In an early “First and Last” entry we mentioned an attempted Li’l Abner revival by Norm Hochberg and Steve Stiles. In 1997 Steve told the details of this 1990 adventure in his career to a fanzine.
© Steve Stiles
© Capp Enterprises
FANAC presents Idea #10 with Steve Stiles version of the Li’l Abner revival.
Advertising in The Funny Pages has a long tradition, and making those ads in the form of comic strips is just as long.
© Tootsie Roll Industries
I’m not sure of the laws surrounding such projects, but notice that most such advertisements have a small notice at the top informing readers that they are reading a sales pitch. Some manage to get around that. For example Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales was an advertisement for whatever motion picture was currently in theaters. And then there was…
© McDonalds
The Ronald McDonald comic strip ran in The Chicago Sunday Tribune for two years, from January 1, 1978 to December 30, 1979. McDonald’s had done comics, in one form or another, for at least ten years. Now they apparently took the Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum idea to heart and decided to put them on the front page of newspaper comics sections.
Retroist alerts us to the comic strip, which has been collected and bound. That Amazon link includes a preview giving what is known about the strip (not much).
What we can add is that after 18 months the strip began identifying itself as an advertisement, and then continued to do so until it ended (below).
Captain Tootsie was done out of the Fawcett shop, which is why he looks so much like Captain Marvel. (Very vague as to powers.) There’s also a couple of Captain Tootsie comics archived at Comic Book Plus. The character, apparently in the public domain, has shown up in Savage Dragon recently.