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Post by electricmastro on May 22, 2020 16:40:15 GMT -5
An appreciation thread for the comic strips of the past, of which my favorites include Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Nancy, Popeye, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Dick Tracy. Comics like Peanuts in particular give me nostalgic, yet insightful look at childhood which can perhaps leave on with a different view of the world, while also being pretty fun.
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Post by tarkintino on May 22, 2020 17:14:33 GMT -5
An appreciation thread for the comic strips of the past, of which my favorites include Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Nancy, Popeye, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Dick Tracy. Comics like Peanuts in particular give me nostalgic, yet insightful look at childhood which can perhaps leave on with a different view of the world, while also being pretty fun. I was going to mention Flash Gordon--as much the Ground Zero of heroic fiction in illustration as Superman, only Raymond also predicted the impact science fiction would have on heroic fantasy in the decades to come. Not sure where your cutoff for "classic" is, but the Al Williamson / Archie Goodwin part of the Star Wars daily strip (1981-84) was a masterclass in sci-fi, film-based comics and near-perfect pacing on a daily basis. For a series based on broad, dramatic set pieces like the original Star Wars films, the strip successfully captured that, even as the strip format demanded a start-and-stop story progression. The influential and long-running Secret Agent Corrigan was another thrilling triumph during the Goodwin/Williamson run on the strip (1967-80), with the strip often playing like a film with Goodwin's brand of characterization (IOW, the characters did not sound like anything in the typical comic strip / book).
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Post by brutalis on May 22, 2020 17:28:25 GMT -5
Newspaper comic strips were a natural part of every day during my childhood. Talk about the good stuff and variety providing laughs and thrills and action/adventure!
Stuff I would cut out and paste onto sheets of paper to read over again: Amazing Spider-Man B.C. Beetle Bailey Flash Gordon Johnny Hazard Prince Valiant Star Wars Steve Canyon Tarzan Wizard of ID
Ones I would always read: Blondie Bloom County Brenda Starr Calvin and Hobbes Dennis the Menace Family Circus Fred Bassett Funky Winkerbean Garfield Hagar the Horrible Lil' Abner Modesty Blaise Pogo
Paperback Books I had a few: Buck Rogers Dick Tracy Peanuts
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Post by electricmastro on May 22, 2020 17:30:32 GMT -5
An appreciation thread for the comic strips of the past, of which my favorites include Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Nancy, Popeye, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Dick Tracy. Comics like Peanuts in particular give me nostalgic, yet insightful look at childhood which can perhaps leave on with a different view of the world, while also being pretty fun. I was going to mention Flash Gordon--as much the Ground Zero of heroic fiction in illustration as Superman, only Raymond also predicted the impact science fiction would have on heroic fantasy in the decades to come. Not sure where your cutoff for "classic" is, but the Al Williamson / Archie Goodwin part of the Star Wars daily strip (1981-84) was a masterclass in sci-fi, film-based comics and near-perfect pacing on a daily basis. For a series based on broad, dramatic set pieces like the original Star Wars films, the strip successfully captured that, even as the strip format demanded a start-and-stop story progression. The influential and long-running Secret Agent Corrigan was another thrilling triumph during the Goodwin/Williamson run on the strip (1967-80), with the strip often playing like a film with Goodwin's brand of characterization (IOW, the characters did not sound like anything in the typical comic strip / book). The board description appears to define classic as the 1930s through 2000s as far as comics go, and Calvin and Hobbes lasted into the 1990s, so I’d probably say around 2000.
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Post by tarkintino on May 22, 2020 19:37:51 GMT -5
Newspaper comic strips were a natural part of every day during my childhood. Talk about the good stuff and variety providing laughs and thrills and action/adventure! Stuff I would cut out and paste onto sheets of paper to read over again: Amazing Spider-Man B.C. Beetle Bailey Flash Gordon Johnny Hazard Prince Valiant Star Wars Steve Canyon Tarzan Wizard of ID I also collected / cut out Amazing Spider-Man, Star Wars and other strips, but I lined them up in a photo album. Nice memories.
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Post by electricmastro on May 22, 2020 20:08:12 GMT -5
Newspaper comic strips were a natural part of every day during my childhood. Talk about the good stuff and variety providing laughs and thrills and action/adventure! Stuff I would cut out and paste onto sheets of paper to read over again: Amazing Spider-Man B.C. Beetle Bailey Flash Gordon Johnny Hazard Prince Valiant Star Wars Steve Canyon Tarzan Wizard of ID Indeed, and Raymond’s work on Flash Gordon particularly caught my attention for how he uses lighting and scaling.
