Comic strips

No More Spectickles (Belated Notice)

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D. D. Degg May 12, 2024 1 minute 1 comment

Bill Abbott is no longer creating new Spectickles panels for syndication.

The last new panel was issued on December 16, 2023. Creators has been issuing reruns since then.

Bill, replying to a Daily Cartoonist inquiry, says he continues writing but not drawing until things shake out.

above: the last three new Spectickles

Spectickles started … well, it’s complicated.

Cartoonist Bill Abbott, who had already been cartooning, signed with Bill Kellogg’s Ink Bottle Syndicate in early 2012. It was around that time that Abbott’s Spectickles gained a name and began circulating (I think).

From a February 2012 interview:

I was recently contacted by Bill Kellogg of Ink Bottle Syndicate to run “Spectickles” weekly in the Funnies Extra (hitting a city near you in the coming months) published by Richard Cross who also happens to be a talented cartoonist.

Not long after that interview Spectickles began appearing in Funnies Extra (on the front page).

From Bill Abbott’s blog entry of April 23, 2021:

My cartoon Spectickles, and Karma Cafe which I draw with Richard Cross doing the writing, are syndicated by Ink Bottle Syndicate and featured in a color weekly called Funnies Extra. The project is new, but is spreading rapidly across the country. New distribution channels are opening up far and wide, which means you should be able to pick up a copy of the Funnies Extra at a local business near you.

above: a Funnies Extra insert from The Sacramento Bee

By 2014 Spectickles is appearing in newspapers on its own.

Through the Ink Bottle Syndicate the panel was appearing in The Ottawa Citizen among others. The panel debuted in The Citizen on May 24, 2014 under the incorrect heading of “Specticles.” It took nearly a year (on April 4, 2015) for the paper to start running the panel with the “Spectickles” title.

The panel attracted the attention of Creators Syndicate which signed Bill and Spectickles to their company. Spectickles began Creators distribution on October 3, 2016.

above: the first three Creators panels

In 2022 when newspaper groups began demanding unified comics pages be run by all their regional papers it was the beginning of the end for Spectickles.

So…