Angels From the Attic Pack It Up? – updated

It seems earlier this year that Angels From the Attic by Mark Marderosian ceased being published.

In 2007 Mark Marderosian, a cartoonist in all its forms, created the characters of Angels From the Attic as stuffed animals. He soon joined with Robert Palmer Jr. and created Big City Productions to promote the characters in a number of formats. One of those formats was a newspaper kid’s activity page beginning in 2011 which eventually included a comic strip. It was distributed to Gatehouse newspapers.

The earliest comic strip found (via newspapers.com) was in a December 14, 2011 edition of Sulfur Daily News (the comic strip contains a 12-9 date).

Marderosian’s Angels From the Attic and Draw With Mark features were partnered with Ann Raih (and later Erika Enigk) articles and word search puzzles, all of which formed a themed page.

In 2012 Gatehouse changed their internal More Content Now to a syndicate news service and the page expanded its distribution beyond Gatehouse papers.

For a couple months in the middle of 2014 Gatehouse distributed a “Fun Page” which may have been all reprints of earlier Marderosian features. By August 2014 Angels From the Attic were back to the themed page with Erika Enigk replacing Ann Raih as the article author. (It took a while for Marderosian and Enigk to get in sync.)

The Gatehouse page with Angels From the Attic ran until the end of January 2021 and Gatehouse shut down their More Content Now service in May 2021. (Some Gatehouse papers ran Marderosian’s Fun Page reprints until November 2021.)

Meanwhile, back in early 2020…

While doing Angels From the Attic for Gatehouse’s More Content Now Marderosian had signed with the Tribune News Service to supply an activity page to be distributed to newspapers. March 2020 saw the debut of Mark’s Just For Kids! which included his comic strip now retitiled The Magical Attic. And while the page was weekly the comic strip became an occasional part of the feature.

Tribune’s Just For Kids by Mark Marderosian page seems to end with the last week of March week without a The Magical Attic comic strip, though two comic strips featuring the angels in the magical attic appeared the previous week:

But…

Since March 2023 the Tribune News Service has been distributing a KidsNews page with Marderosian content! It is unclear if this is new Magical Attic content or not. The pages on occasional have the comic strip.

So – has Angels From the Attic/The Magical Attic comic strip ended? Mark Marderosian and Big City Publications websites have disappeared and Tribune News Service has not responded to inquiries.

Same Day Edit

Mark Marderosian has kindly replied to an inquiry and says that the recent KidNews pages are new material.

I’m happily working away with the nice folks at the Tribune Content Agency every week. This week, the Magical Attic crew are embarking on their “road trip” education feature for the next six weeks. I have not written/drawn a new Magical Attic COMIC strip in a while. I’ve been focusing on activities and games for the full-page feature. While I hope to return to some new comic strips, I’ve also been busy since January developing new features. I’m attaching the road trip page and two new pages in progress we’re really excited about. My colleague, Mark Mullaney, and I are collaborating on his character, Ninja Bear [link added] and I can’t wait to blast it out to the client newspapers!

So. while that April 1, 2024 KidNews Magical Attic comic strip shown above is the last to date, hope remains that more Angels From the Attic comics will appear. For the nonce Mark is busy with projects!

Allan Holtz