Of the two-score-minus-one comic strips Mike Peterson displayed from 1948 seven are still being syndicated with new content in 2023. None of which will be highlighted in this post.
Which is not to say some oldies won’t be here. The Phantom was around then and is now.
At the risk of stepping on the toes of the excellent blogger Joseph Nebus, there’s a plot development in The Phantom Daily strip that I just need to comment on.
Dan Fraser at The Chronicle Chamber has some thoughts on Tony DePaul’s Wrack and Ruin plot twists.
But there was another possible ending given in Chapters 4 & 6 – one where Diana leaves and it seems that Savarna steps in, fulfilling her erstwhile fantasy of connecting with Phantom 21 and producing Phantom heirs of her own.
But is all as it seems? Here’s my theory, a guess really, at yet another twist in the tale. I wonder if Savarna and Kit Jr becoming an item might fit within Mozz’s prophesy of her becoming The Phantom’s wife. Maybe, just maybe, Savarna ends up marrying Phantom 22.
Mara Llave: Keeper of Time the comic strip wasn’t around 75 years ago, though maybe the character was/will be.
The world of “Mara Llave” is chockfull of opportunities to creatively explore points of conflict for its characters due to its limitless setting based on time travel. Segura and Villiger specifically crafted this to transcend genre and allow them to be more flexible with their storytelling.
“We realized we needed the kind of story flexible enough to allow us to tell any story — a western, space-opera, noir-detective story. That’s when we landed on time travel,” reveals Segura. “‘Mara,’ to us, is like playing jazz. We’ll go where our shared mood takes us, and the world of ‘Mara Llave’ can contain it.”
Yeah, one Thanksgiving tradition is football, but this is about cartoonist Robb Armstrong, creator of JumpStart.
Renowned cartoonist Robb Armstrong ’85, the creator of the syndicated comic strip JumpStart, has always appreciated an influential art teacher’s guidance that led him to Syracuse University. These days, Armstrong is committed to helping guide the next generation on their path to success. In a recent campus visit, he sat down for an interview with Nikkos Saviolis ’23, an illustration major who aspires to write and draw graphic novels. When Saviolis asked him what advice he had for students who want to follow their dreams, Armstrong told him, “There is nothing more valuable than you and your contribution to this world, and the sooner you recognize that, the sooner we’ll have a chance to experience what you want to give us.…
These days all is by computer, but 75 years ago there was a different process to printing newspaper comics.
Glenn Fleishman is preparing a book with a new take on comics history.
The book will cover the entire history of newspaper comics from a unique angle—how they were made and printed. You can find many other books that I can recommend that look at comics through the lens of artist, biography, genre, and subject matter, as well as hundreds of lovingly, painstakingly restored collections, such as the complete “Peanuts” the and “Little Nemo” Sunday strips.
How Comics Were Made, turns to the stories of creation: What did artists’ originals look like and how were they transformed for print? In the days before digital reproduction, how did a cartoonist tell a printer they wanted a 30% green? How, in fact, did the Yellow Kid get his tint? How did cartoonists represent Black faces in a medium that favors the empty page and was poor at reproducing nuanced tones? The answers are surprising, revealing, and beautiful. You’ll see reproductions of art and artifacts that have never appeared in print anywhere, and some historic comics will appear for the first time ever in any medium in this book.
I recently stumbled on a first edition of the classic AdExchanger comic.
I have no idea how I came to possess this artifact of ad tech history, but there it was, blaring at me from a pile of old papers: “Gigantic First Issue!! AdExchanger: An All-Star Collection of the Greatest Advertising Stories Ever Told!” It is dated December 2010.
Eight years after Berkeley Breathed ended his Bloom County (1980-1989) and Outland (1989-1995) comic strips, he returned to newspapers with the Sunday-only Opus on November 23, 2003.
“How Comics Were Made” — I can’t imagine more than a dozen people in the world would get excited over this announcement, but I’m definitely one of ’em!!!
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