The King Features Weekly Service (KFWS) comic strip Amber Waves by Dave Phipps is joining the Comics Kingdom lineup. While they haven’t got the strips running there yet they do have a holding page.
Experience a day in the life of a boy named Gerald, his parents, his best friend Owen, and all the pigs, cows, and other animals on the farm where he lives.
Amber Waves began as a self-syndicated daily 24 years ago. The earliest I find is Tuesday August 8, 2000 in The Abbeville Meridional (the paper didn’t publish on Mondays then).
We interrupt this post for an important message:
Charles Brubaker and Allan Holtz have found an even earlier Amber Waves than the August 8, 2000 strip mentioned above. As Allan explains here Dave Phipps was part of an experimental comics page where Amber Waves ran five weekly comic strips from November 6, 1994 to December December 4, 1994.
An aside: Allan also links to a 1993 college paper comics insert where Dave T. Phipps’ The Good Life appears.
And now back to our regularly scheduled post.
The strip ran in The Meridional daily until December 30, 2000., at which time it disappears until returning on March 13, 2001 in The Stanly News and Press (below) as a weekly comic strip distributed by King Features Weekly Service.
It has been running as part of the KFWS ever since. I currently read it in a Thursday insert in my local daily, which is a fairly recent development. Before that I read it online at The Pickens County Courier comics page.
Amber Waves will run weekly on Comics Kingdom and will remain a part of KFWS offerings, no word if this the beginning of King Features moving the entire KFWS roster to Comics Kingdom.
Dave Phipps continues his weekly Just Like Cats and Dogs panel for KFWS as well as his other projects.
I was just at the King Features Comics Kingdom page, and the Amber Waves page appears to be up and running now.
Hey, everybody! That’s the famous Bob Ingersoll! ^^^^
Doubtful if the Lee Enterprises newspapers will carry this strip in their papers with the other King Features strips after signing a deal to replace the Andrews-McMeel strips with KFS strips.
Amber Waves also appeared in the “Tomorrow’s Comics” line-up from Argonaut Entertainment in 1994.
Thanks Allan, I checked your book but not your Stripper’s Guide for updates.
“New” info added to the post.