Today in the history of the American comic strip: September 25

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.

9.25.1863: Richard F. Outcault, creator of The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown, dies in Flushing, New York, at 65.

9.25.1933: Dan Dunn, whose eponymous hero is a hardboiled detective, is syndicated by Publishers Syndicate as a daily strip. A Sunday page was added later.
 
9.25.1955: Dondi debuts. Created by Gus Edson and Irwin Hasen, it starred a young war orphan, for whom the strip is named.

9.25.2003: Don Asmussen unveils Bad Reporter, a strip that parodies newspaper articles.

9.25.2003: Artist, playwright and screenwriter Herb Gardner dies in New York City, at 68. While in college he began drawing The Nebbishes, a comic strip that was syndicated from 1959 to 1961.
 
9.25.2006: Universal Press Syndicate announces that Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks, ostensibly on hiatus, will not return.

 

9.25.2022: The Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Ca., unveils “The Spark of Schulz,” a centennial celebration of the Peanuts creator’s birth in 1922. In 1950, Peanuts debuted in a mere seen newspapers, but when the strip drew to a close in 2,000, it ran in more than 2,600 newspapers worldwide.

The Yellow Kid

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.