Before there were comic books for me, there were comic strips, the newspaper type. Daily delivery of art and humour. Or story. Love them. As per everything else I became interested in, it became a fascination and the history of the medium interested me. Like movies, old radio shows, and television shows, I read about strips I had no expectation of ever seeing. If nothing else, I have this reason to love my life: all those things I thought I would never be able to see, hear, or read, well, a bunch of them are available somehow these days. And that's great. Don't get me wrong, I've got all sorts of reasons to love life but fullfilling the dreams of Young Steve is always a good one.
I got to some of those parts of the Archive this week; the newspaper strip collections, not the dreams of Young Steve part. A lot of those Peanuts books I had to sort through? I've got better printed, more complete reprints now. Makes it a little easier to let go. I've got a lot of Beetle Bailey books as well. I think that's a combination of my Dad's interest in war films and the fact that Goodwill used to have piles of them for a dime apiece when I was a kid. It's always easier to collect what's available to you. I do enjoy them but my familiarity with the strip means that I can often tell when Mort Walker is repeating himself. One volume of a mighty reprint of the strip has begun and I hope it continues.
They've started nice reprints of the original Dick Tracy series which means that I might be able to rid myself of some of the other Tracy reprint books I have. There's some nice Gasoline Alley reprints now, Popeye era Thimble Theatre, Terry and the Pirates... the heart swells.
The rough part about digging in the Archive is that I see the gaps. I'm missing For Better or Worse books, Fox Trot, Dilbert. At least I have all the Bloom County, even if those aren't comprehensive reprints.
I've got some clipped strips. There's also some newspapers I've retained in some state. For those who remember the older Milwaukee Journal, I've got some Green Sheets yet. The Journal used to print the comics section on green paper in order to make it easily identifiable.
It's hard to read the comics these days, in our local paper anyway. The strips are printed so small. At least most are reproduced online as well. Comics used to sell papers. Now papers don't even sell papers. Things change and that's not always a bad thing.
And the comics are still there.
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