Mary Worth
In the current storyline this guy is going to disguise himself as an older man to seduce a gold digger. To prove how well he can disguise himself he shows some pictures of himself from some plays.
Stage make-up is very obvious when seen close-up. It is meant to be seen under bright stage lights by people sitting in seats. It would not stand up to scrutiny in real life.

Ah... Mary Worth. We shall never find another woman of her meddle!

Rex Morgan, MD

Of course, we won't mention the plastic surgery that both Rex and June had when the baby was born...

I believe in Mary Worth! I believe in Mary Worth! I believe in Mary Worth! I believe in Mary Worth! I believe in Mary Worth! I believe in Mary Worth! I believe in Mary Worth! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

Muhahahahahaaaa!

The British comic strip Axa, in The Chosen storyline, Axa & her lover Matt are fighting the Middle People & Matt says to her, 'You handle your sword as well as a man, Eva.'
Either the typesetter must not have been paying attention or Matt was thinking of some other woman he slept with.

Axa in The Brave storyline refers to Jason Arkady's grandfather as Jason's father.

In order to keep from freezing Axa skins a wolf & wraps it's pelt around her. Ummmm... wouldn't that get blood & stuff all over her? Doesn't it take time to cure a pelt to wear? And even if you were desperate & couldn't wait, shouldn't a person wrap it around themselves with the fur inside for better insulation?

Axa... again. Same storyline as before. Axa is in the valley of mist where dinosaurs & robots roam. Talking to one of the scientists he says about the dinosaurs, "Whether they or their embryos had been hibernating here since the last ice age, millions of years ago"
Ugh!
The dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, a little long to be hibernating.
The last ice age was thousands of years ago, not millions.
Also the final panel showed a picture of a Dimetrodon which died out 220 million years ago, before the dinosaurs.
Earlier in the storyline Jason mentioned that cavemen fighting dinosaurs was a scene out of the past & I decided not to comment on it, since maybe Jason wasn't that well educated in the history of life on Earth, but now it seems that it's the artist/author himself who isn't that well educated in the history of life on Earth.

Steve Canyon:Ever noticed how many times Steve
seems to be dreaming?

Comics pages suggestions:

DICK TRACY----Time to retire---NOW!

CATHY-----DIE, CATHY DIE!

CURTIS-----Same ol', same ol'---Get some new material or get out of the funny papers.

Hi & Lois---See "Curtis"

Hagar----Ditto

Brenda Starr---See "Cathy"

I like Cathy.

Born Loser - see Curtis

Boondocks - see what John said about Cathy.

Today's "Momma".

States that Francis was born in 1983. I have a signed Mell Lazarus cariacture of myself from the late '70s starring me as Francis.

I just realized last week that the New York Daily News dropped Dick Tracy. Anyone know when? Could have been years ago, and I just now noticed. The News carried Tracy from the beginning. It still carries Gasoline Alley.

NNAN, but the first mention of a Mrs. Wilson in Dennis The Menace was apparently the mother of a girl (Sally) Dennis' age. The Mrs. Wilson we're all familiar with was childless.

Tarzan
Fight for Life From the Sunday newspaper strip of January 10, 1932 Reprinted in Tarzan #209 (DC Comics)
The text says that the panthers found Bara the antelope drinking from the pond and they decided to eat Bara before drinking, but panels 4 & 5 show the panthers at the pond & Bara behind them.

Tarzan
The Deadly Dangers Of Pal-Ul-Don! collected from the sequence of Sunday Tarzan strips of March 14, 1971 to August 1, 1971 Reprinted in Tarzan #231 (DC Comics)
Gail identifies the dinosaur as a tyrannosaurus.
Unfortunately it looks like Russ Manning was using illustrations of Megalosaurus as his reference. In particular the real tyrannosaurus had two claws, his drawing shows a four-clawed hand.

