Stripper's Guide

Here's some very early C.E. Toles work from the July 28 1895 issue of the New York Herald. The Herald actually had a colour press by this time, but they often squandered it on non-comic material. The fools! 

The Toles gag cartoon is nothing to write home about, but the comic strip is a wonderful example of Toles' inventiveness, ably abetted by his incredible drawing ability. The third cartoon is by A.D. Rahn, who was unknown to me but a Google search shows that he did some very impressive work, mostly straight illustration.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 7:00 AM 2 comments

The comics have always been determined to have a presence in every section of the paper except for maybe the obits, and the TV listings seemed like easy pickings. The viewers of the glass teat offer up endless fodder and the listings in the heydays of TV accounted for acres of unattractive dull newsprint, so it seemed like a natural. Many features planted their flags in the TV listings section, but none really stood out as the winner of the genre. Bil Keane's Channel Chuckles probably had the most papers, but it was no juggernaut by any means. Today for your prime time viewing pleasure we offer an also-ran feature, TV Laffs by Cliff Rogerson. 

TV Laffs, which was also known under a slew of homophones such as TV Laughs, Tee Vee Laffs, Teevee Laffs, etc.*, debuted on July 1 1957** in a modest number of papers, distributed by Consolidated News Features. CNS was a small but long-standing player in the comics syndication game. There is precious little documentation of this syndicate, but the company was purchased by North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) in the 1930s, and thereafter the name apparently was used as just another imprint of that major syndicate. What I don't know is why certain features were assigned to that imprint as opposed to Bell Syndicate or Associated Newspapers, also owned by NANA. But I digress...

In 1960 the feature switched over to the McClure Syndicate imprint, which was also a NANA name by this time, and then in 1963 TV Laffs wore the brand of Bell-McClure Syndicate after those two divisions of NANA were consolidated.

For most of its life the TV Laffs panel offered one-off gags with no continuing characters. However, when United Feature took over Bell-McClure and therefore this feature, there must have been some meetings about the future direction of TV Laffs. As soon as the panel got its new syndicate badge, it changed to focus on a husband-wife team of snarky blob characters named Boobtoob and Cathode.The humour got a bit more slapstick, and newspapers seemed to respond positively for a while. But in the late 70s clients began to bail, perhaps because Rogerson's art was starting to look a little unpolished. United Feature seems to have dropped the feature in early 1980.

According to the E&P syndicate directories, something called Superior Features Syndicate tried to continue the panel from 1980-85, though finding examples is like fishing for trout in a goldfish bowl. Singer Communications, a constant E&P lister whose wares never seem to show up anywhere, offered a panel they called TV Laughs from 1983-1990, but they didn't offer a credit so I have no way to know if this is yet another attempt to sell Rogerson's feature or not. 

* Cliff Rogerson was on the staff of the Long Island newspaper Newsday, and when this panel ran there it ran under yet another name, Telly Laughs.

** Source: Buffalo News

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 7:00 AM 3 comments

In this year’s survey we lost one paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, not because the paper went out of business but because the information is not available online. But we did get two papers returning that were not available for the previous year, so this survey covers 256 papers.

In the Top 30 the biggest mover is Dilbert moving up 4 spots from 10 to 6. Baby Blues was the other big mover this year, moving up 2 spots from 27 to 25. Two strips moved into the Top 30. The first is the debut of Zits which debuted at the 22^nd position. Zits writer Jerry Scott became the second cartoonist to have two strips in the top 30 (the other is the Walker family with Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois). The other strip to enter the Top 30 is Jump Start at number 30. Three strips fell out of the Top 30 -- Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, Crankshaft and Rex Morgan. With Barney Google falling out the oldest strip in the Top 30 is now Blondie and with Rex Morgan falling out that leaves only one adventure or soap strip in the thirty, Mary Worth.

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

The surveys I did for Editor & Publisher were of the top 100 papers in the US, by circulation. There’s an important difference in the criteria for that poll compared to The 300 – 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.

This is the last year we can compare the Top 25 from both surveys. Out of the 25 top strips, 23 of them are on both surveys. The main difference is because we have added smaller circulation papers to this survey, and many of them were using the NEA package which included their two more successful strips, Born Loser and Frank and Ernest. The E&P list has Prince Valiant in the Top 25, proving that Prince Valiant is the most successful adventure strip of all time and the most successful Sunday only strip.

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 fewer 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. 

