Today in the history of the American comic strip: September 30

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.

9.30.1968: Gary Trudeau’s Bull Tales, the precursor of Doonesbury, appears in the Yale Daily News while Trudeau is an undergraduate there.

9.30.2001: George Gately, the creator of Heathcliff, dies in Ridgewood, New Jersey, at 72. Launched in 1973, Heathcliff remains in print.

 

9.30.2022: The United States Postal Service releases a sheet of 20 stamps featuring characters from the Peanuts comic strip, in honor of creator Charles M. Schulz’s birth in 1922. The strip ran from 1950 to 2000, the year Schulz died, although it has continued in reruns.

Heathcliff

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.