Newspaper Comics General

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'Tis time that I introduce you all to some of the great men of newspaper cartooning during its golden age, roughly from the turn of the 20th century to World War II - the days when comic strips took up a whole page on Sundays, and when the form was at its most popular and creative.

First off:
Little_nemo_the_walking_bed.jpg

Winsor McCay - one of the greatest artists to have ever worked on the form, most famous for Little Nemo in Slumberland, which boasted great, detailed art. With this and with his earlier Dream of the Rarebit Fiend he managed to really capture the feel of dreams in print like no one else has done since, not even the anime film done by TMS.

Krazy-Kat-17th-June-1917.png

George Herriman, of course, was famous for Krazy Kat, a masterpiece of surrealist comic art. He was also perhaps the first really successful black cartoonist as well (though in the past it was debated what race Herriman really was the consensus is that he was black, but could pass for white).

popeye10c.gif

The original Popeye comics by E.C. Segar are brilliant in ways that the Fleischer cartoons - which were brilliant themselves - were not. It was well-written stuff, with tons of great characters who hardly ever appeared in film or TV form, unless you count the Robin Williams movie.

mickey-mouse-suicide_1.jpg

In the area of licensed comics, the Disney stuff is so good it's become a tradition unto itself, and this is where it all started, with Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse comics - he was to Mickey what Carl Barks was to Donald Duck, in that his comics were great adventure stuff. (There ought to have been a show inspired by the comics à la DuckTales.)

pogo-malarkey.gif

This one post-dates World War II but I think Pogo should be covered anyway. Walt Kelly was a genius at political satire.

There are many other names I could think of right now, but those are the ones that come to mind.
 
'Tis time that I introduce you all to some of the great men of newspaper cartooning during its golden age, roughly from the turn of the 20th century to World War II - the days when comic strips took up a whole page on Sundays, and when the form was at its most popular and creative.

First off:
Little_nemo_the_walking_bed.jpg

Winsor McCay - one of the greatest artists to have ever worked on the form, most famous for Little Nemo in Slumberland, which boasted great, detailed art. With this and with his earlier Dream of the Rarebit Fiend he managed to really capture the feel of dreams in print like no one else has done since, not even the anime film done by TMS.

Krazy-Kat-17th-June-1917.png

George Herriman, of course, was famous for Krazy Kat, a masterpiece of surrealist comic art. He was also perhaps the first really successful black cartoonist as well (though in the past it was debated what race Herriman really was the consensus is that he was black, but could pass for white).

popeye10c.gif

The original Popeye comics by E.C. Segar are brilliant in ways that the Fleischer cartoons - which were brilliant themselves - were not. It was well-written stuff, with tons of great characters who hardly ever appeared in film or TV form, unless you count the Robin Williams movie.

mickey-mouse-suicide_1.jpg

In the area of licensed comics, the Disney stuff is so good it's become a tradition unto itself, and this is where it all started, with Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse comics - he was to Mickey what Carl Barks was to Donald Duck, in that his comics were great adventure stuff. (There ought to have been a show inspired by the comics à la DuckTales.)

pogo-malarkey.gif

This one post-dates World War II but I think Pogo should be covered anyway. Walt Kelly was a genius at political satire.

There are many other names I could think of right now, but those are the ones that come to mind.
I believe you covered most of the bases here! Of course there's also Rudolph Dirks' The Katzenjammer Kids, one of the first strips to use speech bubbles, it's legacy is still indirectly felt today, though the kids' antics were inspired from a much earlier creation of Wilhem Busch's Max und Moritz. After a bitter dispute over the rights between Dirks and his former syndicator, he got the rights to take the characters with him to another syndicate, where he continued the strip as "Captain & The Kids" while King Features' The Katzenjammer Kids continued to run simultaneously for decades to come.
crumblingpaper_katzenjammers02.jpg

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Another early notable is R. F. Outcault's "The Yellow Kid", who later gave rise to the term "Yellow Journalism".
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Another creation of Outcault's, though perhaps not as well known today, but lived on as a brand of children's shoes for generations was Buster Brown and his dog Tige.
buster01.jpg


Another strip of early renown with it's focus on the emerging suburban landscape of America was Fontaine Fox's Toonerville Folks. It's colorful folk and the trolley that takes them to-and-fro would also found its way into a number of animated shorts from the Van Beuren Studios.
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Some notable others (pre-Peanuts)...
Bud Fisher - Mutt and Jeff
George McManus - Bringing Up Father
Cliff Sterrett - Polly and Her Pals
Sidney Smith - The Gumps
Frank King - Gasoline Alley
Billy DeBeck - Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
Harold Gray - Little Orphan Annie
Claire Briggs - When A Feller Needs A Friend
Otto Soglow - The Little King
Carl Anderson - Henry
Milton Caniff - Terry & The Pirates
Alex Raymond - Flash Gordon
Hal Foster - Prince Valiant
Chester Gould - Dick Tracy
Will Eisner - The Spirit
Rube Goldberg - Boob McNutt
Bill Holman - Smokey Stover
Milt Gross
Frank Williard - Moon Mullins
Al Capp - Li'l Abner
Jimmy Hatlo - Little Iodine

I think the best strip in recent years that always gives me a laugh is Bill Griffith's Zippy, I love it when Bill talks at panels like this!
 
Not to wake up a dead thread months later, but because a certain comic strip celebrated it's 40 birthday recently, someone did a vid talking about what makes it sucks today.
 
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