'Beetle Bailey' cartoonist Mort Walker dies at 94

AP ^ | 1/27/18 | Lynn Elber

[sparklite2]

Blondie started out about Blondie, and not Dagwood.
Blondie was a hot flapper, not very conservative at the time.

The unlikely titled ‘Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend,’ preceded by the silly Sneezer, let to the masterpiece of comics, Nemo in Slumberland. It was what we’d call ‘diverse’ today.

[Dr. Sivana]

Blondie started out about Blondie, and not Dagwood. Blondie was a hot flapper, not very conservative at the time.

That's an interesting point about the change in direction of the strip, though it happened quite early in its run, as did Beetle Bailey's.

Blondie is still a major character in the strip, compared to Barney Google who rarely shows up in his own strip. Again, by "conservative" I don't mean political values.

I mean that once the strip is set, certain things don't change even though time continues to pass, including things taht are anachronisms today. This is triply true in strips where the characters don't age (which is most of them). Blondie and Dagwood aged until their kids were teens. Charlie Brown and company aged until they settled in at about 6-8 years old. Gasoline Alley ages periodically and has changed more than most, EXCEPT for the characters who don't age (as far as I know, Becky the mule is still pulling a cart!). The rest are pretty static, and even Blondie has to forget the original story about Dagwood foregoing his massive inheritance from the Bumstead Railworks when he married the flapper Blondie Boopadoop, proving it was true love for both of them.

You can pick up a Beetle Bailey comic strip from 1953, and it could have been reprinted with no changes in 2018, and (in most cases) vice versa.

One thing that catalyzed both Blondie's and Fritzi Ritz' change from a drama/romance/light comedy strip to straight comedy was the depression at first, and later the availability of soap operas on radio and television to provide those kinds of stories. Brenda Starr and Winnie Winkle would soldier on for a few more decades, but the gal centered strips (not county cartoony gag strips like Cathy and Sally Forth) mostly died out as a genre because updating didn't work.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Canadian strip "For Better or For Worse" had the characters getting older (more noticeably with the children), until the cartoonist decided to reboot (getting rid of the third child, April). Now it's just the two kids and apparently they won't age.

It's Canadian so sometimes the virtue signaling trumps the humor, eh?

[Dr. Sivana]

The Canadian strip "For Better or For Worse" had the characters getting older

I forgot about "For Better or Worse". It started out as a nice, gentle, family strip that was all the more dangerous as it started pushing the "tolerant" social left agenda, because of it's family friendly look and feel, compared to Doonesbury etc.

Funky Winkerbeam also decided to age everyone all at once, after being static for a long time.

[nobamanomore]

There was an old bar on the MU campus that had a bunch of his drawings in it before he was famous. Some were also carved into the wood of the seats. I think it has since been flattened, but when I was in school, we used to meet between classes, have a couple of beers and a hamburger. It was called The Shack, the whole place was off plumb, it was a shack! Stag beer on tap

[nutmeg]

I will allow it could be over-sensitivity on my part, but I believe they had a strip showing support for Obamacare, and just recently, Hi was saying, “Let’s hope 2018 isn’t as awful as 2017 was!” with a “Chaos in Washington” paper in his hand. Now, perhaps you could read that any number of ways, but all of the liberal strips also had characters whining about how horrible 2017 was.

Oh geez... that does sound like Hi and Lois is trending to the Dark Side.

I thought 2017 was a *great* year, politically. :-)

Thanks for the report on Hi and Lois.

[Political Junkie Too]

And Dik Browne did Hagar the Horrible, too.

-PJ