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.
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, political cartoons, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. The syndicates offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own and/or represent copyrights. Other terms for the service include a newspaper syndicate, a press syndicate, and a feature syndicate.
Randy Glasbergen was an American cartoonist and humorous illustrator best known for three decades of newspaper syndication as well as a freelance career. He produced the syndicated strip The Better Half from 1982 to 2014.
LeRoy Robert Ripley was an American cartoonist, entrepreneur, and amateur anthropologist, who is known for creating the Ripley's Believe It or Not! newspaper panel series, television show, and radio show, which feature odd facts from around the world.
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.
Henry is a comic strip created in 1932 by Carl Thomas Anderson. The title character is a young bald boy who is mostly mute in the comics. Except in a few early episodes, when the comic strip character communicates, he does so largely but not entirely through pantomime. He also spoke in a comic book series of 1946–1961 and in at least one Betty Boop cartoon from 1935 in which Betty Boop has a pet shop and Henry speaks to a dog in the window.
Rhymes with Orange is an American comic strip written and drawn by Hilary B. Price and distributed by King Features Syndicate. The title comes from the commonly held belief that no word in the English language rhymes with "orange". It was first syndicated in June 1995.
Hazel is an American sitcom about a spunky live-in maid named Hazel Burke and her employers, the Baxters. The five-season, 154-episode series aired in prime time from September 28, 1961, to April 11, 1966, and was produced by Screen Gems. The first four seasons of Hazel aired on NBC, and the fifth and final season aired on CBS. Season 1 was broadcast in black-and-white except for one episode which was in color, and seasons 2–5 were all broadcast in color. The show was based on the single-panel comic strip of the same name by cartoonist Ted Key, which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post.
A gag cartoon is most often a single-panel cartoon, usually including a caption beneath the drawing. In some cases, dialogue may appear in speech balloons, following the common convention of comic strips. A pantomime cartoon carries no caption.
The Lockhorns is a United States single-panel cartoon created September 9, 1968 by Bill Hoest and originally distributed by King Features Syndicate to 500 newspapers in 23 countries. The Lockhorns joined Andrews McMeel Syndication (AMS) January 1, 2024 and continues to appear in hundreds of newspapers worldwide and online through websites including AMS's GoComics! After Hoest's death in 1988 the comic panel was continued by his wife Bunny Hoest and cartoonist John Reiner. In 2017 Hoest donated the archives of more than 37,000 of her cartoons - including The Lockhorns, Howard Huge and others - to Adelphi University where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree and an honorary doctorate.
James Cecil Hatlo, better known as Jimmy Hatlo, was an American cartoonist who in 1929 created the long-running comic strip and gag panel They'll Do It Every Time, which he wrote and drew until his death in 1963. Hatlo's other strip, Little Iodine, was adapted into a feature-length movie in 1946.
Grin and Bear It is a former daily comic panel created by George Lichtenstein under the pen name George Lichty. Lichty created Grin and Bear it in 1932 and it ran 83 years until 2015, making it the 10th-longest-running comic strip in American history. Frequent subjects included computers, excessive capitalism and Soviet bureaucracy. Situations in his cartoons often took place in the offices of commissars, or the showrooms of "Belchfire" dealers with enormous cars in the background. His series "Is Party Line, Comrade!" skewered Soviet bureaucrats, always wearing a five-pointed star medal with the label "Hero".
William Pierce Hoest was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of the gag panel series, The Lockhorns, distributed by King Features Syndicate to 500 newspapers in 23 countries, and Laugh Parade for Parade. He also created other syndicated strips and panels for King Features.
Ted Key was an American cartoonist and writer. He is best known as the creator of the cartoon panel Hazel, which was later the basis for a television series of the same name, and also the creator of the Peabody's Improbable History animated segments.
Henry Boltinoff was an American cartoonist who worked for both comic strips and comic books. He was a prolific cartoonist and drew many of the humor and filler strips that appeared in National Periodical comics from the 1940s through the 1960s.
Irving David Breger was an American cartoonist who created the syndicated Mister Breger (1945–1970), a gag panel series and Sunday comic strip known earlier as Private Breger and G.I. Joe. The series led to widespread usage of the term "G.I. Joe" during World War II and later. Dave Breger was his signature and the byline on his books. During World War II, his cartoons were signed Sgt. Dave Breger.
Frederick Theodore Rall III is an American columnist, syndicated editorial cartoonist, and author. His political cartoons often appear in a multi-panel comic-strip format and frequently blend comic-strip and editorial-cartoon conventions. At the peak, Rall's cartoons appeared in approximately 100 newspapers around the United States. He was president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists from 2008 to 2009.
Stan Fine, was an American gag cartoonist. He contributed to major magazines, signed his work with his full name but sometimes reversed his last name to submit cartoons under the signature Enif.
Quincy is an American syndicated newspaper comic strip published from July 13, 1970 to October 4, 1986, created and produced by cartoonist Ted Shearer. The series, about an African-American boy being raised by his grandmother in Harlem, was one of the earliest mainstream comic strips to star an African American in the lead role, following Dateline: Danger! (1968-1974) and Luther (1969-1986). Another predecessor, Wee Pals, features an African-American among an ensemble cast of different races and ethnicities.
Thaddeus Shearer was an African-American advertising art director and cartoonist whose 1970–1986 Quincy was one of the earliest mainstream comic strips to star an African American in the lead role.
