See You in the Funny Pages: NEWSPAPER & MAGAZINE Strips

Will Eisner’s The Spirit at Quality

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« I tell ya, Spirit… this neighborhood is like a lit firecracker… »

I’m surprised that it took us this long to get to Will Eisner and his signature creation, The Spirit. Is it perhaps too obvious a topic? Nah. Though the ink and the pixels may flow, and even if everyone and his chiropractor has already waxed rhapsodic about old Will, the subject retains its depths of evergreen freshness.

For most generations of cartoonists, Eisner is an irresistible influence. My own initial encounter came in the early 1970s, when I glimpsed ads for Warren’s Spirit reprints in the rear section of Famous Monsters of Filmland. And then I was introduced to his groundbreaking style and storytelling approach… only it wasn’t, in this case, quite his.

In 1975, I had stumbled upon a Dutch collection of WWII-era Spirit newspaper strips (The Daily Spirit, Real Free Press, 1975-76… a publication designed by none other than Joost Swarte), and I was captivated… by the ghost work of no less than Plastic Man creator Jack Cole!

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« You can do that in a comic strip? » was my general feeling as a ten-year-old aspiring cartoonist. From The Spirit daily strip, January 3, 1942 (scripted by Manly Wade Wellman, illustrated by Jack Cole).

I won’t go over the action-packed history of the character… what I’ll focus on here instead is inextricably linked to Eisner’s terrific business acumen: having held onto his character’s ownership, he could shop him around the publishing world, a process still unfolding to this day, well beyond his own passing.

The Spirit, that well-travelled rascal, has witnessed his exploits bearing many a publisher’s imprint, from Quality to Fiction House, through I.W. (naughty, naughty!), Harvey, Kitchen Sink, Warren, and DC… so far. And the coolest thing is that Eisner was along for most of the ride, creating glorious new cover visuals for the venerable archives.

Today, we’ll focus on Quality’s output (1942-50), which alone was contemporary to the strip’s tenure. About half of it was Eisner, but I’m no purist: the man hired some of the finest ghosts in the medium’s history, when it came to both story and art. To name but a few favourites: Manly Wade Wellman, Jerry Grandenetti, Jules Feiffer, Wally Wood…

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Speaking of Jack Cole… before he got his own title, The Spirit was featured for a couple of years in Quality’s Police Comics anthology. He occasionally ran into his fellow headliner, Plastic Man. This is Police Comics no. 23 (October, 1943). Cover by Jack Cole. Read this issue here.
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This is The Spirit no. 12 (Summer 1948), cover by Eisner, and featuring a bunch of Manly Wade Wellman / Lou Fine Spirit tales, which is to say “Eye, Feets, and Lock” (August 12th, 1945), “The Case of the Missing Undertaker” (September 30, 1945), “Skelvin’s School for Actors” (November 18, 1945), “The Whitlock Diamond Caper” (June 24, 1945) and “Nitro” (October 21, 1945).
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This is The Spirit no. 13 (Autumn, 1948), cover by Eisner, and gathering a clutch of Wellman / Fine outings, i.e. “Mr. Martin’s Pistols” (September 23, 1945), “Red Scandon” (June 3, 1945), “The Strange Case of the Two $5.00 Bills” (December 9, 1945), “Mr. Exter” (May 27, 1945) and “Vaudeville Vinnie” (November 4, 1945).
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Another high-wire master class in design and tension from Mr. Eisner. This is Quality Comics’ The Spirit no. 14 (Winter, 1948), featuring reprints of Spirit adventures (“The Alibi Factory“, “The Kuttup Shop“, “Prominent Executives Vanish“, “The Masked Magician“, “Belle La Trivet“) from 1945, written by Chapel Hill‘s foremost scribe, Manly Wade Wellman, and illustrated by Lou Fine and the Quality shop.
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This is The Spirit no. 15 (Spring, 1949), cover by Eisner, and gathering a bouquet of Wellman / Fine offerings, namely “Rosilind Ripsley” (June 10, 1945), “Madame Lerna’s Crystal Ball” (September 16, 1945), and “The Case of the Will O’Wisp Murders” (November 5, 1944).
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This is The Spirit no. 16 (Autumn, 1948), boasting an Eisner cover and rounding up a rogues’ gallery of  Spirit exploits scripted by Bill Woolfolk: “The Case of the Uncanny Cat” (October 8, 1944) and “Jackie Boy” (September 9, 1944) and Manly Wade Wellman: “The Case of the Headless Burglar” (September 24, 1944), all pencilled by Lou Fine.
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I’ll bet Dolan could kick himself if he wasn’t so tidily trussed up. Fooled by a pretty… er, face again. This is The Spirit no. 20 (April 1950), featuring “The Vortex” (September 8, 1946); “The Siberian Dagger” (January 27, 1946); “Magnifying Glasses” (May 26, 1946), plus a couple of Flatfoot Burns stories by Al Stahl. Cover by Will Eisner, and a gold star and a hearty round of applause for the colourist. 

