Stripper's Guide

 

Just when you thought you'd seen every possible gag played out in a comic strip, here comes Syd B. Griffin with one so outlandish, so weird, that I bet it is that rarest of birds, a unique gag never seen before or since. 

He Would Steal Eggs, or Willy the Human Omelette ran in the New York Journal comic section of May 9 1897.

Labels: One-Shot Wonders

... A native of Watertown, S. D., where his father was postmaster, he is a graduate of the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Chicago Art Institute where he studied illustration. He spent four years in the Marines in the Pacific from 1924 through 1928, and has worked as artist and layout man for the advertising department of the New Orleans Times-Picayune and for a department store in Norfolk, Va., switching later to the Virginia Electrical and Power Company as art director where he handled advertising brochures and newspaper advertisements. He then went to the Virginian Pilot and Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch, doing layouts, headings and signatures.

Ambitious to be a short story writer, he took a course at Wil­liam and Mary but he’s been too busy to get around to it seriously.

It was this urge to write, however, that was indirectly responsible for his drawing Superman. Intent on writing during his spare time, he would pour over Writers’ [Writer’s Digest] magazines in an attempt to learn a short-cut to success, and one day came across a “cartoonist wanted” advertisement. Boring answered the ad and contacted Jerry Siegel who had an idea to sell comics to a magazine. Siegel and his partner, Joe Shuster, had not yet dreamed up the Superman idea.

“I  think there was only one Comics Magazine on the market at that time in 1937 or 1938,” Boring muses. “And that was Action Comics.” [Superman appeared in Action Comics #1, June 1938.]

In his spare time, Boring began to put Siegel’s stories into picture strip form. The first one they tried was “Slam Bradley” who was an ordinary fellow, goodlooking and strong and with a resemblance to Superman, but who wore civilian clothes—no uniform. Two pages per month were sold to “Action Comics.” After that came “Spy” and one called “Radio Squad,” each story running about two pages each month. Two or three other ideas flopped. 

Then one day Siegel from his home in Cleveland sent Boring a story about a fellow called “Superman.”

“It was new and fresh as an idea then and it still is today,” Boring said, recalling Siegel’s enthusiasm for it.

But it was hardly received with enthusiasm by the syndicates. Siegel and Shuster had quite a time selling it in the beginning. It looked crazy, they were told. A man who flew would be laughed right out of the market. Besides, the artists would run out of material in a week, it was said.

Despite that, Siegel knew he had a good idea and took it to every syndicate at least three times. He finally sold a story to good old “Action Comics.” The results were electrifying. Kids began to ask for it by the thousands and circulation of the magazine jumped overnight, just how high no one seems to know. “Before long millions of kids were screaming for this big strong guy,” Boring recalls with a smile.

In 1940 [sic] Siegel took it to Mclure [sic] Newspaper Syndicate and Boring quit his job in Virginia and moved to Cleveland to draw the syndicated strip for “Superman” at the resounding salary of $50 per week. ...

Publication Enterprises Co. is in immediate need of contacting artists to work upon comic and cartoon strips. While at this time our greatest need is for artists to work upon illustration story strips, we would also be pleased to consider the work of cartoonists.

We work on a 50-50 basis, doing the continuity and selling ourself. Artists sending in samples of their work are asked to enclose envelope and return postage if they care to have their work returned.

Publication Enterprises Co., 

10622 Kimberly Avenue, 

Cleveland, Ohio. 

Jerome Siegel, President.

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

In this year’s survey we lost only one paper and again it is a newspaper publisher who had a morning and evening paper closing one of them. This time it was the Indianapolis News. So the total papers reviewed for this survey is 253 papers.

The biggest mover in the Top 30 was Baby Blues, which moved up 3 spots from 23 to 20. With the end of the original Peanuts, the most popular strip in the last 20 plus years falls to number 2 tying with the most popular previous strip Blondie. Garfield now has the number 1 spot all to itself and I don’t think we are going to have a challenger in the future.

Arlo and Janis re-enters the Top 30 while Mary Worth falls out of the Top 30. With Mary Worth falling out of the Top 30 this means that all Top 30 strips are either sitcoms or gag a day strips.

