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Comic strips

A New Panel and An Old Strip Added to GoComics

1 minute 6 comments

Since we have been tracking comics dropped from the GoComics site, it’s only fair we let people know when they add features. And two enjoyable features have recently been added.

Last week (February 22) a comic panel by a couple of high-profile cartoonists appeared.
Mannequin on the Moon is by Ian Boothby and Pia Guerra. A couple days after its addition GoComics interviewed the cartoonists about their careers and their collaborations.

What’s your style of collaboration and is it different than when you work alone? 

Ian:Pia and I are constantly joking and working on ideas. When one makes us both laugh, I scramble for a pen to write it down and she… doesn’t. Because her memory is much better than mine. When I’ve got about ten ideas, I’ll write them up, trimming the joke down as much as possible. Then I send them to Pia who, while I’m asleep and I assume with the help of elves, magically turns them into full cartoons.

Pia: Yep. Elves, it’s totally elves.

While your mileage may vary, I found today’s cartoon hilarious:


© Ian Boothby & Pai Guerra

Which is not to discount the previous eight panels.
This is crying out for syndication!

 

And then this week GoComics introduced a classic comic strip to their roster – Bozo by Foxo Reardon. According to Allan Holtz Bozo was syndicated from 1945 to 1955, though it began as a local comic in the Richmond Times Dispatch in the mid-1920s.


above: a Bozo strip from December 1925

From the GoComics Foxo biography:

Francis X. Reardon, the creator of the world’s first pantomime comic strip, was born in Richmond, Virginia on January 5, 1905 …

(I always cringe when a comic is called the first of its kind, in this case pantomime.
You just know that one or two or three comics will be found to predate it.)

It should also be noted that Foxo Reardon took a word, “bozo,” that was practically unknown in the 1920s and popularized it through his weekly newspaper strip, decades before the appearance of Bozo the Clown.

Anyway GoComics seems to be putting up three strips a day.


© the respective copyright owner

Searching the archives will find more strips but the dates there are hit and miss.

 

Dislosure time: The Daily Cartoonist and GoComics are kinfolk in the Andrews McMeel family.

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Comments 6

  1. Joseph Nebus

    Oh, wow. I’m always glad when they add a truly vintage comic. I’m surprised they aren’t telling anyone about it. Also that they’re putting in an archive backdated to 1951, although not continuously on any stretch of time.

    Less surprised they aren’t saying anything about Bozo; they’ve become awful about announcing new features.

    Also i have no idea how they picked this; I would have thought Pogo the obvious vintage comic strip that needs an online home.

  2. Michael Reardon

    In regard to the claim that my father’s strip “Bozo” is the world’s first pantomime comic strip: the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where the strip appeared weekly from 1925 to 1945,, made that claim before the strip was syndicated. The syndicate itself promoted it as such. That claim has never been disputed. “Bozo” was actually created in 1916, when Foxo Reardon was hired as that paper’s first sports cartoonist at age 16. He never held a job title other than that of “cartoonist.” A poll showed the strip was the most popular of all the comics carried by the syndicate.

  3. D. D. Degg  (admin)

    Thank you for the additional information.
    Can you answer Joseph’s inquiry about how GoComics decided to run Bozo? Did you contact them? Do you retain copyright?

  4. Michael Reardon

    Made a little mistake above. I should have said that “Bozo” was created in 1921 when Foxo Reardon was age 16. Will add here that I appreciate the comments made by Joseph Nebus above. There is a biography of my father that can be found on the GoComics page featuring “Bozo.” The strip appeared daily for only ten years as my father died of cancer at age 50 in 1955.

  5. Michael Reardon

    Thank you, D.D. Degg for your questions. Yes, I made a submission to GoComics back in September 2019. I furnished them with about a dozen weeks of “Bozo” strips, and received the great news in mid-December 2020. Well worth the scrutiny and wait. I never made a submission elsewhere, since I believed “Bozo” and Foxo deserved the best. And that patience was rewarded. I certainly appreciate every single person who follows the strip. In regard to the copyright, I will not go into that as it could possibly violate my contract.

  6. Michael Reardon

    One can “cringe” at the claim that a particular comic was the first pantomime comic strip, but the fact is that Foxo Reardon’s “Bozo” was the first sustained and successful pantomime comic strip, and obviously the very earliest pantomime strip that went on to be syndicated, and that with a major syndicate. It was not a flash in the pan as those mentioned above. So in my humble opinion it deserves the title of being the first pantomime strip- one that that was good enough to survive and is still be around today.

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