a couple of three-panel archie newspaper strips.

When I was a kid in Canada, we had “Saturday Funnies” in the newspaper. These were full pages (if memory serves, it was maybe 2-4 pages) of full color cartoons. You had your Beetle Bailey, your Family Circus, your Andy Capp, your Marmaduke, and your Hagar the Horrible, among others. I don't remember if we always had Calvin and Hobbes, but when we did, those were my favorite.

Eventually, the funnies shrank to take up less and less real estate in the newspaper - before we knew it, it was just one page at the back of the paper each week.

I also saw the black and white daily strips in the paper sometimes. They were never completely my cup of tea, maybe because they weren't in color, were smaller, and tended to be more text-heavy.

It also seemed challenging to only see two-to-four panels at a time, with no idea how to get the previous page easily, and there was no way I was gonna remember to find the following day's paper to get one more little snippet of story. Way too much work!


The Archie strips, a bit bigger

Of course, I was able to see plenty of those characters in book collections that were fairly easy to come by at the library (and by my generous babysitter, who would give us used paperbacks full of Beetle Bailey, Willie Weirdie, and Mad Magazine comics. Great times! My choice was Archie digests, found in grocery store checkout racks for about a buck. I had stacks of those digests, and still have some. Once in awhile I even
grab one now, though the stories don't grab me quite the same as an adult (besides which, the damn things cost ten bucks now!).

I became somewhat interested in vintage comic strips later, and have picked up some collections over the years. They're a bit of a funny read, with all the exposition in each strip, for the readers at the time who were only seeing one strip a day. In the collections, we can see them all at once. Still fun, but a different experience than in the old days, obviously.

Anyway, a little disjointed prattling for this New Year's week because I didn't think of anything else to talk about, and I'm finishing up the next edition of our own weekly strip here on the Duck, which is returning tomorrow.

In 2025, I'm looking forward to another year of making comics: The weekly funnies “Continuity Falls” that I mentioned, plus my own projects continuing forward! Tally-Ho!

Happy New Year! What kind of comic making plans do you have this year? Or what comics are you looking forward to, if any in particular?