As for the insides… I’m tickled to inform you that all of Quality’s issues of The Spirit are available gratis on comicbookplus.com. Enjoy!

– RG

p.s. For more (much more!) of Will Eisner’s famous creation, just click on the umbrella category, THAT’S THE SPIRIT!

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Señor Arriola!

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We’d like to wish a happy birthday to Mexican cartoonist and animator Gustavo “Gus” Arriola, creator of beautiful, experimental, charming (am I running out of superlatives yet?) comic strip Gordo, published for an impressive some-forty-odd years (between 1941 and 1985, to be exact). Arriola was born on July 17th, 1917 and died in 2008, when he was 90 years old.

Gordo was designed to be a Mexican version of Li’l Abner, but Arriola quickly realized that his strip was relying on stereotypes of Mexican culture as seen through American eyes. He strove to make it truer to his mother culture, making Gordo (the main character – his real name being Perfecto Salazar Lopez, with his nickname more or less translating to « Fatso ») “an accidental ambassador” for Mexican mores.

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The strip featured a lot of animals, and its plotlines often pivoted around concerns about the environment. It also regularly included recipes. For instance, Gordo’s beans and cheese recipe from a strip in 1948 got the comic strip into 60 extra newspapers. And, significantly, Gordo also had gorgeous, inventive art!

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This sweet strip was scanned from a collection of Gus Arriola strips, “Gordo’s Critters: The Collected Cartoons”, published in 1989 and sadly out of print. Gus Arriola had a wonderful drawing style and a bouncy imagination, but it’s his sense of humour I like best: gently philosophical, hilarious but always kind to its characters.

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Sunday strip from January 25th, 1959.

Aside from being a music aficionado, Gus Arriola was also a great connaisseur of art. R.C. Harvey, the editor/writer of “Accidental Ambassador Gordo: The Comics Strip Art of Gus Arriola” mentions Arriola’s love for jazz: “[he] finally [settled] in Carmel, where he met his life-long friend and fellow cartoonist, Eldon Dedini, and they both became fixtures at Doc’s Lab, where Hank Ketcham and other habitués of the place met weekly to admire jazz and tell stories.” Read the rest of his lovely article here.

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Sunday from June 11th, 1958.

In 1999, Arriola was interviewed by John Province for Hogan’s Alley no. 6 – it’s well worth a read if you’ve got some spare quality time! You can read the interview here.

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Sunday from 1958.

Want to see more? Head over to the Fabulous Fifites blog, where many scans of Sundays strips are available for perusal. (Ger Apeldoorn, the blog’s author, did a monumental job of scanning newspaper strips for our enjoyment.)

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~ ds

Richard Thompson’s Far-from-poor Almanac

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Richard Thompson*, cartoonist extraordinaire and an exceptionally kind and talented man, tragically passed away in 2016 – and I don’t like to throw the word “tragically” about without good cause. His was a rare combination of wit, imagination, and style – think of how often one comes across an excellent writer whose material suffers from his poor drawing ability, or an artist whose beautiful art is like en empty shell, with nary a story nor convincing characterization in sight. Thompson had ideas, tons of ideas, and he was able to translate them into visuals with a dynamic pen-line and elegant watercolours.

His first truly successful strip was Richard’s Poor Almanac, which ran in the Washington Post for seven years or so from 1997. These little gems have been collected in “Richard’s Poor Almanac: 12 Months of Misinformation in Handy Cartoon Form” in 2004, but sadly this wonderful volume is quite out of print. You can get your fix from GoComics, however, as they’re re-running the whole thing here.

*not the musician.

Here’s a few strips from Richard’s Poor Almanac that always make me chuckle, no matter how many times I see them.

