The Sunday Funnies – A Comics Kingdom Edition

Flash Gordon

   
© King Features Syndicate

Jim Keefe noted that the monster introduced last week (above left) and continuing this week (above right) in Flash Gordon was an Easter Egg referencing the first inhabitant that Flash had met upon landing on Mongo.

Little Easter Egg in today’s strip. The monster in the last panel is the same kind of monster Flash encountered when he first crash-landed on the planet Mongo way back on January 14, 1934.

And remember to check out The New Adventures of Flash Gordon in this week’s Flash Forward installment by Pia Guerra.

 

Hi and Lois

© King Features Syndicate

Eric Reaves does some amazing on-model drawing in Hi and Lois. It is amazingly hard for cartoonists to mimic the Schulz art of the Peanuts characters. I thought maybe he copied and pasted art from the other strips, but the Family Circus panel puts that idea to rest. It is the older Billy, not little Jeffy, that wanders unescorted.

The inside pages of the comics section shown in panels three and four – is that Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side?

 

Popeye

 
© King Features Syndicate

To be honest today’s Popeye (above left) scared me. For some reason I remembered that strip as one from the past and thought that Hy Eisman had retired, leaving the Sundays to join the dailies as reruns. But it turns out that it is only reworked from the November 5, 2006 Sunday (above right). A sigh of relief as Hy continues to create Popeye Sundays.

I don’t know how often Hy goes back to rework a page; but it turns out this is not the first time:

 

 

The Amazing Spider-Man

  
© Marvel Characters, Inc.

The joy of the new Mark Trail and the new Flash Gordon and that Hy continues on Popeye is dampened by the realization that The Amazing Spider-Man comic strip will remain reruns. This Sunday’s Spider-Man leads into a four month arc guest-starring Antman and will take us to Spring 2021 before the next shot at new stories. Making it two years since Marvel promised, “We’ll be back soon with great new stories and art.”