Today in the history of the American comic strip: December 8

American cartoonists and writers may not have invented the comic strip, but some argue that the comics, as we know them today, are an American creation. Clearly, the United States has played an outsize role in the development of this underappreciated art form.

12.8.1891: Percy Crosby is born in New York City. He created Skippy in 1923. The comic about fifth-grader Skippy Skinner ran for 22 years.

12.8.1894: E. C. Segar, the cartoonist behind Popeye, is born in Chester, Illinois. He introduced Popeye the Sailor in Thimble Theatre in 1929. 

12.8.1935: The Sunday page of Flapper Fanny Says, a strip launched by Ethel Hays in 1925, is discontinued.

12.8.1950: A villain named Doctor Plain makes his first appearance in Chester Gould's Dick Tracy. The strip has featured a long list of colorful, often bizarre-looking, evildoers over the years.
 

12.8.1964: Percy Crosby, the creator of Skippy, dies on his 73rd birthday in Kings Park, New York.

12.8.1980: Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County makes its debut.

 

12.8.2020: During a New York Times interview on the 40th anniversary of Bloom County’s debut, cartoonist Berkeley Breathed explained how his famed penguin, Opus, got his name. It happened at about 3 a.m. on "a blazing hot June Iowa night," when a disc jockey at Iowa City’s only rock station "yelled out the name of his next song from the group Kansas — one that could only be played at such an hour: Magnum Opus."

Bloom County

Most of the information listed here from one day to the next comes from two online sites -- Wikipedia, and Don Markstein's Toonopedia -- as well as 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics, edited by Maurice Horn. Note that my focus is on American newspaper comic strips (and the occasional foreign strip that gained popularity in the United States). Thus, comic books and exclusively online comics are not included here.