Commentators
Someone must have switched Rick Marschall‘s Sanka to real coffee. Suddenly he’s become a dervish of activity. Recently announcing the revival of Nemo, now he is commencing a weekly column of comic related anecdotes and history. The first column is an autobiography of sorts.
The column will have its home base at John Adcock‘s Yesterday’s Papers, where John also contributes greatly to our knowledge of comics. Both gentlemen are highly recommended.
Elsewhere let’s not forget that R. C. Harvey has opened up his columns as a free reading library for the month of August. A few days ago he posted a new Rants & Raves with the latest news and reviews. Rob Rogers, Stan Lee, Glenn McCoy, some background on the current Gasoline Alley Centennial Celebration, comic books, comic strips, editorial and gag cartooning, and just too much to list.
Current events and historical hindsights and decades of archives, well worth your time.
And then there’s Joseph Nebus who regularly updates the current continuity strips. If you have fallen behind or just started reading a story strip and need to quickly catch up, Joseph will let you know what’s going on with a minimum of snark (excepting his captioning to the strips).
What’s Going On in Mary Worth is the latest installment.
Comic Strips
Stan Lee was mentioned in R. C. Harvey’s column of a few days ago – breaking news is that Stan will no longer be making public appearances to sign books.
“To be very clear, Stan is 100% not doing any conventions / public signings. In the last few years his well-being had been compromised by people for monetary gain and that practice is over”
To be very clear they are accepting material by mail to be signed and authenticated.
Last year Chuck Ayers gave up regular art duties on Tom Batiuk‘s Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean. Dan Davis became the Crankshaft artist and Rick Burchett assumed the Funky Winkerbean art chores.
Chuck Ayers has returned as cartoonist on occasion, a week here and there, But this time Ayers is sticking around on Funky a bit longer. He’s been doing the Sundays since July 15, and dailies since July 30th.
Of course Chuck hasn’t been otherwise idle. The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists has informed that Ayers has a commercial high life.
Chuck Ayers, the longtime illustrator of the popular comic strip Crankshaft and a former Akron Beacon Journal editorial cartoonist, designed illustrations for all the beers at the upcoming Ohio & Erie Canal-themed, chef-driven brewpub in Akron.
Back to Batiuk and Funky – Tom’s blog had a very interesting excerpt from his Complete Funky Winkerbean series:
A 1984 letter from the syndicate about Field bring sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News America.
Tom recalls his reaction and some effects of that sale.
Over at Creators Syndicate they have returned Rugrats to their comics homepage.
It was moved to Creators Archived Page last year(?), but has recently returned to the forefront.
It has not returned, as of this writing, to the GoComics page.
It looks like Mort Walker will join Art Sansom and Bil Keane as the Beetle Bailey comic strip will continue to carry the creator’s signature. (Today’s gag certainly reminds me of Mort.)
And because Mike Peterson‘s Comic Strip of [To]Day has put me in a mood…
here’s the August 6, 2018 Lio
