Back before Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson became the mega comic strip hit it was to become the first appearance was seen in the Universal Press Syndicate press kit sent to newspaper editors.
Connor Ratliff presents the entire Calvin and Hobbes press kit from the mid-1980s on his Bluesky page.
Recently the 90th birthday of Mr Snuffy Smith was observed. Technically, it was the 90th anniversary of the hillbilly’s debut in Billy DeBeck’s classic strip Barney Google.
Comic-strip characters are famous for “growing,” or aging, at their onw speed, or not at all. Snuffy is one character who has changed over the near-century… but somehow is younger-looking, cleaner, more active, and happier then when he was introduced to readers in 1934. Withal, he and his woman Loweezy (her name, appropriately, of inconsistent spelling) attracted the attention, and affection, of America to extent that he took over the strip. Its title is, formally, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, but Mr Google has become an occasional cast member.
Comics editor and historian Richard Marschall shares trivia about Barney Google, Snuffy Smith, and the friendship between Billy BeBeck and Frank Willard (and not so friendly King Features boss Rudolph Block).
Billy DeBeck and Frank Willard were stars and were paid accordingly. In 1934 cartoonists were paid a pretty penny. Below is a 1934 column by Westbrook Pegler about the then lucrative cartooning career.
“I am assured that $25,000 [nearly $590,00 inflation adjusted today] a year is no uncommon rate of pay…”
Unfortunately that non-inflation-adjusted earning of $25,000 remains not uncommon for cartoonists today.