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Post by electricmastro on May 23, 2020 15:06:42 GMT -5
Ernie Bushmiller’s use of visuals and minimal dialogue in his Fritzi Ritz comic (Tip Top Comics #12, April 1937).
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Post by beccabear67 on May 23, 2020 16:32:24 GMT -5
I like the collections of Milton Caniff dailies of Terry & the Pirates and Dickie Dare I still have... I find them a more modern read than Prince Valiant or Flash Gordon sundays which may have had more inf common with British comic book comics and Rupert the Bear etc. I generally just don't like the text captions only approach for comics. They feel like frozen illustrations more then, even in an action scene.
I like lavish illustration, especially in actual books with editions by Arthur Rackham or W. Heath Robinson, but only for covers and first pages of comic books perhaps; the storytelling flow or bounce is what makes comic stories, book or strip, unique.
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Post by electricmastro on May 23, 2020 16:47:19 GMT -5
I like the collections of Milton Caniff dailies of Terry & the Pirates and Dickie Dare I still have... I find them a more modern read than Prince Valiant or Flash Gordon sundays which may have had more inf common with British comic book comics and Rupert the Bear etc. I generally just don't like the text captions only approach for comics. They feel like frozen illustrations more then, even in an action scene. I like lavish illustration, especially in actual books with editions by Arthur Rackham or W. Heath Robinson, but only for covers and first pages of comic books perhaps; the storytelling flow or bounce is what makes comic stories, book or strip, unique. I was surprised to see how wordy Dickie Dare got, which I suppose some might seem to be a negative, but I think Milton Caniff uses his words effectively enough.
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Post by berkley on May 23, 2020 17:45:15 GMT -5
I like the collections of Milton Caniff dailies of Terry & the Pirates and Dickie Dare I still have... I just started getting into Steve Canyon the last year or two and now I'm kicking myself for not "discovering" Caniff about 12 years earlier when the IDW collections of Terry and the Pirates were published. They're all quite expensive now, about $150 Canadian for the cheapest copies I can find online.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 23, 2020 18:38:39 GMT -5
I like the collections of Milton Caniff dailies of Terry & the Pirates and Dickie Dare I still have... I just started getting into Steve Canyon the last year or two and now I'm kicking myself for not "discovering" Caniff about 12 years earlier when the IDW collections of Terry and the Pirates were published. They're all quite expensive now, about $150 Canadian for the cheapest copies I can find online. I had someone gift the first three volumes to me. When I was working at B&N, one of our regulars (a veteran, like myself) one day brought in a sack with the three of them, which he bought from us and said he had something for me and handed them too me. I think we had talked about the strip when he ordered them. He read them, but the nostalgia wasn't that strong in him and he thought I would enjoy them more. I had already owned the NBM editions, plus a couple of volumes of Steve Canyon. When we moved, I had to clean out a chunk of the library and ended up donating them to the local library. Looking back, I wish we had the room to keep all of my library; but, sometimes its good to let go of possessions. I did keep my Prince Valiants, though. I mean, there are sacrifices and then there are SACRIFICES! I also used to have the Kitchen Sink editions of Flash Gordon, as well as the Nostalgia Press editions (they stopped short before Raymond's final storyline); but sold those years ago, after getting digital copies. Now, nothing will get me to part with my Complete Calvin & Hobbes boxed set. For a while there, I had our original display stand, from when the book set was first released. It had a single volume bolted down for viewing, then room below to store a couple of sets, plus art panels on the sides. I used to use it to store some of my comic strip collections. I had to let that go in a different move. I grew up with later era Steve Canyon (in the 70s, when it was more of a soap opera than an adventure strip). Always enjoyed the art; but, the stories weren't as good, then. Our paper also had Steve Roper & Mike Nomad, which was still a bit livelier, though Peanuts and Alley Oop were my favorites.