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The sprawling, madcap Almanac presented “misinformation in handy cartoon form” on subjects ranging from traditional almanac fodder like weather phenomena and local fauna to entertainment and political news. “The ideal cartoon for the Almanac was made up off the top of my head with no research, with only its own comic logic holding it together,” noted the artist in The Art of Richard Thompson. (Andrew Farago for the Comics Journal.)

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It may not be spring anymore, but this is still perfectly relevant. Just trade “magic bean-stalk” for “zucchini”.

You may have heard about the Almanac thanks to the fame of “Make the Pie Higher”.

«Upon learning that George W. Bush had opted not to invite an official poet to his inauguration ceremony in January 2001, Thompson composed his own poem from Bush malapropisms, and assembled them into a free-form verse entitled “Make the Pie Higher”. The cartoon was widely circulated online over the next year, was set to music by multiple composers, and earned its own entry on the fact-checking website Snopes.com. » (source)

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~ ds

The Observant Ambulations of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer

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« This peephole was smeared when I moved in »

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« A RAW One-Shot » (1991, Penguin Books)

Originally appearing in alternative weekly The New York Press in the late 1980s, Ben Katchor’s Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer belongs to that most exotic breed of comic strips, those that suddenly awake the mind to the medium’s grand possibilities. Said experience can be abrupt and dizzying, but in this particular instance, it’s soothing and bittersweet, full of rightful yearning for things that possibly were or surely should have been, glimpsed in a daydream by the low flame of the fantastic mundane.

Mr. Katchor (born November 19, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York) is blessed with a vision of startling depth and singularity. By its nature and scope, it’s not everyone’s thing, but the rest of us likely wind up as lifelong admirers, and isn’t that just the ideal audience?

Much has been written elsewhere, often brilliantly, about Mr. Katchor and his œuvre; it’s work of a calibre to inspire theses, dissertations and papers, so I’ll mostly stick to presenting some samples. The passionate plaudits these strips have inspired tend to obscure the fact that most people just haven’t had the pleasure, or at least the opportunity, of encountering such rich material.

These vignettes were collected in 1991 as Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay. Oddly enough, it was the only one of Katchor’s books to go out of print… the situation was remedied in 2016 by Montréal’s Drawn & Quarterly, who brought it back in a lovely hardcover edition.

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While on vacation, my accountant fell in love with a hot sauce manufactured on the small Caribbean island of Dominica. He’s since devoted considerable energy to renewing his stock of the stuff, which has involved much international horse trading.

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Montréal has its share of architectural remnants of bygone commercial enterprise; arguably, the most famous is the “Giant Milk Bottle“, but no, it isn’t full of milk.

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This melancholy vignette ties in quite nicely with a recent piece from Atlas Obscura noting the fading lingo and diminishing rôle of the soda jerks of New York City. Read it over a mug of murk with a choker hole.

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From the collection’s back cover blurb: « In a vast and shadowy city of old skyscrapers, neglected warehouses, juice stands, and coffee shops, Julius Knipl, a rumpled, middle-aged man in a suit and hat, wanders the streets photographing buildings and pondering the details: the scent of the past that seeps into the present; the ghosts of other values and culture embedded in the urban landscape; people and behaviors almost gone that linger on. He sees what others overlook, a Borscht-belt Buster Keaton. »

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The esteemed Mr. Katchor.

-RG

Tentacle Tuesday: Popeye, the Sailor Man

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Since Popeye’s a sailor, one would expect him to run into a lot of octopuses during his adventures. It doesn’t happen nearly as often as one would think, actually, but there’s still enough encounters for a decent-sized tentacle journey. Here we go!

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Popeye: Danger, Ahoy! Big Little Book no. 5768 (Whitman, 1969). Does anybody know who painted this cover?

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« Zombie Popeye » (and, more importantly for our current topic of discussion, Chtulhu-Olive!) by the talented Roger Langridge. He posted this so-called sketch (how detailed can a drawing be before it stops being a sketch?) on his website on September 2014… and the original is still for sale, I believe! Go here. This isn’t the first time Langridge tentacles slither into a blog post – for instance, go visit « Tentacle Tuesday: pirates and treasure, oh my».

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A variant cover for Popeye Classics no. 48, July 2016. These Craig Yoe reprints of Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye are great fun, by the way, and I highly recommend them for the proverbial children-at-heart.

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Original art for a Popeye Sunday, published on July 9th, 1958. The art is by Bela (Bill) Zaboly, who worked on Thimble Theater starting from 1939 and until Bud Sagendorf took over in 1959.