Title (253 Papers)	Rank	Rank Change	Papers +/-	Total Papers
Garfield	1	Same	0	223
Blondie	2	Up 1	1	210
Peanuts	2	Down 1	-13	210
For Better or For Worse	4	Same	1	205
Beetle Bailey	5	Same	2	184
Dilbert	6	Same	4	182
Family Circus	7	Same	7	164
Hagar The Horrible	8	Down 1	4	161
Cathy	9	Same	-4	145
Doonesbury	10	Same	-2	143
Fox Trot	11	Up 2	8	110
B.C.	12	Same	0	107
Hi and Lois	12	Down 1	-1	107
Frank and Ernest	14	Down 1	-2	100
Wizard of Id	15	Same	0	99
Zits	16	Up 1	16	97
Born Loser	17	Down 1	0	90
Dennis The Menace	18	Down 1	2	83
Shoe	19	Same	-4	72
Baby Blues	20	Up 3	10	68
Marmaduke	21	Same	1	64
Sally Forth	22	Down 2	-1	64
Mother Goose and Grimm	23	Down 1	-2	59
Non Sequitur	24	Same	0	54
Close To Home	25	Down 1	-3	51
Ziggy	26	Same	-3	50
Mallard Fillmore	27	Same	-3	48
Rose is Rose	27	Up 2	6	48
Jump Start	29	Down 1	4	47
Arlo and Janis	30	Returning	2	43

 

The average number of comic strips per paper went up to 18.41 from last year’s average of 18.18, a pretty big gain and perhaps helps to explain some of the strong debuts we saw.

On the Universal comic section there are big changes:

Top 2 – 190 (Down 19)
Top 3 – 173 (Down 9)
Top 4 – 153 (Down 4)
Top 5 – 124 (Same)
Top 6 – 101 (Up 13)
Top 7 – 87 (Up 16)
Top 8 – 70 (Up 7)
Top 9 – 57 (Up 1)
Top 10 – 44 (Down 4)
Top 11 – 23 (Down 10)
Top 12 – 14 (Down 9)
Top 13 – 11 (Up 4)
Top 14 – 4 (Down 2)
Top 15 – 4 (Same)
Top 16 – 4 (Up 1)
Top 17 – 1 (Down 1)
Top 18 – 1 (Same)
    

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

42 – Crankshaft (+5), Mary Worth (0)

39 – Luann (+7)

36 – Funky Winkerbean (+4)

35 – Herman (0), Rex Morgan (-2)

34 – Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (-2), Mutts (+1)

32 – Lockhorns (0)

30 – Alley Oop (+2), Pickles (+5)

28 – Curtis (0)

25 – Grizzwells (0), Kit N Carlyle (0)

23 – Boondocks (R)

22 – In The Bleachers (-2), Marvin (-2)

20 – Geech (-1)

19 – Eek and Meek (0), Judge Parker (0), Real Life Adventures (-4)

18 – One Big Happy (0), Robotman (0), Rubes (-7)

16 – Andy Capp (-9), Gasoline Alley (-1), Overboard (-1)

15 – Bizarro (-2), Crabby Road (-1), Sherman’s Lagoon (+3)

14 – Big Nate (0), Grand Avenue (R), Pluggers (+1)

13 – Adam (0), Betty (+1), Drabble (0), Get Fuzzy (R), Rugrats (-6), Stone Soup (-1), Tank McNarama (-3)

12 – Fred Basset (0), Heathcliff (+1), Mark Trail (0), Piranha Club (-2)

11 – Buckles (0), Phantom (0), Tiger (0)

10 – Berry’s World (0), Hocus-Focus (-1), Lola (R), Nancy (0), Speed Bump (0), Sylvia (0)

9 – Agnes (R), Dunagin’s People (-1), Middletons (0)

8 – Apartment 3-G (0), Gil Thorp (0), Herb and Jamaal (+2), Mr. Boffo (-2), Rhymes with Orange (+1), Zippy (0)

7 – Amazing Spider-Man (-2), Brenda Starr (0), Dick Tracy (-1), Duplex (0), Heart of the City (+5)

6 – Against The Grain (-1), Buckets (0), Committed (+1), I Need Help (-1), Off the Mark (-1), They’ll Do It Every Time (-1)

5 – Archie (0), Ben (0), Bound  & Gagged (-4), Citizen Dog (-1), Dinette Set (+2), Fusco Brothers (0), Grin and Bear It (0), Kuduz (-1), 9 Chickweed Lane (+1), Our Fascinating Earth (+1), Safe Havens (0), Strange Brew (+1), Tumbleweeds (0)

4 – Crock, Horrorscope, Mixed Media, Momma, Ralph, That’s Life, Twins

3 – Ballard Street, Comic For Kids, Cornered, Donald Duck, Liberty Meadows, Love Is, Reality Check, That’s Jake, Willy N Ethel

2 – Animal Crackers, Better Half, Between Friends, Bobo’s Progress, Broom Hilda, Chubb & Chauncey, Clarie & Webber, Fair Game, Meg!, Mickey Mouse, New Breed, Norm, On The Fastrack, Over The Hedge, Quigmans, Redeye, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Second Chances, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Tarzan, Warped