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2020 23:19:10 GMT -5
I love a lot of classic strips. Stuff I am trying to put together or have... There's 4 oversized treasury volumes of E.C. Segar's Popeye Sundays, I have 2 of them and I am always on the look out for the other two... I have 2 of the Hal Foster Tarzan volumes, not sure how many more there are, but they are also on my list of things to keep an eye out for... I've been putting together a run of the NBM Terry and the Pirates volumes, I have the first 13 or so and a few more scattered volumes... I've been picking up the Pioneer Press volumes of classic strip reprints done in comic format whenever I see them cheap, I have a few of the Official Prince Valient, Official Mandrake, and a handful of others... I've been grabbing Pogo collections whenever I see them too... I've picked up a few of the Blackthorne strip collections from the 80s as well, including a few Prince Valiant and Star Hawks... I also have managed to grab a couple of the Tempo Books collections of Star Hawks as well... I also pick up original Spirit sections when I can find them at affordable prices... and anything Flash Gordon. I have all the Checkers volumes collecting the original Raymond strips, but I also have the 70s paperback collections likes these... and a collection of the Kurtzman, Dan Barry with Frazetta ghosting Flash Gordon strips I have a chunk of the early Steve Canyon stuff in the Checkers collections, I am missing 2. I have a nice coffee table book that surveys different era of the Buck Rogers strips from the late 20s to the late 60s/early 70s. Thanks to my Secret Santa last year, I have all 3 volumes of the Batman dailies, and I also have one volume of the Superman dailies. I have a couple of Peanuts paperbacks from the 70s and have considered going down the rabbit hole of the Fantagraphics Complete Peantus books. I also have a handful of Phantom collections and want to get more. There are also several Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County collections on my shelves, as well as the only volume of Conan strips Dark Horse collected. I have one of the recent Epic Collections of the Goodwin/Wiliamson Star Wars strips as well. There are a couple of holes in my strip library as well. I don't have any Dick Tracy but have contemplated picking up some Gould collections. I am tempted to pick up the L'il Abner collections of the time Frazetta worked on the strip. My Amazon wish list is filled with things like, Kirby's Skymasters, the IDW collections of the Star Trek strips form the late 70s/early 80s, Secret Agent Corrigan X-9, etc. I am sure there's stuff I am forgetting at the moment as well. -M
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Post by Calidore on May 24, 2020 0:13:32 GMT -5
Mrp, your history is pretty similar to mine. I can tell you that the old Fantagraphics Popeye collection had four of the oversize Sunday collections and another 6 or 7 of the dailies. Fun stuff.
Pogo I can maybe help you with at some point. My dad had a complete set of the old paperbacks, which he gave me a while ago to read or sell. They're in storage in my mom's basement right now, and I'm not going anywhere near her until it's safe again, but maybe I then can hook you up with what you're missing if you're interested (or maybe you can just take the whole damn load off my hands).
Peanuts was my first love and is one of the earliest things I can remember reading. I've still got tons of the old paperbacks because the Fantagraphics volumes were both expensive and hard to keep up with. A complete Peanuts read-thru is a lifelong dream.
I've also got several old paperbacks of very early B.C. and Wizard of Id, when both were funny.
I once had the full set of NBM's Terry paperbacks but eBayed them long ago. Bought all six of IDW's volumes fairly recently & am astonished what they're going for now.
I think I currently have all of Kitchen Sink's Steve Canyon magazines & books, and I'm sure I still have the entire Blackthorne Dick Tracy output, plus a few of the older hardcover compilations.
I've got the slipcased Complete Calvin & Hobbes and Far Side collections for both reading and exercise.
I was very disappointed to collect all of the recent Complete Bloom County and then discover on rereading them that Breathed's style didn't work at all for me anymore. In high school, I loved the strip, but now it seems way too shrill and sledgehammery. I think I laughed once and smiled a couple more times total through all five volumes. Doonesbury, on the other hand, I have everything of until sometime in the '90s. I hope to catch up on that one day. Has anyone else ever touched Trudeau's blend of satire and characterization?
I had a set of the first dozen of so Kitchen Sink's Li'l Abner. Reading them, there was a pretty clear line when it stopped being as funny for whatever reason, so I sold the ones past that point.
Don't know if I still have any Prince Valiant or not. Loved looking at them, but always struggled to get into the stories, so I may have unloaded them.
More currently, I have several collections of Zits and Mutts, both of which I think are absolutely brilliant and would easily make my desert island list.
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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2020 0:41:38 GMT -5
Oh I forgot to mention Comics Revue, the now sadly defunct magazine that featured comic strips... any time I see copies of these at shows or shops I snap them up. It's a great way to sample a lot of different strips. I recently got one of their Modesty Blaise collections, which is another strip i am curious about, but haven't had a chance to dive in yet. Calidore I have a bunch of the 70s paperback strip collections of B.C> and the like I used to have a bunch more (a lot of Beetle Bailey as that was a favorite of my dad's) as a kid. I've mentioned this before, but reading the Sunday funnies with my dad, especially the adventure strips like Tarzan and the Phantom, but also stuff like Peanuts and the like, was my introduction to comics as a kid and where my love of comics comes from. If it weren't for the Sunday papers, I am not sure I would have wanted to get my first comic book. And those 70s papaerback sized strip collections were a wonder for me, and when I first got Son of Origins, for me it was an extension of that kind of reading experience, which had a big impact on the way I like to experience comics, and part of why I was an early adopter of trade paperbacks and collected editions for comics. -M
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Post by electricmastro on May 24, 2020 1:43:05 GMT -5
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