Again With The Comic Strips

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Research

Sunday Phantom artist and South Seas researcher Jeff Weigel tells us:

“Take note that this story will be dealing with real isolationist tribes in Papua New Guinea who deliberately avoid contact with the outside world. I’ve tried to convey their native garb as accurately as possible based on photos I found online.”

Sports Toons

WAFB Baton Rouge profiles sports cartoonist Tom Sylvest, Jr. and his decades of TigerToons.

“He loves his Tigers.

“He began sketching out his love and his frustrations years ago. Back in 1996, he started up TigerToons. But before even that, he was drawing and making people smile and laugh. He would draw up pictures and put them on his RV for people in the neighborhood or at the tailgate to enjoy. He would also send out sketches by fax machine.

“And that’s how TigerToons was born.”

Comic Strip Influencers

“By quietly changing the way people think about comics and art, some of the most important comic strips opened up incredible artistic possibilities. While strips like Peanuts are justly famous for the way they changed comics’ state of being, early strips like Krazy Kat and even contemporary behemoths like Garfield deserve credit for their influence, good and bad.”

While it may be hard to argue with the influence Dick Tracy, Peanuts, Pogo,andDoonesbury had on cartoonists that followed them. but the inclusion of Superman (comic books yes, comic strips no), Flash Gordon (five years after Buck Rogers), and Garfield (more on book compilations than comic strips) is not worthy of such a list. Where’s The Gumps the archtype of the entire pathos soap opera story strip or B.C. that popularized of the “intellectual” comic strip?

About those rerun comic strips

The discussion about reruns taking up space on the funny pages and the fact that many newspaper readers don’t realize that they are reruns, we get this letter from a Salisbury Post reader to bring back Dilbert:

“I’m so sick of the crap the Doonesbury strip spews almost on a weekly basis. How this is considered worthy of being in the comics is beyond me. In fact, very few of the comics are even the least bit funny. How about bringing back Dilbert? There’s more than enough TDS in the op ed pages.”

I wonder how many newspaper editors would sign up Dilbert if Scott Adams’ family would offer it.

The 300

Jeffrey Lindenblatt returns to The Stripper’s Guide with “Paper Trends: The 300 for 2008 — Rookies of 2007” which show us 3 comics that will be celebrating their 20th anniversaries next year.

Also Allan Holtz has grouped the entire 300 to date on one easy to access page! The full newspaper lists for each year of The 300 are now available right here on the website. Just click on The 300 on the menu bar.