Peanuts

27 Amazing Facts about Comic Strips

At Home with Roz Chast

8 Accurate Comics about the Anxiety of Writers

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Snowmen That Would Make Calvin and Hobbes Proud

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Valuable Holiday Lessons from Calvin and Hobbes

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Cartoon College

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman

Dear Mr. Watterson

The Rise of Webcomics

Stripped: A Documentary about Comic Strips

Calvin and Hobbes in Real Life Settings

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Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum to No Longer Carry Bazooka Joe Comics

So says the New York Times.

From the article...

What adults may remember best about Bazooka, however, is disappearing. The tiny comic strip featuring the eyepatch-wearing brand mascot Bazooka Joe that has been wrapped around each piece of gum since 1953 is being replaced. 

New inserts will feature brainteasers, like a challenge to list 10 comic book heroes named after animals, or activities, like instructions on folding the insert into an airplane. They also include codes that, when entered at BazookaJoe.com will unlock content like videos and video games.

Bazooka Joe and his sidekick, Mort, who wears his turtleneck up over his mouth, will appear only occasionally as illustrations in the new inserts, but without the antics and corny jokes of the three-panel strips. 

Only 7 percent of children age 6 to 12 are aware of the Bazooka Joe character, according to E-Poll Market Research, a brand and celebrity research firm that last collected data about the character in 2007. In contrast , an average 30 percent of children are aware of food product mascots, the firm said. Among children who are aware of Bazooka Joe, 41 percent liked the character, below the average likability for food characters, which is 54 percent.

Rare "Calvin and Hobbes" Art to Be Auctioned

Save your pennies. The auction happens in November.

From a piece in Comics Alliance...

If you've been wondering what to do with that massive inheritance some distant relative left you in their will, or pondering whether we were finally in the kind of financial reality that could support rash overspending that could leave you in incredible amounts of debt, here's something that may help you in your decision making: The original art from a 1986 Calvin and Hobbes Sunday page is going up for auction.

The page is being put up for auction by cartoonist Brian Basset, who was given the strip by Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson himself twenty-six years ago.

Rewriting Comics History

Paul Gravett traces the history of daily comics in a review.

From the piece...

You’d think by now that the history of a medium as global and influential as comics would be fully researched and written, but this is not the case. In contrast to the more varied and international perspectives available on film or literature, the majority of English-language reference books on comics plough through the well-worn furrows of the 20th century American newspaper strip and comic book, re-affirming old "truths" and historical "facts". Objectivity and lack of bias are practically impossible, because by putting into print your history, your version of the "facts," your inclusions and omissions determine who and what are significant. In the process, almost inevitably, supposedly "minor" or "peripheral" figures and events can be overlooked.

Writing history is a way of controlling history. As R.C. Harvey puts it in his book Children Of The Yellow Kid: The Evolution of the American Comic Strip (University of Washington Press, $29.95, ISBN 0-29597778-7), "And we begin, as most historical surveys of this medium do, with The Yellow Kid (shown above in his first appearance, not yet in yellow, bottom left in a single-panel cartoon by Richard Outcault for Truth magazine, dated May 5th, 1895). To justify this, Harvey invokes the "Columbus principle," used by many comics historians since Coulton Waugh’s 1947 book The Comics which admits that the Vikings were the first to reach the New World, but Columbus’ "discovery" inspired others to follow him. Unfortunately, applied to comics, this approach conveniently writes off all that came before, in America, Europe and elsewhere, as precursors or "proto-comics," of interest perhaps but not the genuine article. After all, they don’t fit into the notion that this ‘new’ narrative medium began in America.

Archie Getting Own...Make Up Line?

Indeed!

From a piece in USA Today's Pop Candy...

Today, I have the exclusive news that Archie Comics has partnered with MAC Cosmetics, of all things, to launch a makeup line called "MAC Archie's Girls."

According to the publisher, the cosmetics "will celebrate the iconic beauty looks of Betty and Veronica" and be available next spring.

Popeye Heading Back to the Big Screen?

It looks that way, as a 3-D cartoon.

From a story on Variety...

"Hotel Transylvania" helmer Genndy Tartakovsky is attached to develop and direct "Popeye," Sony Pictures Animation's 3D take on the familiar sailor man.

Avi and Ari Arad will produce under their Arad Productions banner with Sony Pictures Animation. As of November, scribes David Ronn and Jay Scherick were attached to pen the script.

Popeye, the spinach-loving seaman who first appeared in the "Thimble Theater" comicstrip in 1929, spawned numerous spin-offs, including one of the longest-running series of animated shorts and Robert Altman's 1980 film starring Robin Williams.

The Life of a Writer....Sigh.

Cartoon College

Inside the Home of Cartoonist Chris Ware

Take a tour, here.