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.
Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which originally ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where animals can talk.
Eugene Leslie Ahern was a cartoonist best known for his bombastic Major Hoople, a pompous character who appeared in the long-run syndicated gag panel Our Boarding House. Many of Ahern's comic strips took a surreal or screwball approach, notably The Squirrel Cage with its nonsensical catchphrase "Nov shmoz ka pop?"
Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune is an American action-adventure comic strip created by Roy Crane that was syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association beginning on Sunday, July 30, 1933. The strip ran for more than five decades until it was discontinued on October 1, 1988.
A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.
A panel is an individual frame, or single drawing, in the multiple-panel sequence of a comic strip or comic book, as well as a graphic novel. A panel consists of a single drawing depicting a frozen moment. When multiple panels are present, they are often, though not always, separated by a short amount of space called a gutter.
The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary news service to the Scripps Howard News Service; it later evolved into a general syndicate best known for syndicating the comic strips Alley Oop, Our Boarding House, Freckles and His Friends, The Born Loser, Frank and Ernest, and Captain Easy / Wash Tubbs; in addition to an annual Christmas comic strip. Along with United Feature Syndicate, the NEA was part of United Media from 1978 to 2011, and is now a division of Andrews McMeel Syndication. The NEA once selected college All-America teams, and presented awards in professional football and professional basketball.
Mickey Finn was an American comic strip created by cartoonist Lank Leonard, which was syndicated to newspapers from April 6, 1936 to September 10, 1977. The successful lighthearted strip struck a balance between comedy and drama. It was adapted to a 400-page Little Big Book and was reprinted in several comic book series throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
An Altar Boy Named Speck, also known as Speck the Altar Boy, is an American gag cartoon comic strip series created by Tut LeBlanc. The strip first appeared March 1, 1951 in Catholic Action of the South, which was the official paper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans. Margaret Ahern continued the Speck comic upon LeBlanc's 1953 death, drawing it until 1979.
James Robert Williams was a Canadian cartoonist who signed his work J. R. Williams. He was best known for his long-run daily syndicated panel Out Our Way. As noted by Coulton Waugh in his 1947 book The Comics, anecdotal evidence indicated that more Williams' cartoons were clipped and saved than were other newspaper comics. A newspaper promotion of 1930 compared him to poets Eugene Field and James Whitcomb Riley.
Out Our Way was an American single-panel comic strip series by Canadian-American comic strip artist J. R. Williams. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association, the cartoon series was noted for its depiction of American rural life and the various activities and regular routines of families in small towns. The panel introduced a cast of continuing characters, including the cowboy Curly and ranch bookkeeper Wes. Out Our Way ran from 1922 to 1977, at its peak appearing in more than 700 newspapers.
Bill Holman was an American cartoonist who drew the classic comic strip Smokey Stover from 1935 until he retired in 1973. Distributed through the Chicago Tribune syndicate, it had the longest run of any strip in the screwball genre. Holman signed some strips with the pseudonym Scat H. He once described himself as "always inclined to humor and acting silly."
Ethel Hays was an American syndicated cartoonist specializing in flapper-themed comic strips in the 1920s and 1930s. She drew in Art Deco style. In the later part of her career, during the 1940s and 1950s, she became one of the country's most accomplished children's book illustrators.
Clare Victor Dwiggins was an American cartoonist who signed his work Dwig. Dwiggins created a number of comic strips and single-panel cartoons for various American newspapers and newspaper syndicates from 1897 until 1945, including his best-known strip, the long-running School Days.
Flapper Fanny Says was a single-panel daily cartoon series starting on January 26, 1925, with a Sunday page following on August 7, 1932. Created by Ethel Hays, each episode featured a flapper illustration and a witticism. The Sunday strip concluded on December 8, 1935; the daily panel continued until June 29, 1940.
Irving Walter Phillips was a noted American cartoonist, playwright, television scriptwriter, author, illustrator and educator. He is best remembered for his daily newspaper comic panel The Strange World of Mr. Mum.
The Strange World of Mr. Mum was a surreal humor comic panel by Irving Phillips which was published from May 5, 1958, to 1974. At its peak, it appeared daily in 180 newspapers in 22 countries. Initially distributed by the Hall Syndicate, it was later handled by the Field Newspaper Syndicate. A Sunday edition began October 4, 1959.
Room and Board is the title of two American comic strips. The first, created by Sals Bostwick, debuted on May 21, 1928. He drew it until his death in 1930, after which it was continued by cartoonists Brandon Walsh, Benbee, Darrell McClure, Dow Walling and Herman Thomas before coming to an end in 1932.
William Henry Freyse was an American cartoonist notable for his three decades of work on Our Boarding House, syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Bela P. Zaboly, a.k.a. Bill Zaboly, was a first-generation Hungarian-American cartoonist best known for his work as the sole illustrator for the daily and weekly strips of Thimble Theatre’sPopeye from 1939 to 1959. He worked with two writers over this two-decade run leading the strip. Zaboly's well-known and distinctively illustrated signature used the initials BZ with the "B" formed by the wings of a bumblebee. In headings for Thimble Theatre, his typeset credit line often used his Americanized name, Bill Zaboly rather than his Hungarian given name, Bela Zaboly.
