Fond Memories of the Sunday Funnies

I don’t miss much about the old days, but I kind of miss the Sunday funnies in the Sunday newspaper. I don’t miss the Sunday funnies enough to actually buy a Sunday newspaper though. The internet has everything a Sunday newspaper used to have… and more. With the internet, every day is Sunday.

Below is one of my sentimental favorites, Prince Valiant. The illustrations by Hal Foster are almost too good for a common newspaper. By the time I was reading Sunday comic strips in the 1970s, some other guy was filling in for Hal Foster, but this early strip from before I was born is a good example of an early Prince Valiant.

Even though I have some collections of old comic strips, the collections don’t replace the mild excitement seeing a variety of comic strips every Sunday. Below is Peanuts. Every newspaper had Peanuts. I don’t think I have ever been in a city with a daily newspaper (with a page for syndicated comic trips) that didn’t have Peanuts.

Going to unfamiliar cities was fun because each city newspaper would carry a comic strip that I hadn’t seen before. My hometown newspaper was late to start carrying The Far Side. It was kind of frustrating to be aware of a cool comic strip that your hometown paper didn’t carry. The internet hadn’t been born yet, so if your newspaper didn’t carry a comic, you didn’t see it until the collections came out in the book stores months/years later.

Family Circus was never my favorite comic strip, but I respected its creator. He was willing to kill off his characters. I mean, he had stuff like grandparents dying of old age because that’s what happens in real life. I don’t mean he drew shock value stuff. I’m not posting a death comic strip(and the snowman in the Peanuts strip above doesn’t count).

Doonesbury could be controversial sometimes, so much so that some newspapers would refuse to run certain Doonesbury strips, depending on the topic. Haha… comic strip controversies. I don’t think the particular strip below was controversial. You can’t be controversial every day/week.

I rarely saw Beetle Bailey as a kid. I was aware of Beetle Bailey, but rarely did I see this strip in a newspaper. Military comedy isn’t my thing. I never watched Hogan’s Heroes either. Stripes was a good movie, though.

Calvin and Hobbes just came out of nowhere and got huge, and then the creator Sam Watterson just quit. Sam Watterson… what a slacker.

You can call me a slacker too. I put up only seven comic strips when a Sunday paper would have way more than seven.

So, whatever happened with that truce that Prince Valiant’s father made with the Britons? I guess you’ll have to wait until next Sunday to find out. Or you can use the internet to look it up. With the internet, every day is Sunday.