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.
9.29.1947: Time magazine reports that Al Capp’s Li’l Abner disappeared from the Pittsburgh Press the previous week because a series of strips poked fun at the U.S. Senate.
9.29.1970: Gilbert Seldes dies. A writer and cultural critic, he wrote in The Seven Lively Arts (1924) that George Herriman’s Krazy Kat “is, to me, the most amusing and fantastic and satisfactory work of art produced in America to-day.”
9.29.2002: In a review of The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo, a collection of strips about a fictional species in Al Capp’s Li’l Abner, The Baltimore Sun says the comic “was never more celebrated than during the Time of the Shmoo, 1948 until roughly 1952 and then again in 1959. The Shmoo, any literate person must know, was one of history's most brilliant utopian satires.”
9.29.2012: John Forgetta, creator of The Meaning of Lila, announces that he cannot afford to continue the strip, which launched in 2003. The strip was written by Forgetta and three collaborators identified collectively as L. A. Rose.
9.29.2018: Hazel, a single-panel cartoon about a live-in maid working for a middle-class family, is canceled.
9.29.1947: Time magazine reports that Al Capp’s Li’l Abner disappeared from the Pittsburgh Press the previous week because a series of strips poked fun at the U.S. Senate.
9.29.1970: Gilbert Seldes dies. A writer and cultural critic, he wrote in The Seven Lively Arts (1924) that George Herriman’s Krazy Kat “is, to me, the most amusing and fantastic and satisfactory work of art produced in America to-day.”
9.29.2002: In a review of The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo, a collection of strips about a fictional species in Al Capp’s Li’l Abner, The Baltimore Sun says the comic “was never more celebrated than during the Time of the Shmoo, 1948 until roughly 1952 and then again in 1959. The Shmoo, any literate person must know, was one of history's most brilliant utopian satires.”
9.29.2012: John Forgetta, creator of The Meaning of Lila, announces that he cannot afford to continue the strip, which launched in 2003. The strip was written by Forgetta and three collaborators identified collectively as L. A. Rose.
9.29.2018: Hazel, a single-panel cartoon about a live-in maid working for a middle-class family, is canceled.
9.29.2024: Cartoonist Patrick McDonnell pays tribute to Richard F. Outcault's Hogans Alley with a Sunday Mutts strip promoting the spaying and neutering of pets and stray cats.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment