Tag Archives: newspaper strips

The Saturday Comics: Hejji by Dr. Seuss

28 Jan

January 28 2012

I wish this wasn’t so short-lived. A weekly Dr. Seuss comic strip. There isn’t much known about it so I’ll quote from wikipedia, which can’t be that far off:

Hejji was a short-lived 1935 comic strip, an early work and the only comic strip by prominent children’s author Dr. Seuss (pseudonym of Theodor Geisel). Hejji was produced by Geisel during the Great Depression, two years before the publication of his first book.

Distributed by William Randolph Hearst’s King Features Syndicate, Hejji began publication on April 7, 1935, as a Sunday strip. A comic strip with an unusually brief publication period, it was cancelled before the year’s end

The title character was a traveler who, in the first strip, entered the strange land of Baako, which had whales swimming in water-filled volcano craters, a flower broadcasting music and twin goats sharing a single beard. Hejji inadvertently plucks the sacred Trumpet Flower and is promptly arrested. He is taken to the palace of the Mighty One, who has Hejji thrown to the Seven Deadly Wombats. After Hejji escapes, the Mighty One apologizes and gives him a guided tour of Baako. They encounter various creatures and eventually arrive at the mysterious castle of the Evil One.

Characters and situations from Hejji reappeared in later Dr. Seuss work. For example, the two goats with the single beard reappeared in the musical fantasy film The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, scripted by Geisel.

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The Saturday Comics: Calvin and Hobbes.

29 Oct

October, 29, 2011

I hold Peanuts in very, very high esteem. In some ways it is THE epitome of the comic strip. I may think more with The Far Side, and I believe that Popeye in its classic era is the epitome of sequential and serialized story telling, but none make me feel the way Peanuts makes me feel. It is not simply a strip about a group of little kids, it is a peek into the innocence of youth, and a glimpse into human nature. I’m sure some of you will agree with me, and some of you will think I am reading way too much into it, but legions of people worldwide feel the same way I do.

Calvin and Hobbes comes very, very close to Peanuts. Simply, it is a celebration of the innocence of youth and the wonders of the world as seen through the imagination of a young boy named Calvin and his best friend, a stuffed tiger named Hobbes. Like Peanuts, it tells universal truths hidden inside everyone’s everyday life. It is a beautiful strip.

From wiki: The 3,160th and final strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995. It depicted Calvin and Hobbes outside in freshly fallen snow, reveling in the wonder and excitement of the winter scene. “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy… Let’s go exploring!” Calvin exclaims as they zoom off over the snowy hills on their sled, leaving, according to one critic ten years later, “a hole in the comics page that no strip has been able to fill.”

Precedents to Calvin’s fantasy world can be found in Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby, Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts, Percy Crosby’s Skippy, Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County, and George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, while Watterson’s use of comics as sociopolitical commentary reaches back to Walt Kelly’s Pogo and Quino’s Mafalda. Schulz and Kelly particularly influenced Watterson’s outlook on comics during his formative years.

Peanuts, Bloom County, Krazy Kat, Pogo. And Calvin and Hobbes.

No selection of strips can do it justice. I’ve also made sure to include some of the Spaceman Spiff strips, which are among my favorites.

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