Tarzan says, “We’ve crossed the time line between the Twentieth Century & Pal-Ul-Don!”
Time line? Was the writer trying to anti-nit the fact that we’ve explored Africa enough to know that there is no lost land where dinosaurs & missing links still exist?

Page 7, Panel 3. The shot of the ground, horizon & the large shadow cast on the ground* would seem to indicate that the pterosaur is quite high up when it drops Samie. However in the next panel she’s on the ground, with no serious injuries.
* Okay, in retrospect that shadow seems wrong too. It’s way too dark. Also while getting closer to a light bulb would cast a bigger shadow, I’m not sure it works the same way with getting hundreds of feet closer to the sun though. I mean birds don’t cast gigantic shadows while flying, do they?

>NNAN, but the first mention of a Mrs. Wilson in Dennis The Menace was apparently the mother of a girl (Sally) Dennis' age. The Mrs. Wilson we're all familiar with was childless.>

Perhaps it was a relative of the Regular Mrs. Wilson. (There is another... a sister-in-law.)

Well, pretty much any science fiction strip set after the year 2006 that calls Pluto a planet is now a nit.

I think Buck Rogers did although I don't have a copy of that story. (Saw it in a collection several decades ago.)

Not if the decision is reversed at some point.

Not so much a comic strip nit, but a nit of the comic's summary.

"Bird & Worm is one of the Ducks few daily strips that runs every day"

Somebody should explain the meaning of the word "daily" to whomever wrote that summary.

The guy who wrote that works for the Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

In a recent Dick Tracy strip, he went up against...get this....Al Kida

HANG IT UP ALREADY!

The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Dailys & Sundays 1931 - 1933 Volume One
Man that title's a mouthful. Also shouldn't Volume One precede 1931 - 1934?

October 24, 1931.
NNAN. Tracy calls a uniformed officer under him Gilligan. Later strips he would regularly refer to a uniformed officer under him as Milligan.
Possible Anti-Nits:
1. Completely different policeman.
2. The officer's name is Gilligan Milligan.
3. Tracy was confused about the officer's name & was corrected off-panel.

Dick Tracy

Even in 1931 I doubt a non-cop could be appointed to being a plainclothes policeman.

February 21, 1932
Judge Biller has been shot, Tracy orders Pat to get the judge to a hospital while he & Milligan look for the murderer.
Shouldn't that be 'attempted murderer'?

The shooter was hiding inside a snowman.
... uh, yeahhhhhh...
1. Hypothermia.
2. Too much movement & the snow will fall off.
3. Body heat should have melted the snow, which doubtless would have soaked into the shooter's clothes, see #1.

Anyone ever read the "Fearless Fosdick" series parodying "Dick Tracy" in Al Capp's "Little Abner" strip? Hilarious stuff. Reportedly Chester Gould was really P.O.'d about them, probably due in no small part to the fact that Capp depicted Gould as a straitjacketed lunatic who could only write the strip while in the throes of madness.

My dad has the second collection Fearless Fosdick: The Hole Story, so I recently borrowed it and read it.

Al Capp comes from the "Sledgehammer To The Face" School of Subtlety. ;-)

Reading it reminded me of some Mad magazine stuff, which considering some of these stories preceeded Mad just shows Capp's influence on later cartoonists.

Afterwards I found myself thinking of that scene in The Naked Gun where Frank Drebbin loses his badge & says, "Just think, the next time I shoot someone I could be arrested."
Wonder if the writer was a Capp fan as well?

The Illustrated History Of Union County
First Strip, Panel 4. "Often often three miles high!"

NNANJAO. It's mentioned that some 1950 era terms were changed to less offensive terms, one notable spot were this occurs is a section dealing with the lynching of some "African-Americans". I don't think the term African-American even existed in 1950.

Donald Duck Reprinted in Disney Comics: 75 Years Of Innovation
October 17, 1937. Huey, Dewey & Louie's mother is named Della here, but I thought I'd read somewhere that in the first film featuring the nephews their mother was named Dumbella.
Then again, Disney does have a habit of changing things that they think might be offensive, so maybe they relettered the name to make it less offensive??

