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Opus and Hobbes
Modern newspaper comics are not very good. The demographics of print skew grey, so papers run legacy strips that started long ago – during the FDR era, in the case of Blondie, or Ike, in the case of Peanuts. Now and then a venerable strip is taken over by someone who yanks it into the 21st century; Mark Trail has new life, as does Nancy, revived with a slightly surreal aspect. Dick Tracy now has a self-conscious retro vibe.
But. Garfield plows the same furrow it has worked since the Carter years. Hi and Lois is frozen in post-war suburbia. Sometimes you see a single-panel comic added in the 90s when features editors were looking to shake things up with a Far Side-style comic whose “offbeat” tone might fit with the free-weeklies.
If newspaper comics seem rote today, well, thus it was always so. It’s always been a mix of sharp and plain, corny and witty. Strips have always hung on for decades past their expiration point, dragging the conventions of their era into foreign lands. Harold Teen, an account of Jazz Age flaming youth, ended during the Korean War. Maggie and Jiggs – aka Bringing up Father – started in the Wilson administration, and ended in the year 200. Major Hoople – aka Our Boarding House – started in the Harding era, and was still playing the same tropes in the days of Reagan.
I grew up reading Gasoline Alley out of habit, unaware that Frank King had turned a standard flivver-humor strip into something quite touching, with Sunday forays into design that treated the Sunday page as a single glorious canvas. It was just a standard feature by the time I came along. I had no idea how revolutionary Peanuts was at the start. I suppose we all accepted the comics in the paper at face value, noted the differing styles, and thought little about their history, the different eras they represented. We assumed they would always be there, every day, because why wouldn’t they?
It seemed impossible that Little Orphan Annie or Dick Tracy would stop. Why would they stop?
In my youthful adult years, there was the trifecta of quality: Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbes, and Bloom County. The first was your daily reminder of the superiority of your political opinions. The second was a brilliant, if misanthropic, interrogation of human nature. The third was a loud, smart, highly verbal, slightly messy assemblage of personalities we all recognized. We all wanted to be as good as Opus, and knew we were as slack as Steve Dallas. Doonesbury still exists as a Sunday feature for NPR-listening Boomers, with all of its pieties and smugness embedded in amber. Calvin and Bloom County are long gone, their creators yee-hawing into the sunset before they soured on the creations they loved.
But.
But.
Berke Breathed, the creator of Bloom County, has been turning out new work. There’s no fanfare, no newspaper stories about its return. He just slipped the new stuff out at irregular intervals: here you go. It hasn’t changed at all, stylistically, although it’s aware of the passage of time. It’s a delight to see.
I wouldn’t bring this up at all, except for this:
Opus finds Hobbes, and vows to reunite him with Calvin.
It’s a damned sweet thing. It’s all on the Twitter feed. Start here, and scroll up.
Published in General
We should also give a shout-out to the “girl comics”, the romance-oriented equivalent of daytime drama: Apartment 3-G, Brenda Starr with her girl pal “Hank”, the world’s least attractive lesbian; On Stage, with Mary Perkins; The Jackson Twins; Rex Morgan M.D., a handsome doctor looking for the right girl.
I’d glance at both Nancy and my horoscope, and read whichever one was shortest.
Growing up, I loved The Teenie Weenies. Make of that what you will.
What I make of that is that you grew up somewhere (or somewhen) other than where I grew up.
Somewhen. It originated in the Chicago Tribune in 1914 and ran until 1970, but I don’t remember it either.
Hmph. No mention of Prince Valiant so far.
Val should be about 84 by now, though in comic strip time he’s probably about 50. (Still in fighting shape, though.) He does have grandchildren. Well, one grandchild who is heir to Arthur’s throne (thanks to a bit of conveniently contrived parentage through her mother’s side).
It does appear that the days of the serialized comic strip are waning. Thanks to some wonderful reprint editions, I’ve been binging on Terry and the Pirates, Buck Rogers, Steve Canyon, Russ Manning-era Tarzan, the brief run of the Star Wars comic strip in the 80s (Russ Manning’s post-Tarzan gig, later taken over by Williamson and Goodwin), and of course Prince Valiant, which was the first thing my dad always turned to when the St. Paul Pioneer Press hit the paper box. I also remember following the adventures of Steve Roper and Mike Nomad (how I wish some publisher would start reprinting those), and of course The Amazing Spider-Man, which appears to be still in a daily run, though I haven’t read it since the 80s. But that Bermuda Triangle adventure where Peter Parker met Namor is burned into my memory.
First mention.
I don’t read the Free Press, but . . .
:: raises hand ::
So who do you think the mystery sorceress is?
Steve Roper was a magazine writer IIRC, sort of a strong jawed Robert Stack type. His occasional sidekick, Mike Nomad, was a truck driver and all-around tough guy, closer to a Clint Eastwood or George Peppard type. Gradually, Nomad’s adventures took over the strip, much as Kingfish Stevens took over TV’s Amos and Andy, or Dr. Zachary Smith took over Lost in Space.
Yeah, by the time I started reading the strip, Steve Roper made only the occasional appearance. It was pretty much the adventures of Mike Nomad at that point, frequently blurting out “Holy Toledo!” As I understand it, home town of creator Allen Saunders.
Among briefer-lived strips was Friday Foster, a turn-of-the-’70s Black photographer later featured in her own Blaxploitation film, and another female product of the late ’60s, a London model. That one was very well drawn, but I forget her name; it didn’t last long.
In denial, are we?
Luann did move on in time, and Luann’s brother Brad pining for Toni Daytona and finally winning her heart after saving her life – or at least saving her from serious injury – as they worked together, seems like a good example for today’s kids. One of many in that series.
I was never particularly fond of Prince Valiant.
Think of it as a 4400-page (and counting) novel with pictures.
Dick Tracy and Gasoline Alley I remember.
I remember it from when I was a kid. As Heinlein said, even the immortal Will had his off-days.
Li’l Abner?
It was one of my favorites. But Al Capp has been dead at least 30 years.
Li’l Abner didn’t run in the Tribune or the Joliet Herald News. It did in one of the papers my grandmother got in Ohio, as did Prince Valiant. Our Boarding House did run in the Tribune too.
Not sure. Maybe we will find more clues tomorrow!
Mr. Tweedy was the first post-modern comic. Whatever that means.
Never heard of them until I found this while cleaning out my parents’ house.
But everything now has a Wikipedia page…unless it’s politically incorrect.
I have all the Bloom County books, and most of C&H books. (And if anyone would like to buy them from me, let me know.) I never liked Doonesbury. At all. The thing is, BC was and is vaguely left-wing, but the characters are interesting and relatable, and the strip showed follies of the left as well. They weren’t cartoons, they were characters.
The stuff Breathed has put out recently has been a nice return to that world, and even occasionally touching. I’m not as thrilled about this mashup with C&H; I don’t know that he has the warrant to do this, and it seems just a shade off to me. It feels a little presumptuous. I admit I’m over-thinking this. And if he has the blessing and direction of Watterson, I’d be all on board.
I have 2 copies of that book. Both are in poor condition, and one is missing pages. If someone wants them and is in the Chicago area, just message me.
I don’t know what copyright issues might exist, but someone scanning all the pages and making them available online would seem like a service to humanity.
I think we have all of the C&H books. I’m not willing to sell any of them.
Tempting. But not worth getting shot.
Greater Chicago area, not Chicago.
The books are in poor enough condition that bookstores won’t take them, but I hope an impecunious collector might want them.
Project Gutenberg has two of those books. The Internet Archive has one. Very useful resources for old books.