Syndicate Stripping Saturday

Started the week with remembrances of a long gone character.

Though we get a better look at Broom-Hilda peeking out of that log than we used to get of Grelber’s face.

Strangely beginning Tuesday “Browne” started showing up as the signature in Hi and Lois.

It seems too soon to be paying tribute to Chance so it must be coincidence that they ran a week’s worth of reruns this week (and a Browne Sunday page on the 24th). Surprising is that they went back as far as they did – Eric Reaves began signing the strip on October 30, 2017.

The Weingartens and Clark faked me out with Wednesday’s Barney & Clyde.

That first panel led me to believe they were headed toward most of the “dailies” these days having a publishing schedule of four or five days a week. Instead they just confused me because “back in my day” newspapers printed a dozen different editions every day. Clare Briggs’ A Piker Clerk is sometimes called a daily predecessor of the daily Mutt and Jeff, but nobody knows. The comic didn’t appear daily or in all the editions of Hearst’s Chicago American and the Chicago Library’s archive of the paper doesn’t include every edition of every day, so there is no reliable record of how often or the dates the comic appeared.

These days we seldom get one printing a day much less “alwayses” – note the hard copy in Grandpa’s hands.

But speaking of Barney & Clyde: I just learned they have a Substack.

Thursday’s child was synchronicity as Ben Hatley and Earl Pickles are two of a kind.

Friday saw the return of Guard Dog as a new Mutts comic strip appeared in the midst of the reruns.

And the return of what seems to be a regular (fortnightly average or so) reference to The Funnies in Ziggy.

This has been the sixth comics reference this year in Ziggy.

Of course it is not an unusual subject for cartoonists lately, for example Mike du Jour this week.

What was unusual was Ray Billingsley’s specific hat tip to another cartoonist in Curtis.

And while Paul Gilligan didn’t have an end of the week deadline crunch with his Pooch Cafe strip…

I have just barely got my Saturday post out on Saturday. But before logging off I would like to note for the record that Rod Whigham’s ghost week for Mike Manley on Judge Parker lasted a full week into the Sunday March 17 page.

And … that Rosebuds is now at Comics Kingdom, though it will be another month for new strips begin appearing. Mark your favorites accordingly. That’s Rosebuds’ Rosa, Maria, and Maricela Gonzalez in the feature image.

Since it is almost Sunday here is the sermon courtesy Pearls Before Swine: