Today in the history of the American comic strip: April 26

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.

4.26.1952: Characters in Walt Kelly’s Pogo demand that the strip’s namesake, Pogo Possum, run for president, which he does. He loses, and tries again in 1956, with the same result.
 
4.26.1970: Steve Breen, the creator of Grand Avenue and a political cartoonist, is born in Los Angeles, California.

4.26.2001: Henry Boltinoff dies, at 87. The comic strips he worked on included Stoker the Broker, This and That, Woody Forrest and Hocus-Focus.
 
4.26.2004: Phyllis (Blossom) Wallet, the wife of Gasoline Alley’s Walt Wallet for nearly eight decades, dies in the strip, leaving Walt a widower.

4.26.2020: Coronavirus and the resulting safeguards, which made no appearance in the Sunday comics during the early weeks of the pandemic, turn up with increasing frequency in a growing number of strips.  In Doonesbury, for example, a character has a pizza delivered to a barn "to quarantine it," only to discover a week later that animals have eaten it in the interim.

Gasoline Alley

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.