Been reading Kitchen Sink's Lil Abner Dailies: 1942 reprint. It's been pretty good. However, in the August 8th, strip, in order to be made presentable to society, we see Moonbeam McSwine being dressed by Abner's Aunt Bessie Bopshire. In one panel, we see Moonbeam in a bra (with strap) and girdle. However, in the next panel, Moonbeam is wearing a strapless dress. I'm a guy who has no real fashion whatsoever and even I know you don't wear a bra with strap under a strapless gown. (Not to mention the bra straps have mysterious disappeared when the dress is on.)

KAM:It's mentioned that some 1950 era terms were changed to less offensive terms, one notable spot were this occurs is a section dealing with the lynching of some "African-Americans". I don't think the term African-American even existed in 1950.

The term African-American has been around at least since the 1920s. It just wasn't in common use.

Okay, thanks.

I'm now reading Recycled Doonesbury. During one series of strips involving Ronald Reagan's digital counterpart, in a panel taking place at a press conference, we see someone refer to him as "Mr. Headroom". Um, no. "Mr. Headroom" was Max Headroom, played by Matt Frewer, on both a series of annoying Coke commercials and a very short-lived (mercifully so) TV series. Reagan's computerized alter-ego was "Ron Headrest." (Strangely, in the very next strip, Trudeau gets it right again.)

(Dates aren't given in the book, so I can't say when this strip was first published. It's the second strip on page 15 of the book, however.)

Don Dixon was an adventurer in the Flash Gordon style

Don Dixon And The Hidden Empire reprinted in Amazing Mystery Funnies volume 2 #12

Page 1, Panel 7. Don says, "But where not going!"
We're not where.

Gordon Fife And The Boy King was about captain Gordon Fife & the young king, Nicky.

Untitled reprinted in Fantoman #2

NAN but I couldn't help snickering at this bit of dialogue.
Colonel Lorenz: I wouldn't be too much alarmed, highness... Fife undoubtedly has taken the boy somewhere with him...
Princess Regent Carol: But why should he? And in the middle of the night? ...and... and Captain Fife was so queer yesterday...

I'm guessing they lost the rights to reprint this story, since it's clearly building up to a climax & then the final panel is all text stating that everything is all settled.

Ben Friday was the star of an adventure comic that started off as The Bodyguard before changing to the title character's name & was later written out of as it was turned into a humor comic called The Bantam Prince.

Untitled Famous Funnies #196

Page 4. I think the person who cut up the strip to fit a comic page goofed up on the order. The story reads right if you go Panel 1, 2, 5, 3, 4, 6-10.

Flyin' Jenny was an aviation strip with a female lead.

Undated Reprinted in Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics #10

Jenny is in a plane that's crashing to earth at five hundred and fifty miles per hour. She climbs out of the cockpit and her flying suit & shoes are ripped away by the wind.
Surprisingly the parachute stays on & her underwear remains intact.

The next strip has her make a dress from the parachute silk.
Wonder where she stowed the sewing kit because the impromptu dress is somewhat fancy.

Blondie: Why is this kid, Elmo, always hanging around with Dagwood? He's not his son. Furthermore, why does Dagwood let this kid hang around with him all the time.

Does anyone find that creepy? I never pictured Dagwood as a pedophile (sp?).

Why does Dennis hang around Mr. Wilson?

Back in the old days kids used to wander around their neighborhoods rather than being leashed or caged in the front yards like in our now more enlightened times, and kids would sometimes find an older person cool and enjoyed hanging out with them.

Gosh how things have changed.

Yeah, and sex offenders got away with it more in the old days. Look at all the stories coming to light now about priests molesting kids 40-50 years ago.

There were those kinds of criminals back then, you just didn't hear about it.