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A chunk of story in which an octopus makes a very minor appearance… from a strip by Bug Sagendorf published on October 7th, 1960.

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A panel from “Hitchhikers!” by Bug Sagendorf, published in Popeye Comics no. 19 (January-March 1952). Read the full zany story here. (Technically, this is a Sherm story, but let’s not split hairs.) I’m not surprised the octopus looks like a spy, wearing a hairpiece like that. Or is it just a nest for the birdies?

– ds

Tentacle Tuesday: the Many-Armed Comic Strip

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Today’s Tentacle Tuesday is home to that conventional, oft-seen beast, the comic strip. Without getting into the complexities of defining this term, I use “comic strip” here to refer specifically to the (syndicated) newspaper comic strip, although by now the newer ones may have never seen print in a newspaper, only online.

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There’s one that doesn’t need an introduction. Go visit his website, though!

Most of these are available for perusal on one of the comics-clustering websites, such as gocomics.com, or sometimes directly on a strip’s own website (in which case it also becomes a webcomic strip, I guess). I’ve provided the links in the description.

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Overboard by Chip Dunham, July 3rd, 2010. Overboard’s been around for almost 30 years.

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Brevity, March 27th, 2011. This strip was created by by Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry, and for the first couple of years (it’s been around since 2005), it was plotted and drawn by them. Dan Thompson took over at some point… around 2012 or something like it (I can’t find any hard and fast information online). The strip has a home here, but frankly it’s not really worth visiting (terrible art, dumb jokes).

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Once again, Poncho gets his fishy friend into trouble. Pooch Café, May 6th, 2018. I hate Poncho and think his owners should have kicked him out a long time ago, but there’s enough characters and surreal situations to tolerate his presence in this fun strip.

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Sherman’s Lagoon by Jim Toomey, 20th April 2016, also around for almost thirty years (it made its debut in 1991).

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Not to forget our classics! One of the nice things about Calvin and Hobbes is that it was never ghost-written – when Bill Watterson quit it in 1995, that was it. However, you can catch re-runs in many places, for instance here.

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Liō (not forgetting the accent!) by Mark Tatulli and distributed by the Universal Press Syndicate since 2006. This is the first appearance of Ishmael, Liō’s cephalopod best friend. Tatulli says that he at first wanted to make Ishmael into a mother figure for motherless Liō, but that’s not the way things worked out.

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Liō routinely encounters tentacles, so it would be a long list indeed, but here’s another favourite. Both strips were plucked from the collection Liō’s Astonishing Tales: From the Haunted Crypt of Unknown Horrors, 2009.

We started on a Bizarro note, so let’s wrap things up with another.

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~ ds

Growing Old Gracelessly With Broom-Hilda

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« Modern technology has tripled the life expectancy of the professional insulter »

It was forty-eight years ago today, which is to say Thursday, April the 20th, 1970, when a certain short, dumpy, cheap-cigar-chomping 1500-year-old green witch first crash-landed into the funny pages, though we wouldn’t know she was green until that Sunday.

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The cast’s principal players: Broom-Hilda, Gaylord Buzzard and Irwin Troll. Colour by Barbara Marker.

Russell Myers‘ (born October 9, 1938 in Pittsburg, Kansas, and still with us) Broom-Hilda has been easy to take for granted… it’s never been a trendy strip, but it’s always had its adherents, a somewhat enlightened, or at least less dim than average, passel of loonies, to which I proudly belong.

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One of my favourite B-H collections… an oversize one-shot issued in 1978. And don’t let the subtitle throw you: *all* Broom-Hilda books are profoundly silly.

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An undated strip from 1970.

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Grelber always gets the last laugh. August 17, 1973. Bet you never knew that Grelber shared a genteel hobby with Nero Wolfe.

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This Sunday strip comes from just about a year into the run, April 4, 1971, back when Broomie still was allowed to enjoy all of her little hobbies. A day in the life of the resilient Irwin Troll, Mother Nature’s Personal Friend.

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Low-key and surreal, the March 11, 1974 strip. Pour me a cup of that jaunty java!

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Wise words from the strip’s resident intellectual, Gaylord Buzzard (Sept. 13, 1973)

Over the long years, the changing times and the powers-that-be had Broomie clean up her act, stripping her of her beloved vices one after the other. Well, she’s held on to her gluttony and lust, but no longer indulges her passion for third-rate tobacco and beer. Still, since there was so much more in the strip’s DNA, the eschewing of Broomie’s low-down habits was not fatal.

