Comic strips Obituary

Julie Larson – RIP

Skip to comments

D. D. Degg May 28, 2024 1 minute 3 comments

Cartoonist and puzzle maker Julie Larson had passed away two years ago.

From the obituary:

Julie Harris Larson, 62, of Lincoln, passed away peacefully on Wednesday, August 17, 2022, at The Christian Village in Lincoln.

Julie began her professional career in architecture, interior and landscape design, but changed paths when her first daughter was born. Moving from Chicago to the suburbs, she channeled her creativity into a single-panel newspaper comic, a satire on middle-class culture. It was titled ‘Suburban Torture’ during the years of self-syndication 1990 – 1997, then later she earned national syndication, and it ran as ‘The Dinette Set’ until her retirement in 2015, notably running in the Chicago Tribune. Julie self-published nine printed volumes of her comics. She was also a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune’s Sunday color comics page creating find-its and rebus picture puzzles during the 1990s.

above: some very early samples of Suburban Torture as seen at ComicStripFan

As mentioned in the obituary Julie’s Suburban Torture began in 1990 in The L. A. Reader and a few other alternative newspapers. In January 1997 King Features Syndicate had signed Julie and began distributing the panel, described as “an off-center take on suburban life’ displaying the foibles of “agreeable types who without a lot going for them ‘except for gossip, worrying about other people, shopping and collecting teensy figurines.”

above: an early January 1997 syndicated Sunday strip

From 1993 to 2001 Julie also was a contributor to The Chicago Tribune’s Spots page in their Sunday comics section. While doing various puzzles (Find It, Snip It) her specialty seems to have been creating the Read It rebuses.

The Dinette Set would run until November 2015 when Julia retired the comic. GoComics maintains an archive.

_{h/t: Charles Brubaker}