Patrick Reynolds Has Historical Flashbacks
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Historical cartoonist Patrick Reynolds is an American Legionnaire in good standing.
Readers of the “Flashbacks” comic strip in their Sunday newspaper – which brings history to life in multi-paneled cartoons – may be interested to know that the artist is a 50-plus-year Pennsylvania Legionnaire.
Patrick Reynolds is a life member of William P. Duffy American Legion Post 544 in Minersville. He graduated from the prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, went to work as an art director, then enlisted in the Army during the Vietnam War as an intelligence officer. He is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Army Reserve.
The American Legion has a short profile of Patrick.
As seen above Patrick also does state-specific comic strips for local papers. A few years ago Patrick told Allan Holtz how he went expanding his Flashback Universe:
For Texas, I first approached the Houston Post.
Why Texas, you might ask. I figured correctly that the Texans are so full of themselves that they’d jump at such a cartoon. The Houston Post took on the cartoon and ran it until they folded about 6 years later. The Chronicle ran it for a while during the Texas Sesquicentennial then dropped it.
With the Houston Post on board, I did a mass mailing to all the Texas newspaper editors. Then, my wife and I planned a week-long trip there. I found out that the big syndicates sold their new features to big papers, then offered it to smaller ones. That is the route I followed in Texas. I had set up appointments with papers in Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin.
My appointment in Dallas was with the Tribune (actually I forgot the name). When we got there I was kept waiting for an hour because the editor forgot about the appointment. Once in the meeting he said he was most impressed, then asked if I had shown it to the guys “across the street”, meaning the Dallas Morning News.
I said “No, but I will meet with them if you say one of two things to me: ‘No, we do not want it’ or ‘We will think about it;” because it has been my experience that when an editor says he’ll think about it, his answer always ends up being no. The Trib editor said he will think about it but asked that I give him until Wednesday before I go the the News (it was now Monday).
We left the office and went directly to the News.
Much more background on cartoonist Reynolds at Allan Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide.
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