Now I'm not saying that Dagwood and Mr. Wilson were such criminals, they weren't. However, from todays perspective, it looks creepy for a little kid to be hanging around an adult like that. Unless, of course, said adult is a trusted friend of the kids family. Mr. Wilson is the Mitchell's neighbour, so obviously they know and trust him. I don't know if we've ever seen Elmo's parents.

I'm not sure they got away with it more. There are stories of police looking the other way while parents got revenge on child molesters.

However getting back to comic strips IIRC Elmo was created a long time ago & basically his existence falls under a grandfather clause. A number of stories from that time period have unrelated kids who hang around adults. Someone trying to create a similar situation in a new comic would probably have to deal with today's perspective.

I seem to recall a strip where Blondie tells Elmo his parents had called so they presumably know & trust the Bumsteads.

Capt. Frank Hawks - Air Ace was a real life pilot who played up his being an aviator hero which got translated into comic strips and even movies.

Undated Crackajack Funnies #5

Page 2, Panel 6. The forgot to give one guy's face a flesh tone.

The most current example I know of a kid hanging around an adult who is not a relative or family friend is in "Curtis". Curtis often goes to visit the barber who never gets Curtis' name right. Beyond that, I can't think of any "current" (or relatively current, I should say) examples.

Dan Dunn started off in a 1933 comic book Detective Dan, Secret Operative N0. 48 and was picked up by a syndicate to become the Dan Dunn comic strip. He's also a bit of a Dick Tracy knockoff.

Undated Crackajack Comics #9

Okayyyyyy... Dan is attending his college class reunion when one of his old friends is killed. Dan wants to investigate but doesn't want anyone to know that he's the famous Dan Dunn & has his friend introduce him as Dan Smith.
Gee you're a famous detective visiting the town where you went to college while your class reunion is going on and you're trying to pass yourself off as somebody else? Yeahhhhhh...

After recognizing Dan, Captain Sharp says, "Sure, it is'nt often I get a chance to work with a real expert, Dan!"
Isn't not is'nt.

Wow, the Springdale police department really fails when it comes to examining crime scenes. Dan starts looking around the scene & finds the bullet that killed Stuart in the cushion of a chair & later after talking to the coroner & finding out the bullet entered the body at an angle he returns to the crime & figures it must have come from a new window on the building where a scaffolding is still in place & only after Dan & Captain Sharp climb up there do they discover a hole cut in the window.
Guess Captain Sharp wasn't kidding when he said he doesn't work often with experts.

One problem with reading a daily comic put together as a comic book is the repetition that comes as the writer starts off each daily emphasizing the point made in the last panel of the previous daily.
Oddly enough it only seems to be the Dan Dunn strips where I find the repetition annoying. Possibly it's just that other strips are better written (not a surprise) or they had better packagers joining the strips together & eliminating the repetition.

NNANJAO. I assume the scene with the coroner must have been a Sunday page as we don't actually see the coroner in this reprint.

Dan Dunn

Undated reprinted in Crackajack Comics #11

Page 2, Panel 4. The world balloon that should be pointing to Ranetti is pointing to Irwin & the word balloon that should be pointing at a door is pointing at Ranetti.

Don Winslow Of The Navy

Undated Reprinted in Crackajack Funnies #18

Page 3, Panel 4. The captain's face is white instead of flesh-colored. Pennington's hands are orange, but colored normally in the following panels.

Flyin' Jenny

NAN per se, but I had downloaded some scans of original Flyin' Jenny Sundays & I compared them to the reprints in Heroic Comics. It's amazing how chopped up the reprints were. Multiple panels dropped, some Sundays skipped completely & yet when I was reading those reprints I never got the feeling that there was anything missing. I'm now wondering that when I get around to actually reading those strips will they seem fine or stuffed with filler? (Well, except for the paper doll cutouts, those obviously were filler. ;-)

Dan Dunn

Undated Reprinted in Crackajack Funnies #34

Page 2, Panel 6. The Professor says, "He could have driven better than than"
Than that.

