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.
6.21.1916: Jack Sparling, the creator of Claire Voyant, is born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The strip ran for a mere five years in the 1940s.
6.21.1936: Gene Ahern introduces Room and Board after he discontinued Our Boarding House to make more money with a different syndicate. The new strip, which ran until 1953, shared some similarities with the old one.
6.21.1936: The Squirrel Cage makes its first appearance as a topper above Gene Ahern’s Room and Board. The Squirrel Cage is notable for the lead character’s frequent repetition of the seemingly nonsensical question “Nov shmoz ka pop?” The question was never translated in the strip, but it became a national catch phrase nonetheless.
6.21.1954: Pogo Possum, the title character in Walt Kelly’s Pogo, appears on the cover of Newsweek magazine.
6.21.1957: The cartoonist behind Bloom County, Outland, and Opus — Berkeley Breathed — is born in Los Angeles, California. He won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.
6.21.1981: Doug Marlette’s Kudzu adds a Sunday strip to its lineup. The comic ran from 1981 to 2007, when Marlette was killed in a car accident.
6.21.2020: Cartoonist Jan Eliot, appearing as a cartoon version of herself in her comic strip, Stone Soup, announces that she is retiring the comic, which went into syndication in 1995.
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| Kudzu |
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.