1 – Best Years, Big Picture, Bottom Liners, Cats With Hands, Do Not Distrub, Ffram.com, Flight Deck, Good Life, Graffiti, Laffbreak, Little Orphan Annie, Loose Parts, Mandrake The Magician, Meehan Streak, Meet Mr. Lucky, Modesty Blaise, Nest Hands, Offline, Out of Bounds, Pooch Café, Raising Hector, Top Secret, Trudy, Tundra, Tuttle, Two Toes, Zorro

Labels: Paper Trends

The biggest gainer in 2000 was cartoonist Jerry Scott who had a one-two punch with a combined total of 26 papers added. Zits gained the most with 16 papers and Baby Blues, which gained 10 papers was the #2 gainer. Another big gainer was Fox Trot with 8 papers and Luann with 7 papers. Here is the list of all the strips that gained at least 5 papers during the past year.

Zits – 16
Baby Blues - 10
Fox Trot - 8
Family Circus – 7
Luann - 7
Rose is Rose – 6
Crankshaft – 5
Pickles – 5
Heart of The City - 5

The biggest losers did not happen until the first Monday of 2000. That is when the most successful strip of the second half of the 20th century, Peanuts, came to an end. Well, it did not really come to an end but went into reruns  In what was then a rare move, instead of ending the strip the syndicate started offering reprints from the year 1974. After that client papers had two options; they could run the older strips that were 4 panels long or the newer strips that were at most 3 panels long. Not all the current clients wanted reruns so 13 papers decided to drop the strip. But the vast majority signed on – that 13 paper drop represents only about 6% of Peanuts clients. And once syndicates realized that newspapers and readers would accept reruns, the practice started to flourish – a big blow to young cartoonists hoping to crack newspaper syndication.

Another big loser again was Andy Capp with a loss of 9 papers. Here is the complete list of strips that lost 5 or more papers.

Peanuts – 13
Andy Capp - 9
Rubes – 7
Rugrats – 6

On the story strip front the adventure strips and soap strips lost only 2 spots this year. This year we had the debut of the last pure adventure strip Zorro which only got 1 paper. Ten years from now we will have the debut of another adventure strip, Rip Haywire, but that falls in the category of comic adventure like Alley Oop.

Adventure (-2)
Alley Oop – 30 (+2)
Mark Trail – 12 (0)
Phantom – 11 (0)
Amazing Spider-Man – 7 (-2)
Brenda Starr – 7 (0)
Dick Tracy – 7 (-1)
Mickey Mouse – 2 (0)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 2 (0)
Tarzan – 2 (+1)
Little Orphan Annie – 1 (0)
Mandrake The Magician – 1 (-1)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Zorro – 1 (+1)

Ended
Rip Kirby – 2


Soaps (-2)
Mary Worth – 42 (0)
Rex Morgan – 35 (-2)
Judge Parker – 19 (0)
Apartment 3-G – 8 (0)
Gil Thorp – 8 (0)

Labels: Paper Trends

How times have changed in a decade. Back in the late 1980s we had the beginning of the influx of strips that feature African American characters in leading roles.  Those strips were Curtis, Jump Start and Herb and Jamaal. The best any of these strips could muster was 8 client papers in their rookie years. Now in 1999 we have the introduction of the ‘black’ strip Boondocks by Aaron McGruder debuting with 23 papers to become the Top Rookie strip for 1999.  The Boondocks had already been in print for two years in the monthly hip hop magazine The Source, so it already had a bit of a track record. This is yet another attempt by feature editors to get a young and hip audience to read the daily newspaper.
 

There were more strong debuts this year from all of the top five rookies. Our top five represent an impressive 69 spots going to new features. Here are all the rest of the rookies:

Grand Avenue – 14
Get Fuzzy – 13
Lola - 10
Agnes – 9
That’s Life – 4
Bobo’s Progress – 2
Big Picture, Cats With Hands, Do Not Disturb (local), Ffarm.com, Flight Deck, Meehan Streak, Pooch Café (debuted in the first week of 2000 so not technically a rookie yet), Raising Hector (ditto), Top Secrets (local), Zorro – 1

Labels: Paper Trends

 

Here's another entry from the 'Li'l Arsonist' series of cards, given away free with Hearst papers in 1906. This one features Happy Hooligan and Montmorency in the big reveal. Don't know the details of the ignition properties of these cards, but the user who put the torch to this one managed to get the image of the two stars to appear on the back side of the card as well!

Labels: Wish You Were Here