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Time looks at best long-running comics

Alan Gardner101 mins

With the announcement of the end of Little Orphan Annie, Time Magazine is looking at the best long-running comics. They also allow you to order them in your order of preference.

Here’s their original list:

  • B.C.
  • Dennis the Menace
  • Beetle Bailey
  • Annie
  • The Katzenjammer Kids
  • Gasoline Alley
  • Blondie
  • Dick Tracy
  • Prince Valiant
  • Brenda Starr

10 thoughts on “Time looks at best long-running comics”

  1. I remember back in the 80s, around the holidays, my brother said, “Christmas Day Dennis the Menace will be surrounded by gifts and saying ‘Is that all’?” He said it with the confidence that it wasn’t a prediction at all, but an assured thing.

    Sure enough, that was the joke that ran.

    I stopped reading all of those strips, except the Blondie 75th anniversary book. So I pick Blondie. She’s hot.

  2. BC? Not to slip into Seth and Amy mode but… Really? I know Mr. Hart’s original run on the strip is legendary. And I have no problem with Christian themes in comics. Max Vs. Max is one of the best strips out there right now, as far as I’m concerned. But his work over the last decade or so has been far from the heights he once accomplished. I’d go more into the issues I have with some of the legacy strips or how some on the list have been running on fumes for years, but I don’t wish to sound petty, even if this is the internet. (OK, so maybe I’ll say one thing about how Beetle Bailey completely lost any bite it had when it neutered Halftrack in the name of political correctness.) I just think attaching the word “best” to most of these examples given their present output is merely looking back on the past with rose-colored glasses.

  3. Right – so it’s the longest running strips in AMERICA. No mention of the one of the longest-running strips in the world, Ginger Meggs?
    It’s been around for 90 years next year.. Some of these weren’t even created until the 40’s and 50’s

  5. Oh, I know where they are! Family Circus is in like 1,500 newspapers, and Marmaduke is going to be in theaters in June.

  6. Marmaduke and Family Circus were started after 1950 (OK, Dennis started in 1951 but Hank Ketcham had the idea for Dennis in 1950). Where is Snuffy Smith on the list? He has been around forever. So is Nancy.

  10. I’m proud to be able to say (really…I am) that EVERY one of those listed above in Time’s list – PLUS Ginger Meggs, Family Circus, Marmaduke, Nancy, Snuffy Smith AND Mr. Hinds’ (and Mr. Millar’s) Tank McNamara – will be part of my upcoming traveling exhibition, One Fine Sunday in the Funny Pages. Along with 120 other currently-syndicated comics!

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