Comic strips

Introduction to Adventure

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D. D. Degg August 19, 2021 1 minute 3 comments

The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a rebirth of the adventure comic strip. The successful syndication in 1977 of The Amazing Spider-Man saw a number of action strips getting real estate on newspaper funny pages. The smash box office of Star Wars saw that property adapted to the three panel format, along with more science fiction properties.  A number of other movies also got daily space. Of course more superheroes crashed Spidey’s friendly newspaper neighborhood. The trend also revived comic strips and cartooning careers.

Recently came across a debut strip that I thought was a great introduction to the series and wondered how others stacked up. So here’s what readers had as a first look at some of those adventure strips. (Clicking on the strips will embiggen, clicking again will supersize some of them.)

Latigo had separate daily and Sunday stories

note: Batman appeared in 1989 while Terry and The Pirates and Zorro gave adventure continuity a shot in the 1990s, well after all but Spider-Man had fallen victim to the short attention span of readers and editors. Rip Haywire has survived since 2009 as a 21st Century comedy-adventure strip.

A little exposition by way of narration or activity is great as I realize that not all the readers are as acquainted to the characters as we are. But I find a distaste for talking heads in introductory strips, especially when characters are so well known (Star Trek, Star Wars). The never sold Jonah Hex strip (see below) would be an exception as it is a great introduction to the not-so-famous bounty hunter.

all characters are © their respective copyright owners

Would any of the above lure you into getting the next day’s newspaper to follow the story?