Page 2, Panel 10. Dan's face is bright red for no story reason.

Dan Dunn

4/26/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #2

Not sure if this was a nit for the original or the reprint, but in panel 9 the date & something else is printed backwards.

Out Our Way was a slice of life comic focusing on subjects like small-town life & cowboys.

NNAN. This comic got reprinted in comics under a variety of titles such as Talking Shop, The Worry Wart & Cowboy Comics.

11/25/35? Reprinted in The Funnies #3

Admittedly a numbah uv spellin' err'rs in this heyuh comic er intentional cuz a the dialekt humor, but still "you're to dumb to be polite" is just wrong. That first "to" should be 'too'.

Tailspin Tommy was about a pilot & his adventures.

Strip #334 Reprinted in The Funnies #3

When the blue stratoship crashes the exploded parts are all red.

Captain Easy was a soldier of fortune who started off in the Wash Tubbs comic then took over the Sunday section before eventually having the whole comic be about him.

12/19/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #3

Gizzy's bra & panties changed from blue to orange from last Sunday to this, despite there not being a break in the action.

2/2/36

An unconscious Easy is shown wearing a coat that he wasn't wearing last week when he was knocked out.

Freckles And His Friends was Freckles and his friends. ;-) It started off as a humor strip about young kids, but after a while the author decided to let them age up to teenagers and developed more serious storylines.

2/2/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #3

Freckles & friends are being held at gunpoint, above them some men looking for Freckles see this and a professor takes a small pebble and drops it over the head of the gunman and explains that "a pebble from this height, has the effect of a one-pound object falling ten feet... enough to render any mortal unconscious!" and the pebble knocks out the gunman.
A few hours after reading this I found myself thinking, "Wait, wouldn't a pebble falling from too great a height act like a bullet?" Maybe some of our mathematician/phycisist nitpickers can throw in their thoughts on this?

Dan Dunn

5/31/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #4

Panel 5. More stuff printed backwards.

Herky was a little kid comic

12/29/35 Reprinted in The Funnies #4

Actually a nit for the reprint rather than the original. The title shows Herky as the New Year's baby & the editors put 1937 on the banner, but the comic has Herky mention the upcoming year of 1936.

Boots, aka Boots And Her Buddies, was a humor comic revolving around Boots & the various men in her life.

3/8/36? Reprinted in The Funnies #5

Panel 7. The policeman's uniform is green here, but it was red in the previous panel.

Captain Easy

3/22/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #5

Panel 8. Captain Easy's blue parka is white here.

Freckles And His Friends

4/5/36 & 4/12/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #5

The final panel of 4/2 showed a figure quite close to Freckles & co., but the first panel of 4/12 shows the figure much farther off & coming from a different direction.

Alley Oop was a caveman who would occasionally travel through time.

The basic setting of cavemen & dinosaurs is, of course, a nit. ;-)

4/12/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #6

The two eggs Alley Oop & Foozy found keep changing from color, sometimes they are yellow, sometimes white.

4/19/36

A dinosaur egg is cooked and as it's about to be served a dinosaur hatches.
Must have been fire with a low heat setting. ;-)

Herky

2/16/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #6

NANJAO. Raza Mataz, alleged immortal and wizard claims, "I was with Captain Easy in Kandelabra!"
*snicker* Well, they were both syndicated by NEA... ;-)

Ben Webster's Page was about Ben Webster who had adventures.

The Funnies #5 printed strips D5, D6 & D7 whereas The Funnies #6 prints strips D14, D15 & D16. Now while I can't blame them for wanting to hurry up this dull comic the jump from Ben finding out Cap'n Avery had faked his death to everyone knowing Avery is alive and under arrest for passing a bogus bill is rather abrupt.

