That last panel of Hi and Lois last week kicked off a week of comic character cameos.
With barely a dozen appearances in her own strip since the new year began 100 days ago, Mary Worth has taken to appearing elsewhere. Here she’s crashing a Hootin’ Holler poker game.
© King Features Syndicate
Mary is instantly recognizable thanks in no small part to artist John Rose‘s experience at caricature in his role as political cartoonist.
Ziggy gets an appearance and a mention in Moderately Confused,
© Jeff Stahler
while the walk-on in Dark Side of the Horse is more subtle.
© Samson
heh heh, “walk-on” – get it?
That brings us back to Hi and Lois, who had Superman in that Sunday strip at the top of this page.
A few days later they had the other half of the World’s Finest hiding in the shadows.
© King Features Syndicate
Continuing with super-heroes is Off the Mark.
art © Mark Parisi
A super-hero comic book has been the focus of the Funky Winkerbean comic strip all week,
today it took the spotlight.
Compare to the original:
Funky Winkerbean © Batom, Inc.; Flash © DC Comics
Though the Funky copy was supposed to be a reprint edition, but that doesn’t track:
hat tip to Grand Comics Database for cover images
Above is the Millinium Millennium edition (2000) and the Facsimile edition (2020).
That 10¢ price makes it an original, unless the Komix Korner is marketing bootlegs.
Tom Batiuk admits “mistakes were made.”
Also more guest star than cameo is some characters in today’s Deflocked.
© Jeff Corriveau
A some other shiny objects that caught my attention…
Eight days ago (April 3) cartoonist Ed Steckley got prime attention when Saturday Night Live broadcast his caricature of Matt Gaetz during their Weekend Update.
© NBC Universal
Hat tip to Jason Chatfield for the Ed indentification.
A 2018 story of The Phantom by Tony DePaul and Mike Manley was reprinted in a 2020 issue of Fantomen. It has been voted the best story that ran in the comic in 2020.
© King Features Syndicate
Letters to the editors of newspapers are usually complaintive.
So it’s nice to read a letter of praise about the funny pages:
I’d like to thank the Advance for providing many smiles and laughs each day with two pages of comics Monday through Saturday and six pages every Sunday. Spanning the gamut from traditional style to humor looking at today’s high-tech existence, there is something for nearly everyone to enjoy…
The “archive” page is especially enjoyable when it shows comics I used to read in the “Advance” as a kid. ”Brenda Starr,” “The Jackson Twins,” “Steve Roper,” “David Crane” and so many more.
The Staten Island Advance sounds like a great paper for comic strips.
As the adult spelling bee champion a few times of Oakland County near Detroit, I notice spelling.
When the year turned 2000, we called it the MA-WEN-EE-YUM, you know, every 1,000 years it’s the MA-WEN-EE-YUM, but we didn’t learn how to spell that word. WallStJournal had a piece about the businesses which put that word in their name but misspelled it. And they called them up to let them know, only to be met with surprise at their error in naming their own company.
Anyway, if you ask four people standing together to spell the word and reveal its spelling after their guesses, three out of four will be incorrect! I do that every once in a while.
You can correct the spelling by Funky/Flash…but try to guess correctly if you want to before peeking at your misspelling. By now it may have been corrected.
Seems like a nit, but it’s a fun one for me and sort of ironic that such a wide swath can’t spell it.
Another variation of yours was in the 75th Mark Trail/Jules Rivera piece a few days ago.
Spoileralertallrightitismuinnellimbackwards.
In my defense …
No, I got nothing, even spellcheck agrees with you.