A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.
Zippy the Pinhead is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Zippy, an American comic strip created by Bill Griffith. Zippy's most famous quotation, "Are we having fun yet?", appears in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and became a catchphrase. He almost always wears a yellow muumuu/clown suit with large red polka dots, and puffy, white clown shoes. Although in name and appearance, Zippy is a microcephalic, he is distinctive not so much for his skull shape, or for any identifiable form of brain damage, but for his enthusiasm for philosophical non sequiturs, verbal free association, and pursuit of popular culture ephemera. His wholehearted devotion to random artifacts satirizes the excesses of consumerism.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995. Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life. Larson's frequent use of animals and nature in the comic is popularly attributed to his background in biology. The Far Side was ultimately carried by more than 1,900 daily newspapers, translated into 17 languages, and collected into calendars, greeting cards, and 23 compilation books, and reruns are still carried in many newspapers. After a 25-year hiatus, in July 2020 Larson began drawing new Far Side strips offered through the comic's official website.
Mutt and Jeff is a long-running and widely popular American newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Bud Fisher in 1907 about "two mismatched tinhorns". It is commonly regarded as the first daily comic strip. The concept of a newspaper strip featuring recurring characters in multiple panels on a six-day-a-week schedule had previously been pioneered through the short-lived A. Piker Clerk by Clare Briggs, but it was Mutt and Jeff as the first successful daily comic strip that staked out the direction of the future trend.
Dan O'Neill is an American underground cartoonist, creator of the syndicated comic strip Odd Bodkins and founder of the underground comics collective the Air Pirates.
Stephan Thomas Pastis is an American cartoonist and former lawyer who is the creator of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine. He also writes children's chapter books, commencing with the release of Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. The seventh book, It's the End When I Say It's the End, debuted at #4 on The New York Times Best Seller list for Children's Middle Grade Books.
Bizarro is a single-panel cartoon written and drawn by American cartoonist Dan Piraro and later by cartoonist Wayne "Wayno" Honath. The cartoon specializes in surrealist humor and at times is slightly cryptic in its humor. The creator often includes hidden symbols in the drawing which refer to inside jokes or other elements.
King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles, and games to nearly 5,000 newspapers worldwide. King Features Syndicate also produces intellectual properties, develops new content and franchises, like The Cuphead Show!, which it produced with Netflix, and licenses its classic characters and properties.
Frank W. Bolle was an American comic-strip artist, comic book artist and illustrator, best known as the longtime artist of the newspaper strips Winnie Winkle and The Heart of Juliet Jones; for stints on the comic books Tim Holt and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom; and as an illustrator for the Boy Scouts of America magazine Boys' Life for 18 years. With an unknown writer, he co-created the masked, Old West comic-book heroine the Black Phantom. Bolle sometimes used the pen name FWB and, at least once, F. L. Blake.
Harry Hershfield was an American cartoonist, humor writer and radio personality. He was known as "the Jewish Will Rogers". Hershfield also was a columnist for the New York Daily Mirror. His books include Laugh Louder, Live Longer and Now I'll Tell One. As a comics artist he is best remembered for his newspaper comic Abie the Agent.
Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher was an American cartoonist who created Mutt and Jeff, the first successful daily comic strip in the United States.
Donald Asmussen was an American cartoonist working for the San Francisco Chronicle and Universal Press Syndicate.
Wee Pals is an American syndicated comic strip about a diverse group of children, created and produced by Morrie Turner. It was the first comic strip syndicated in the United States to have a cast of diverse ethnicity, dubbed the "Rainbow Gang".
Paul Leroy Norris was an American comic book artist best known as co-creator of the DC Comics superhero Aquaman, and for a 35-year run as artist of the newspaper comic strip Brick Bradford.
Phil Frank was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of the San Francisco-based comic strip Farley and the artist on nationally syndicated comic strip The Elderberries.
Ted Slampyak is an American comic strip cartoonist who drew Little Orphan Annie until its cancellation in 2010. He also draws the color webcomic Jazz Age Chronicles, a comic based in 1920s Boston. He is now the artist contributor to the Art of Manliness, a popular blog.
Animal Crackers is an animated television series produced by Cinar and Alphanim. It is based on the comic strip Animal Crackers by the American cartoonist Roger Bollen. The show was first introduced in September 7, 1997 and ended with the final episode in September 16, 2000. It lasted for three seasons with 39 episodes.
The Amazing Spider-Man is a daily comic strip featuring the character Spider-Man which has been syndicated for more than 40 years. It is a dramatic, soap opera-style strip with story arcs which typically run for 8 to 12 weeks. While the strip uses many of the same characters as the Spider-Man comic book, the storylines are nearly all originals and do not share the same continuity. A consistently popular strip, new material was published from 1977 to 2019, with the strip going into reruns afterwards.
The Argyle Sweater is an American daily comic strip written by Scott Hilburn, from Garland, Texas. The strip has been syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate since April 2008.
The Field Newspaper Syndicate was a syndication service based in Chicago that operated independently from 1941 to 1984, for a good time under the name the Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate. The service was founded by Marshall Field III and was part of Field Enterprises. The syndicate was most well known for Steve Canyon, but also launched such popular, long-running strips as The Berrys, From 9 To 5, Rivets, and Rick O'Shay. Other features included the editorial cartoons of Bill Mauldin and Jacob Burck, and the "Ask Ann Landers" advice column.