The universal comic strip had growth in some papers and a drop in others. As last year, the most universal comic section had the top 26 strips but this time it is not Colorado Springs Gazette but The Arizona Republic. Here is the breakdown:

Top 2 – 209 (Up 5)

Top 3 – 182 (Up 6)

Top 4 – 157 (Up 5)

Top 5 – 124 (Same)

Top 6 – 88 (Down 3)

Top 7 – 71 (Down 4)

Top 8 – 63 (Up 4)

Top 9 – 56 (Up 9)

Top 10 – 48 (Up 12)

Top 11 – 33 (Up 11)

Top 12 – 23 (Up 8)

Top 13 – 7 (Down 2)

Top 14 – 6 (Up 3)

Top 15 – 4 (Up 1)

Top 16 – 3 (Up 1)

Top 17 – 2 (Same)

Top 18 – 1 (Same)

Top 19 – 1 (Same)

Top 20 – 1 (Same)

Top 21 – 1 (Same)

Top 22 - 1 (Same)

Top 23 - 1 (Same)

Top 24 – 1 (Same)

Top 25 – 1 (Same)

Top 26 – 1 (Same)

The Average Number of Comic Strip per paper cracked 18 this year moving to an average of 18.03 from 17.59.

Here are the rest of the strips that made this year’s survey:

38 – Rose is Rose (+3)

37 – Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (-1), Crankshaft (0), Rex Morgan (0)

33 – Funky Winkerbean (0)

32 – Lockhorns (+2)

30 – Alley Oop (0), Luann (+4)

29 – Andy Capp (-5), Mutts (+6)

28 – Curtis (+2), Marvin (+1)

27 – Herman (R)

26 – Grizzwells (+1), In The Bleechers (-1)

25 – Real Life Adventures (+2)

22 – Pickles (+3), Rubes (-6)

21 – Geech (+1), Kit N Carlyle (-1)

20 – Bizarro (0), Eek and Meek (0)

19 – Gasoline Alley (-3), One Big Happy (+1)

18 – Judge Parker (-1), Robotman (+2)

17 – Tank McNamara (0)

16 – Heathcliff (-1), Overboard (-1)

15 – Adam (+1), Ernie (+2)

14 – Crabby Road (+5), Fred Basset (-1)

13 – Berry’s World (-5), Big Nate (+2), Drabble (0), Tiger (+1)

12 – Mark Trail (0), Nancy (-1), Stone Soup (0)

11 – Amazing Spider-Man (-1), Betty (0), Buckles (+1), Sylvia (-2)

10 – Ghost Story Club (-1), Middletons (+1), Mixed Media (-3), Mr. Boffo (-1), Speed Bump (0)

9 – Apartment 3-G (-1), Bound and Gagged (-1), Dave (-2), Dunigan’s People (+1), I Need Help (+1), Rhymes with Orange (-3)

8 – Dick Tracy (-1), Gil Thorp (0), Hocus-Focus (0), Sherman’s Lagoon (-1), Zippy (-1)

7 – Against The Grain (+1), Archie (-1), Brenda Starr (0), Buckets (-1), Duplex (-1), Herb & Jamaal (-2), Off The Mark (+1), Over The Hedge (-6), Tommy (-6)

6 – Citizen Dog (+2), Kuduz (-2), Momma (0), Ralph (-1), Thatch (-1), They’ll Do It Every Time (-1)

5 – Bliss (+4), Dr. Katz (R), Fusco Brothers (-2), Grin and Bear It (-1), Horrorscope (+1), 9 Chickweed Lane (+1), Safe Havens (0), That’s Jake (0), Tumbleweeds (0)

4 - Broom Hilda, Comic For Kids, Committed, Crock, Motley’s Crew, Us & Them, Willy N Ethel

3 - Ballard Street, Ben, Bottom Liners, Cornered, Donald Duck, Liberty Meadows, Love Is, Norm, On The Fastrack, Our Fascinating Earth, Redeye, Small Society, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Twins, Warped

2 - Animal Crackers, At The Zu, Beattie Blvd, Better Half, Between Friends, Chubb & Chauncey, Dinette Set, Fair Game, Feet of Clay, Frumpy The Clown, Ick, Meg, Mickey Mouse, New Breed, Out of Bounds, Quigmans, Reality Check, Rip Kirby, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Second Chances, Stitches, Too Much Coffee/Strange Brew, Tuttle, Two Toes, Word For Word

1 – Belvedere, Charlie, Flintstones, Good Life, Homespin, J.D. Comics, Laffbreak, Little Orphan Annie, Lumpy Gravy, Meatloaf Night With Brewster, Meet Mr. Lucky, Modesty Blaise, Pellets, Penmen, Playing Golf With Jack Nicklaus, Popcorn, Quality Time, Rural Rootz, Scrimmages, Sneed, Suburban Cowgirls, Swan Factory, Tarzan, Trudy, Tundra, Walnut Cove, Wild Life, Wit of The World

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 7:00 AM 0 comments

 For the third year in a row Dilbert is the biggest gainer with an increase of 28 papers.  Dilbert in these past three years has gained a whopping 129 papers. Other big gainers this year include both Baby Blues and Jump Start which each added 9 papers. Baby Blues has been going up since its debut, but  might have gotten a bigger push this year because of writer Jerry Scott’s new juggernaut strip Zits (see yesterday’s post). 