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The author as he appeared in 1985’s Broom-Hilda Book One (and only), in the “Blackthorne’s Comic-Strip Preserves” series. « To retain this standard of madness requires a good deal of sane and sensible methods. The gags don’t just occur to Russell; he creates them. Like all humorists, he observes where others only look. Others see a man going through a revolving door, Russell sees a man stuck in a revolving door. Perverse, perhaps, but perversity is the trigger of humor. Why else do we laugh at a man stepping into a manhole? »

But how I miss that nasty no-goodnik Grebler!

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Music has its charms, even Grelber music.

Keep up with the current state of Broom-Hilda right here, dear!

-RG

Jules Feiffer’s Triumph

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It’s Jules Feiffer’s birthday! Break out the bubbly (not the cheap stuff)!*

Born on January 26th, 1929, today he turns a respectable 89. He’s still releasing new books, so let’s wish him many more happy and productive years.

If a book with no pictures has no use (according to Lewis Carroll’s Alice), I figure a blog post with no pictures is equally devoid of purpose, so here’s a few fun Feiffer bagatelles.

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“Explainers: The Complete Village Voice Strips” was supposed to collect everything in four handy volumes, but unfortunately so far there’s only been one (published in 2008) and no mention of others to come. Still, it’s well worth seeking out. Check out an excellent review of it here, tempting you to it with this pithy quote:

« Explainers is a ‘dipping book’. It’s not something to storm your way through but something to return to over and again. Feiffer’s thoughts and language, his observations and questions are fearsomely eternal. Best of all, Feiffer’s expressive drawing is a masterclass in style and economy all by itself. »

In his earlier years, Feiffer’s excitable, skittish pen was a little more subdued. Case in point: Clifford, Feiffer’s first published strip.

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Kewpies #1, spring 1949.

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Clifford first appeared in Kewpies #1 (spring 1949), published by Will Eisner, when Feiffer was but 20. In « Out of Line : the Art of Jules Feiffer » (2015), Martha Fay explains that Feiffer had the style of Walt Kelly’s Pogo in mind when he created Clifford.

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Robert Boyd writes: « From 1949 to 1951, Jules Feiffer drew Clifford, which appeared in Will Eisner’s The Spirit Section, an eight-page comic book insert syndicated to newspapers. » This particular strip first saw print in the January 14, 1951 section.

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Feiffer’s lively cover to his 1961 strip collection Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl (Random House)

Nowadays, Feiffer is writing and illustrating children’s books. In an interview with Gary Groth, he explained that « They represent the gentler, sweeter world that, as we grow older, we go about corrupting first chance we get. No, that’s too cynical. Second and third chance we get. » They may be intended for children, but they are, for the most part, every bit as clever and multi-layered as the Feiffer-for-adults.

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1995, Harper Collins.

What kind of plot would a Feiffer-book-for-children have, you ask?

« Prince Roger sets out eagerly on a quest and finds a few adventures, a lot of friends, a damsel or two in distress (not!) and himself, in the end. A ‘carrier of joy’ whose mere presence causes everyone to laugh uncontrollably, Roger finds cruelty and kindness equally amusing, and expects his quest to be a lark. It’s anything but: As Roger passes through the Forever Forest, nearly starves at the Dastardly Divide, sees people at their worst in the Valley of Vengeance, and temporarily despairs in the Mountains of Malice, he sobers up, learns to care for others, becomes an expert peacemaker, does Good Deeds, and falls in love with Lady Sadie, who says what she thinks as she repeatedly saves his bacon. »

Read an excellent (though 10 year-old) article from New York Times about Feiffer here.

~ ds / RG

*A triumphant return to the home town
Treated with love and respect
A special school assembly
Before they would have broken my neck
My favourite colour
An E-type Jag
Roll out the red carpet
A glass of champagne – Not the cheap stuff!

(Black Box Recorder, « Being Number One »)

“He sure is my heap hep dream beam!”* In praise of Bob Lubbers (1922-2017)

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Mr. Lubbers (pronounced LEW-bers) , born January 10, 1922, left us last summer at the venerable age of ninety-five. As it happens, he also left us some fine, fine artwork.

