Photo: “A Page of the Tuesday Funnies Used to Wrap a Mason Jar at the Thrift Store”. The San Diego Union-Tribune. (February 2025)

Gleaning for vintage supplies at the local thrift store, I made out with an assortment of cream coloured typewriter papers weathered by age from card stock cotton resume paper to watermarked onion skin; a pack of nine “THANK YOU” cards, with only one missing from the original box; and four mason jars. The clerk asked if I would like the jars wrapped in newspaper, to which I was most obliged.

I noticed one of the jars was wrapped in the newspaper’s comic section while unpacking the precious cargo upon arrival to my home. The secondhand mason jars went into a plastic tub of water in the sink and I made my way upstairs to catch up on “The Funnies”, or the nickname I would call the printed newspaper comics, it had been years since I last checked in with some of the story lines.

Pluggers by Rick McKee: A dog wearing pajamas is laying in bed, an illuminated lightbulb is seen inside a thought bubble generated by the dog, and a crescent moon can be seen outside a window. Caption- “A plugger gets his best ideas in the middle of the night but forgets them by morning.”

Peanuts Classic by Charles M. Schulz: (Panel One) Snoopy, wearing a scout leader uniform thinks to a group of small Woodstocks, “All right Troops…Here’s where we camp for the night. (Panel Two) A concerned Snoopy points upwards in a matter-of-fact manner, “Each scout pitches his own tent…And then we all go to sleep right away…” (Panel Three) Snoopy begins unpacking his camping supplies saying, “Just follow my example,” while three tiny Woodstocks line up to observe. (Panel Four) No dialogue, Snoopy and the three Woodstocks are sleeping on the roof of the tents they each pitched individually.

Marmaduke by Brad and Paul Anderson: A grinning Marmaduke sits under a tree while his owner is stuck in the branches of the same tree. A police officer walks up, staring up at the owner stuck in the tree. Caption- “I’m not really sure how this happened.”

The newspaper featured a bunch of brand new titles, but the few old favorites from the early 2000s-era were nowhere to be seen like Dick Tracy and Cathy. Tiffany from LuAnn is still talking to Kip; Jeremy from Zits still lives at home with his mom; Garfield is still thinking; The sharks and crab in Sherman’s Lagoon are still swimming. It is nice to see tangible comics in print. Daily print comics are a place where time stays in a loop, the characters rarely age, and the characters I once looked up to now seem like the teenagers they always were when I was that age.

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Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, All!!

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