In the case of Jump Start it seems that newspaper editors have made this this their first choice for an African American strip -- which unfortunately is how for many the calculation works -- it is the rare paper that offers multiple strips featuring minorities. There were three daily African American strips available in general syndication in 1998: Jump Start, Herb & Jamaal and Curtis. 64 of our papers ran at least one of them, but only nine ran two, and one ran all three -- that was the Detroit Free Press. 

Here are the rest of the big gainers for this year:

Dilbert – 28
Baby Blues – 9
Jump Start – 9
Mutts - 6
Hi and Lois – 5
Marmaduke – 5
Crabby Road - 5

The biggest losers were a mix of  new and old strips again. The biggest loser with 14 papers is the panel strip Beattle Blvd. New strips Tommy and Over the Hedge both lost six papers and Andy Capp continued its downfall with 5 more papers dropping the strip. Here is the list of strips that had 5 or more lost papers this past year.

Beattle Blvd - 14
Rubes – 6
Over The Hedge – 6
Tommy - 6
Wizard of Id – 5
Andy Capp – 5
Berry’s World – 5

This year adventure strips lost 9 spots with almost half of them due to the cancellation of the second version of Terry and The Pirates. Soaps stayed even, as Mary Worth picked up a couple of clients while others lost a few.

Adventure (-9)
Alley Oop – 30 (0)
Phantom – 13 (+1)
Mark Trail – 12 (0)
Amazing Spider-Man – 11 (-1)
Ghost Story Club – 10 (-1)
Dick Tracy – 8 (-1)
Brenda Starr – 7 (0)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 3 (-1)
Mickey Mouse – 2 (0)
Rip Kirby – 2 (0)
Little Orphan Annie – 1 (-1)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Tarzan – 1 (0)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 0 (-1)
Terry and The Pirates (ended) – 0 (-4)

Soap (0)
Mary Worth – 44 (+2)
Rex Morgan – 37 (0)
Judge Parker – 18 (-1)
Apartment 3-G – 9 (-1)
Gil Thorp – 8 (0)

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 7:00 AM 0 comments

 For the year 1997 we have one crazy popular debut, and that strip is Zits, which has accomplished an amazing feat which has not happened in over 15 years -- it debuts with over 50 papers in our survey. The highest we’ve encountered in The 300 was in 1981 when The Muppets debuted with 70 papers. Zits did not quite reach that total, coming in at 60 papers. But this is sort of a Babe Ruth – Roger Maris situation, because in our 1981 survey we had at least 40 more papers. I imagine that if there was a level playing field Zits would have beat The Muppets.

Looking at the previous rookies that started out big in The 300, we can see that a big initial splash does not guarantee long-term success. Here is a list of all the rookies that started with 30 or more papers.

The Muppets (1981) – 70
Amazing Spider-Man (1977) – 50
Star Wars (1979) – 50
Shoe (1977) – 47
Winnie The Pooh (1978) – 46
Marvin (1982) – 39
For Better or For Worse (1979) – 38
Best Seller Showcase (1977) – 37
World Greatest Superheroes (1978) – 34
U.S Acres (1986) – 32
Pogo (1989) – 32

As of 1998, only Shoe and For Better or For Worse have more papers than they started with. Spider-Man and Marvin have less, and seven out of eleven of them have been cancelled.  Evidently, a big debut is more of a curse than a blessing.

The only other big debut of 1997 was not really a rookie, it was a returning strip. The comic panel Herman was last seen in the survey 5 years ago. In 1992 when Unger retired it, the feature had 52 papers in our survey. In a return that was billed as a mix of old and new material, it will only get 27 papers.

The remaining rookies did not make much of an impact in 1997. Here is the complete list:

Zits – 60
Herman – 27
Dr. Katz – 5
Liberty Meadows, Warped – 3
Fair Game, Feet of Clay, Meg, Stitches, Too Much Coffee*, Tuttle – 2
Homespin, Meatloaf Night with Brewster, Pellets, Scrimmages, Sneed – 1

* about to be retitled Strange Brew. 

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 7:00 AM 0 comments

Well, I looked around for a New Year's card to feature and came up dry -- they do exist, but they aren't plentiful -- so here's an alternative take to usher in the leap year of 2024. It was once a pseudo-custom that in leap years women were permitted to propose marriage to men. It wasn't a real thing, frankly, but more of a running cruel gag that leap years offered the less desireable ladies a chance to try to snag themselves a husband. 

The Samuel Gabriel & Sons Company offered a whole series of postcards commemorating leap year, titled the Leap Year Series 401, all featuring great cartoons by Dwig. None of my examples have a legible postmark, I'm afraid, but I'd lay a bet that they were issued in 1908, which is right in the middle of the gag postcard craze.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 7:00 AM 0 comments