Just how much money has Cap'n Avery been having the boys pass out amongst the townspeople? He gave them just enough to pay for one old woman's mortgage, but in D15 we find the townspeople quitting work because they expect Cap'n Avery to give them enough money to live on. Huh?

Myra North, Special Nurse was about a nurse who got involved with espionage & other mysteries.

6/5/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #6

Page 1, Panel 8. Hyster's face is white, when it's colored in other panels.

Dan Dunn

8/30/36 Reprinted in The Funnies #7

Panel 3. Dan says, "Have the tunnel searced!"
Searched.

Boots

Undated Reprinted in The Funnies #7

Panel 5. Ferdie says, "Somethin' to match my red sweater, I s'pose"
Whoever colored this gave him an orange sweater.

Freckles and His Friends

Undated Reprinted in The Funnies #9

The logo read "Freekles and his friends." instead of Freckles.

Bronc Peeler was a humorous cowboy strip. Cartoonist Fred Harman would later do the popular cowboy strip Red Ryder.

Undated Reprinted in The Funnies #13

Panel 1. Previously Bronc was winged in a duel with Black Carlos & fell off his horse, this comic Raquel is worried about him and he tells her, "I'm fellin' stronger now."
Fellin'??? Even with his western accent it should have been feelin'.

Bronc Peeler

Undated The Funnies #23 & 24

NANJAO. Little Beaver, Red Ryder's famous sidekick, first appeared in Bronc Peeler.
Course since Bronc Peeler was self-syndicated by Fred Harman I doubt he had many problems getting permission to use him in the later comic. ;-)

Out Our Way

Undated The Funnies #25

All of the panels with Lil except one, have her white-haired instead of blond.
Oddly enough the one exception is the panel where she says she's blond.

Oaky Doaks was a farmboy turned knight.

Undated Reprinted in Famous Funnies #169

Okay, Oaky Doaks is a humor strip so this nit probably falls under the "Rule of Funny", but still...
The Sheriff of Knottywood fires an arrow which pierces Oaky's armor and pins him to the wall.
Either the Sherrif is a lot stronger than she looks, or Oaky's "tin dress" is either very thin or low quality metal.

Ben Friday

Undated Reprinted in Famous Funnies #185

Page 4, Panel 5. Spells kidnapped as kidnaped.

The Nut Bros. Ches & Wal was an odd comic that featured the main characters in surreal settings with conversations that involved puns & corny punchlines.

Undated Reprinted in The Comics #8

Panels 6 & 7 seem to be reprinted out of order.
Then again, with this comic, that might have been intended.

Decks A'wash was a comic about American Naval Heroes

December 14, 1935* Reprinted in The Comics #8

* I assume, since the next page has a 12/21/35 date.

NANJAO. This was about John Paul Jones.

The first panel refers to England as an "island kindom."
I think they meant kingdom.

Rod Rian Of The Sky Police was a science fiction strip.

Undated Reprinted in The Comics #8

Page 3. Panels 3 & 4 are out of order.

Red Ryder

3/12/39 Reprinted in Crackajack Funnies #13

Panel 8. Red's cousin Lance, who had been wearing a yellow shirt, is suddenly wearing red here and there was no time to change.

Don Dixon And The Hidden Empire

Reprinted in Amazing Mystery Funnies volume 2 #11

11/7/37

The Bogvetch, an old hag, takes hold of the cat's-eye gem and becomes young again.
Amusingly enough the baggy, modest dress she was wearing as the Bogvetch also changes into a headdress, a bikini top and a sarong. ;-)
Oddly enough, when Queen Tania (formerly the Bogvetch) ages Dagmar with the gem Dagmar's dress stays the same.

11/14/37

Page 4 of the reprint messes up the order of the panels. It has an arrow pointing from Panel 3 to Panel 4, but Panel 4 should be read first.

