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.
4.27.1890: Dudley Fisher is born in Columbus, Ohio. Right Around Home, which he launched as a Sunday strip in 1937, ran until 1964, with name changes along the way. A daily version titled Myrtle began in 1942.
4.27.1958: Rick O’Shay, a Western strip created by Stan Lynde, debuts with a Sunday strip. A daily feature began about two months later.
4.27.2016: The Library of American Comics releases the first of three volumes reprinting the Silly Symphonies comic strip, which ran from 1932 to 1942 as an adaptation of the animated short films produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939.
4.27.2020: Mark Tatulli, who launched Heart of the City in 1998, turns the strip over to Christina “Steenz” Stewart, whose drawing style is quite different than Tatulli’s. The switch makes Stewart one of the few female African-American cartoonists with a mainstream newspaper strip.
4.27.2020: The New York Times runs a story about the COVID-19 pandemic finally working its way into daily comic strips, based on interviews with several cartoonists. They include Mark Tatulli (Lio), Ray Billingsley (Curtis), Bill Hinds (Tank McNamara), Tony Carrillo (F Minus), Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha) and Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine).
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.
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