Comic strips

Variations on a Comics Theme

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D. D. Degg October 4, 2022 1 minute 4 comments

Dave Blazek is now doing double duty as Andrews McMeel Syndication is offering both the usual horizontal and a new vertical (strip format) version of the Loose Parts panel.

  
© Dave Blazek

© Patrick McDonnell

Patrick McDonnell has contributed the poster art to the Princeton Children’s Book Festival where he will also be one of the authors and illustrators attending.

© Trina Robbins;             Patricia Moodian;           Lee Marrs

Elsewhere, but also a festival appearance, will be Trina Robbins and Lee Marrs celebrating the 50th anniversary of Wimmen’s Comix, both of whom were contributors to that first issue, at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus this week.

    
© Jerry King

Earlier this Summer Jerry King signed with The Canton Repository as their editorial cartoonist, now he has hitched his rising star to GoComics where yesterday his gag cartoons began appearing under the Jerry King Comics title. Adjust your “My Comics” list accordingly.

As an introduction GoComics interviewed Jerry:

… Once I got out of high school, I joined the U.S. Army. I spent time cartooning in the Army, doing more and more one-panels, and I just got better and better at it … When I got out [of the Army], the Locher Awards recognized me as the number-one college editorial cartoonist in the country and I was also named No. 2 Army Cartoonist in the world while serving in the military. After college, I won a National Cartoonists Society Gag Award. I had a 22-year reign cartooning for Playboy, and I loved it. But in the meantime, I worked for Disney and all kinds of magazines, and I’m still a very active political cartoonist. I do editorial cartoons that a lot of people can relate to, like about potholes and things like that …

Michael Jantze celebrates Buster’s Birthday. Not Buster Brown, a different comic.

 
© Michael Jantze

Which brings me to Jason Chatfield’s New York Cartoons…

I perched myself at the Comedy Cellar & Olive Tree Café in Greenwich Village2 —my favourite place in all of New York— over the course of two months and scribbled down what I saw… and overheard. Verbatim.

…where Buster gets a mention, though not an appearance.

© Jason Chatfield 

While Buster Keaton appeared first, there were some other October 4 debuts:

 
© Tribune Content Agency

© OGPI

This would be Pogo’s first newspaper comic strip debut, he appeared earlier in comic books.

© Peanuts Worldwide

That would be Snoopy’s first appearance in Peanuts.
Like Charlie Brown he had appeared, though unnamed, in Schulz’s earlier Li’l Folks.
Snoopy also appeared as part of a promo elsewhere that same October 4th: