The Newspaper Comics I Read as a Kid...

I received a little Q&A survey from someone who's interviewing cartoonists for their blog.  I don't have time to answer all the questions right this minute, but took a quick look at what he was asking.

One of the questions is:  Which comics did you read as a kid?

Aside from Archie comic books, I always read the comics page in my local paper, The St. Catharines Standard.  Where else could you read comics? (Oh wait...I remember finding those little paperback Peanuts collections... 60 cents at Towers department store.  Does that date me or what?)

Here's the line-up as I remember it...and this would probably be early 70's...maybe very late 60's...

Peanuts

Winthrop ( this strip was about a bunch of kids...Winthrop was the main character and he wore a baseball cap that sat on the back of his head.  There was a mean kid named Nasty McNarf...I think that was it...he turned over a new leaf and became a nice kid, although he struggled with it...and I never liked that.  I was always waiting for the him to explode and go back to his true self.  I wonder if the nice kid thing was an editor's suggestion...if they thought the feature would sell better if there were no mean kids in it.  Personally, it never rang true to me, even as a kid)

Tizzy (this was about a teenaged girl who wore these black glasses and the frame of the cartoon was a curly phone cord...I thought that was pretty cool...this was a panel, not a strip)

Pogo ( I didn't get the humour but I loved the character art, the gorgeous background art and even the different fonts that Walt Kelly used and I'd study every panel of the strip. )

The Heart of Juliet Jones (I always like her sister, Eve)

They'll Do it Everytime ( The joke in this panel was about the lame, ironic things that people do and I got the gag but I was more attracted to the art )

Short Ribs (As I recall, this replaced Winthrop which really ticked me off but I didn't have any idea that a phone call to the editor might get Winthrop reinstated...it's not that I didn't like Short Ribs, it's just that I DID like Winthrop...hmm...maybe Winthrop's sales were slipping and that's why he changed Nasty McNarf to a nice kid instead of a bully but it didn't help and the strip ended...maybe THAT'S why Short Ribs replaced it...)

B.C. (it was at the top of the page...I remember a series that Johnny Hart did about clams talking to each other "Life's a bitter pearl, Shirl" ( actually, now that I've thought about it, I think the line was "Life's a bitter pill, Shirl"...but pearl would have been funnier coming from a clam, don't you think?)...and I always liked it when the ants talked to each other...I don't know why, it just struck me as funny.)

There had to be more strips than this but I can't remember them.  I'm sure there were a few soap opera strips...and I'm just guessing but I vaguely remember Mary Worth and perhaps Rex Morgan.

Update:  The Born Loser was in the line-up too...I thought that was a funny strip.

I also remember the Wizard of Id, which I really, really enjoyed...but I think that came a bit later.  Spider-Man was also on the page at some point but I didn't read that feature. 

Here's a note on Spider-Man...when the Standard started publishing Between Friends (four years before I was syndicated with King Features), it replaced Spider-Man.  One of my friends complained to me that they had discontinued Spider-Man right in the middle of a story line and she was ticked about that. 

"Why didn't they wait for the story line to finish and then start your strip?", she complained to me.  A completely legitimate and reasonable request to which I replied,

  "SUCK IT UP AND DON'T YOU DARE CALL THAT EDITOR"

Comments

[StriderGirl]

I second Daniel's comment - Spider-Man STILL takes months to complete an arc! I'd rather have Between Friends any day.

[Daniel Vawser]

Be glad they didn't wait. Back when our paper carried it, Spider-Man moved so slow it took months to complete an arc. Really! You could read it about once a week and completely keep up with the events. Your strip is a great improvement!