvins you see on cars just made money for crooks.

There were tons of other widely syndicated and successful strips in the eighties and nineties. Some, like For Better or Worse, were humorous family dramas. Others, like the largely autobiographical Cathy, by Cathy Guisewite focused on the life and times of young professionals. I do not like Cathy, but I wasn't a young woman in the eighties. It had actually started in the mid-seventies, but really seemed to hit its stride in the eighties. The strip was huge and Guisewite was a guest on late night talk shows. 

There were tons of other strips, including FoxTrot, The Neighborhood, and Rose Is Rose, all of which I enjoyed. Even as newspapers started their death spiral, several new strips came on line in the nineties and aughts, three of which in particular I really like; Mutts by Patrick McDonnell, Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis and Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley. 

Earl, Mooch, Guard Dog, and Shtinky Puddin' (aka, Jules)

For the longest time, Mutts was my favorite comic strip. Largely, it's the lives and adventures of Jack  Russell terrier Earl and housecat Mooch and their owners and friends. It ranged from hilarious to poignant. The art is simple and clean, with McDonnell lavishing his Sunday strips with elaborate title blocks.  

I stopped reading it at some point because it just started spinning its wheels. Sweetly sentimental and
pleasingly drawn wheels, but still spinning wheels. Nonetheless, I think the first decade or so of Mutts remains one of the very best daily strips. I've sold off most of my cartoon books, but I've held onto all of my Mutts books. I've got all ten original annual books, several larger color collections, and, another gift, the over-sized The Art of Patrick McDonnell. The only cartoon art I've ever owned is a print my sister bought me as a present one year and the only characters I've ever had on a t-shirt are Earl and Mooch. When my first shirt wore out, the luminous Mrs. V went out of her way to find a replacement. I even have a set of PVC characters.

Even though the daily strip glory days are long over, two newer strips have caught my eye. The first is Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson. It premiered in 2004, but didn't attain national syndication until 2007. It's a brilliant strip, focused on 4-year Alice Otterloop and her 4-year old brother, Petey. Alice is wild and rambunctious, given to temper tantrums and bossiness as well as moments of kindness and understanding. Petey is afraid of almost everything and, ranked, the 14th pickiest eater in the world. With its focus on how the world is perceived by kids, even though it's very different in feel or style, Cul de Sac is the only comic that feels like a successor to Calvin and Hobbes. Sadly, it ended in 2012. Thompson was earlier diagnosed with Parkinson's and it led to his early death in 2017. The two complete collections of Cul de Sac belong on the same shelf as those early Mutts and Calvin and Hobbes.

The final newer strip I like is Wallace the Brave by Will Henry. It's not as original as either Calvin and Hobbes or Cul de Sac, but its elaborate and fanciful tales of kids adventures is both charming and funny. The fearless Wallace, his fretful best friend Spud, the criminally-minded Amelia, and the prodigy, Rose. It started in 2015, and hasn't shown much evidence of slowing down. 

I love comics. There are about half a dozen daily strips I still read each day, none of them in a newspaper, however. The comic syndicates have online sites carrying their strips to more people than newspapers do anymore. I go to Arcamax.com and GoComics.com. I think it was Berke Breathed of Bloom County who said something along the lines of, 'when I licensed my characters, it was like they drove a dump truck of money up to my house." I can't imagine anything like that happening anymore. Sadly. 

I say sadly, but it's the way of the world and popular culture. It's what happens; it changes. Always has and always will. Still, I'm glad to have grown up with daily comics and that I still have access to some of my favorites. In fact, many classic strips, like Popeye and Dennis the Menace, have been made available in hardcover collections. The medium may be fading, but the best of it is still out there, ready to be enjoyed.

Finally, there's a site called Comics Curmudgeon. The blogger roots thru the best and worst of the legacy comics and adding his own very funny observations on them. Over the years, he's managed to make awful soap strips like Mary Worth and Apartment 3-G hilarious as well as convince me that The Lockhorns is one of the most wonderfully miserable strips of all time.

The Lockhorns, annotated by Comics Curmudgeon