My initial encounter with Bob Lubbers‘ work came in 1978, when he provided a handful of covers and a couple of issues to Marvel’s Human Fly, a book about masked Canadian stuntman Rick Rojatt, whose real-life, non-funnybook story is a gripping read**. Anyway, the series was usually pencilled either by Lee Elias*** or by the mighty Frank Robbins; by the time Lubbers came along, Robbins had rightly had his fill, given the comics industry the one-finger salute and decamped to México to retire and paint in peace. Wise man.

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Lubbers’ fourth and final The Human Fly cover (no. 16, Dec. 1978, Marvel). Inks by Bob McLeod. Inside, “Niagara Nightmare!” is written by Bill Mantlo, with art by Lubbers and Ricardo Villamonte.

I then became aware of Mr. Lubbers as one of the Golden Age’s primo ‘good girl’ cover artists, with Fiction House, no less. That’s what I’ll chiefly focus on here. Can you honestly blame me? Unlike some of his peers (hello, Bill Ward), he wasn’t just good at, and interested in, the saucy depiction of lightly-clad sirens: he could draw anything with finesse and brio.

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Mouth-breathing, slope-browed… I guess he’s not the hero in this one. Wings Comics no. 82 (June 1947, Fiction House.)

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Arguably the most (in)famous of Lubbers’ Wings covers. “Classic bondage and headlights cover!”, cry the ancient fanboys. Wings Comics no. 90 (Feb. 1948, Fiction House.)

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If our man of the hour had rescue in mind for the imperilled damsel, dropping a payload (you heard me!) a hundred feet away from her is likely to… make the situation a bit messy. Wings Comics no. 91 (March 1948, Fiction House.)

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« Seriously? The engine is on fire, we’re being strafed, I’m hogtied and helpless, and he’s still going to threaten me with a gun? » Wings Comics no. 94 (June 1948, Fiction House.)

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The life of a crocodile dentist isn’t an easy one, but the satisfaction of a job well done is its own reward. Wings Comics no. 98 (Oct. 1948, Fiction House.)

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Here comes the mother of all rope burns, sister. You’re supposed to grab the loop! Wings Comics no. 100 (Dec. 1948, Fiction House.)

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The exception to the Fiction House Wings set: Authentic Police Cases no. 5 (Oct. 1948, St. John.) The babes never could resist a bad boy.

Yet farther along, I would learn of his large and distinguished body of comic strip work: Long Sam, Secret Agent X-9, Tarzan, The Saint, Lil’ Abner, and best of all, his most personal work, Robin Malone (1967-70). On the latter, I can’t praise enough Tom Heintjes‘ definitive article (Hogan’s Alley no. 19, 2014), here’s a version of it: www.hoganmag.com/blog/the-life-and-death-of-robin-bob-lubbers-robin-malone

… and don’t forget to scroll down, down, down so you can sample (though it’s never enough!) the article’s lavish bounty Robin Malone Sunday strips.

*From the Captain Wings adventure « The Spider and the Fly-Guy » (Wings Comics no. 82) Read it right here (or pick from a generous selection of Wings Comics issues at Comicbookplus.com)

**speaking of which, check out this fine piece about The Human Fly’s rocket bike and the stunt that ended his career: http://kymichaelson.us/human-fly. You have to admit that jumping over 27 buses is a tad ambitious… and he was originally going to try for 36!

***likely picked for the job due to his fine work on another masked stuntperson character, Harvey’s The Black Cat.

– RG

Hey, Easy With the Jackhammer!

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I understand that this image has to do with the tradition of greeting the new year by banging on pots and pans and generally making a racket, but I presume that both sailor-garbed primate and pneumatic drill were optional, particularly in times of scarcity.

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Art by Stephen Douglas, from Famous Funnies no. 138 (January, 1946). FF number one (July, 1934) was likely the second comic book issued, and the first one *sold*. It was published by Eastern Color / Dell Comics.

Read the issue here: http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=35200

And while we’re on the subject of ushering in the New Year by making a hellacious din, let’s treat ourselves to a couple of relevant Cul de sac pieces. The first returns us to the strip’s formative, water-coloured years, when it appeared weekly (2004-2007) in The Washington Post‘s weekly magazine section.

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The Washington Post Magazine, Dec. 31st, 2006. Richard Thompson: « From when Petey played the trombone, and I found it too hard to draw. »

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The master tackled the theme again in this brief sequence from Dec. 31, 2008- Jan. 1st, 2009.

Nothing left to do now but to wish a joyful 2018 to all you monkeys and assorted critters!

– RG