Comic strips

Comic Strips – Real and Imagined

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D. D. Degg August 18, 2024 1 minute 2 comments

Crankshaft Leadtime (again).

Last week I implied that Crankshaft was at least a year ahead on its deadline. This week has me rethinking that.

Today’s Crankshaft uses an actual Jumble puzzle from April 13, 2024 putting it four months ahead.

Now I’m thinking Tom Batiuk has the plots and scripts further ahead than Dan Davis has the art.

That’s Entertainment?

Little Orphan Annie is older than Crankshaft and has an even more doleful life.

In the summer of 1924, American comics readers met a new kind of heroine: a 10-year-old girl with curly red hair, a wisecracking mouth, and an unshakeable tendency to look on the sunny side of life, no matter how often she’s beaten down.

Nowadays, the Little Orphan Annie comics that Harold Gray drew from Aug. 5, 1924, through his death in 1968 are less well-known than the 1977 musical that adapted the spunky orphan’s story for the Broadway stage, and the 1982 movie that adapted that Tony Award–winning musical for the big screen.

I really wish that we’d reassess Annie’s iconic status, and not just because it gets orphanhood all wrong. When you really look closely at it, her narrative is plain weird.

I spent a lot of time with Annie while researching and writing my forthcoming book on American orphanhood—it would have been impossible to write a book correcting America’s mythical misconceptions about child welfare without understanding the beats of her narrative. I even titled the book The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood to push back against the silver linings Annie prods us to look for when it comes to hardship.

Kristen Martin for Slate writes that Annie knew nothing about the real hard knock life.

Well that was depressing. Let’s lighten the mood.

Thank you Mike (Cornered) Baldwin and Jeff (Moderately Confused) Stahler.

Never Was Comic Strip

Vault is thrilled to announce they have acquired the licensing rights for KID MAROON, the legendary 1940s boy detective comic strip created and drawn by bizarre comics genius Pep Shepard.

The fascinating history of Kid Maroon and his creator, Pep Shepard, is one of the legends in comic book circles. While the details are often debated, one thing is certain: Kid Maroon is one of the most influential cartoon characters of all time, inspiring underground and independent comics for decades. 

Pep Shepard began his comics career as an apprentice with newspaper strip legend Irvin Batch in Pittsburgh, guest-inking on several Sunday strips in the final years of Batch’s famed “How ‘Bout That?” But once “How ‘Bout That?” was canceled (after the apocryphal “Let’s Poison Tommy” story), Shepard found himself without work and enlisted in the Merchant Marines. A dishonorable discharge in ‘39 for public intoxication left Pep out of active service during the war effort and without a job. Shepard soon found himself working for the printing press of the Baltimore Companion in the early 40’s…

Somebody on Vault Comics staff came up with a brilliant press release to publicize an upcoming project.

… The Kid Maroon strip ran daily. Written, drawn, and lettered (with copy corrections) by Pep, who took to working six days a week at his drawing board, further neglecting his family, which they would later argue was better for them in the long run, given his predilections for loud opera records, corporal punishment, and sudden outbursts of tears. All in all, this incessant work totaled 216 Kid Maroon strips printed in the Baltimore Companion from the spring to fall of 1948…

Kinks Komiks

Always a thrill when a Kinks reference hits the funny pages.

Thanks Robb, today’s JumpStart really got me!