Of comic strips still running new (or at least "new") installments, a huge number are now legacy affairs. That is to say, carried on by someone other than their creator. Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, Blondie, Shoe, and Gasoline Alley all continue while their original cartoonists are no longer with us. And that's a very partial list. It's not inherently wrong, and some successors do better than others, but ultimately it's a business thing.
However long we make this list, Peanuts would not be on it. Charles M. Schulz continued to work on it until he died in 2000. While you could argue that in later years he spent too much time on Snoopy and off-Snoopy characters like Spike, he never phoned it in. All along, he wrote and drew with care, introducing new characters here and there even in the late nineties. By the point where he would have had to be replaced, he had become irreplaceable.
2 comments:
Neither of us had any idea the comics you mentioned still existed not drawn by the original artists. Then again, it's not much of a surprise in these 'squeeze the last penny out of anything' days. Some of the new versions may well continue to be relevant and I can't blame anybody for wanting to continue making a successful product even though you might prefer the papers to rerun the original strips.. at least that would provide an income for the original artists' famillies.
It's good Charles Schulz kept up the Peanuts strip for so long and continued to create new characters. I think it would have been hard to
replicate his droll view of the world. Like Peanuts the comics deserving of the most admiration are the memorable ones that actually came and never returned (despite a few brave tries):
A hard act to follow would be the political satire among swamp animals of Walt Kelly's Pogo: "Yep, son, we have met the enemy and he is us."
Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes regularly came up with the most outrageously hilarious views of a child determined to enjoy his own fantasy version of modern life:
“Mom, where are all our chainsaws?”
“Then how am I going to learn how to juggle?”
The last is a favorite of Jer's, Al Capp's L'il Abner and the amazing cast of characters in Dogpatch, USA, especially when Fearless Fosdick made an appearance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li%27l_Abner
The artists' families probably get something from the copyright/trademark. Whether they'd get much more if the original strips were reprinted--which sometimes does happen--I don't know. My impression is that in the early decades of the form there was more changeover. That is, established strips ending and popular new ones beginning. Then a few classics became fixtures on the comics page, permanently taking up a slot. While they kept Bringing Up Father for a while after George McManus passed, ultimately Maggie and Jiggs wouldn't make it to the 21st century.
Schulz was an idiosyncratic talent. In the beginning he claimed that Charlie Brown was based on a couple of friends of his. Eventually he came clean that he essentially was Charlie Brown. And the whole thing was an expression of his life philosophy. It's hard to see how anyone could fill his shoes.
Walt Kelly created a vibrant and endearing cast with Pogo. Comparable to George Herriman with Krazy Kat, although they had different strengths.
Watterson's first Calvin can be seen here. It's almost incredible how he nailed who these people were and how he wanted to depict them right away. The juggling gag has always been one of my favorites.
Good ol' Al Capp. Fearless Fosdick was a parody of Dick Tracy, and Tracy was pretty over-the-top already.
Post a Comment