Today in the history of the American comic strip: April 11

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.

4.11.1906: Dale Messick, the creator of Brenda Starr, Reporter, is born in South Bend, Indiana. She received a Newspaper Comic Strip award from the National Cartoonists Society in 1975.

4.11.1941: In Blondie, newborn daughter Cookie joins the Bumstead clan, which previously consisted of son Alexander and parents Blondie and Dagwood.

4.11.1997: Faith Burrows, a nationally syndicated cartoonist during the Jazz Age, dies at 92.

4.11.1998: Cartoonist Jeff Shesol ends Thatch, a strip whose title character was an everyman who had an alter ego named Politically Correct Person. Shesol dropped the strip when he was hired as a speechwriter by President Bill Clinton.

4.11.2016: The Telegraph, a British newspaper, publishes an article headlined Popeye: 10 things you never knew. No. 1: Popeye and Olive Oyl were based on real people.

 

4.11.2022: In a classic example of a comic-strip crossover, Dick Tracy makes an appearance in Gasoline Alley.

 

Popeye and Olive Oyl

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.