Virgil Partch’s Big George panel began on May 23, 1960.
It last ran 30 years and one week ago on June 8, 1991:
hat tip to Charles Brubaker for the last Big George panel
That last panel appeared nearly seven years after Vip’s death,
Partch being one of very few cartoonists who worked so far ahead in case of illness or emergency.
A month after the panel’s debut a Big George Sunday strip began.
The incredibly prolific Vip continued creating magazine panels and original books during his Big George years and even started another daily comic strip, The Captain’s Gig, for two years in the late 1970s.
Back to 1960…
Virgil Partch was a already a very famous cartoonist when Big George began so it got off to a great start circulation-wise, but clients started to drop the panel when they realized Partch had toned down his usual zany humor for the broader newspaper audience.
Below is the first week of Big George panels from May 1960.
© respective copyright owners
Always weirdly beautiful. You can see ViP faces in the Disney cartoon DUCK PIMPLES, which he worked on. I’m a little sad to see that all the hands in this seem to have no more fingers than normal. Sometimes he would throw in as many extra digits as he could fit, and he always claimed it was in reaction to working for the four-fingered Mouse.
Remember the “I HATE MONDAYS” strips?