Here Come De (Missing) Judge (Parker, not Crater)

8 thoughts on “Here Come De (Missing) Judge (Parker, not Crater)”

1. Thanks for this post. I was wondering about the missing panels.

2. As usual, you came through for us, man! I’m VERY grateful. Thanks.

3. Mike…thanks. Appreciate it.

   It will be interesting to see what King does soon, as I seem to recall when Judge Parker vintage was launched on April 16, 2012, I could swear they said “we have about 10 years of Judge Parker strips”. I think it had something to do with a switch of syndicates? From Field to North American Syndicate and they said the library of strips was “incomplete”. Maybe we are seeing that now?

   But, the strips from the last few weeks (and missing weeks) are from July of 1979. They launched with strips from October of 1968. So, perhaps they found more than just “10 years of strips?”

4. Judge Parker switched from Field Enterprises to News Group (News America/Murdoch) at the beginning of Spring 1984.
   Three years later in March 1987 the comic strip switched to North America Syndicate (KFS).
   Does King Features have the Field proofs but not the Murdochs?

5. Before the invention of the Intertubes but after the development of paste-up, newspapers got an 8.5×11 sheet of paper with each week’s dailies — might have been a velox, but it was crisp, in any case. They’d cut them up and put them on the page. Not sure how it worked in the hot type days, but likely much the same process — papers had quit sending lead sheets at the turn of the century, AFAIK.

   So my guess is that they’ve got a file of those sheets but every once in a while one is missing, which is why they lose an entire week at a time.

6. @D.D. – maybe, I guess time will tell depending on how many gap weeks they don’t have.

   I do know that one time I ordered proofs of several weeks (months) of Judge Parker strips from NAS (King). I paid for them and they sent similar to what Mike said…six strips on one sheet (1 full week). I didn’t get the Sundays. I want to say these were from the mid-90s.

   If they lost the proofs, I guess there is nothing you can do, unless the creators had them. And, both Nick Dallis and Harold LeDoux are no longer with us.

7. “If they lost the proofs, I guess there is nothing you can do, unless the creators had them.”

   They could always have an intern find them on the web, the way Mike does. If you have a subscription to Newspapers.com, it’s not that hard.

8. @Hank…true…but that would mean that KFS would have to expend effort and energy to figure it out. And, perhaps money, to get a newspaper.com subscription. LOL

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