11/21/37

Page 5, Panel 3. Caption reads, "Returning to the palace Tania is delightedly received by the quard"
I believe that should be guard. ;-)

Scorchy Smith

Undated Reprinted in Famous Funnies #26

"Droning over the swamp lands for hours, Scorchy's curiosity is aroused when he sees a man run out of an old mill and disapper into the dense undergrowth"
Disappear, not disapper.

Dickie Dare

Undated Reprinted in Famous Funnies #40

Cranky Joe refers to Lily as a "Blonde pearl" except the colorist gave her orange hair.

Nancy:

Considering when these comics came out, during World War II, isn't it strange that the publishers allowed a character with a distinctly German name (Aunt Fritzi)?

I would have thought they would have ordered the name changed or Americanized at least.

Considering that the comic started out in 1922 as Fritzi Ritz changing her name in the 1940s might have been seen as a bit ridiculous as Fritzi had clearly been presented as an all-American girl for two decades.

Oddly enough the far more Germanesque comic The Katzenjammer Kids, while it had changed it's name to The Shenaningan Kids during WWI, apparently kept it's regular name through WWII (and continues so today).

Many German names were changed or Americanized during World War II (Schmit to Smith, for example).

Maybe changing her name might have been extreme, but one wonders why they didn't Americanize it (what would be the American equivalent).


Strange about that other comic, that they would change the name in World War I, but not World War II. Hiter was far more evil than the Kaiser ever was.

Were people actually ordered to change their names or did they do it for fear of others overreacting to the German name.

On the other hand a couple of newspaper reporters during WWII dressed up like German soldiers and walked around New York City and nobody bothered them.

They changed, or rather they Americanized their names, themselves. It was more out of shame than of fear.

Barnaby was a comic about a young boy and his fairy godfather, Mr. O'Malley.

2/1/43 reprinted in Barnaby and Mr. O'Malley Free Comic Book Day Edition #1

Panel 3. Gus the ghost says, "on one's feel all hours of the night"
Feet not feel.

Baron Bean was the companion strip, or topper, to George Herriman's Krazy Kat and featured the titled, but usually broke, Baron Bean.

All strips reprinted in The Library of American Comics Essentials Volume 1

General Nits.
Herriman's spelling. Ugh. In some cases it seems to be because he's writing dialect humor, other times it just seems to be personal whim.

For someone who is usually shown struggling for money he goes through a surprising number of cooks.

NANJAO. Grimes' appearance changes a bit over the strip's first six months. Originally his features made me wonder if he was supposed to be black or partially black, but as time went by Herriman changed the way he drew him. The Baron, by contrast changed very little over the same time period.
Admittedly the introduction explaining that Herriman's family was listed as mulatto when they lived in New Orleans, but after moving to California they passed as white, made me wonder if there was more to the art change than just an artist deciding to change a character's look.

1/21/1916
P.D. McNutt is called J.P. McNutt in this strip.

2/10/16
This is odd. On first reading I thought they had suddenly jumped to Alaska for a storyline, although rereading it they appear to be in their home when a prospector (or something like that) enters, and after that it seems like they are in Alaska, or Canada, encountering moose and stuff.
Then again logic may not apply to the "setting" of Herriman's comics.

4/11 & 12/16
In these strips the Chinese cook called Mr. Ping Pong on 4/10/16 becomes Mr. Ping-Pong.

4/18/16
Mr. Doodap has hired away the most recent of the Baron's cooks, Fuliginia Twilight, and now Mrs. Doodap asks if Fuliginia can cook.
Shouldn't she have asked this BEFORE she hired away the cook?

The Baron says he doesn't know if Fuliginia can cook since she never had anything to cook.
Except that on 4/14/16 she made herself something to eat, on 4/15/16 she fried an egg and on 4/17/16 she hardboiled an egg.

5/9/16
The Baron asks Grimes (his surprisingly loyal valet) if he has an uncle apparently forgetting he met Grime's uncle, Alfwin McDoodil, on 4/29.

Either the collection made a mistake or the original syndicate did. The 5/19/16 strip should follow the 5/20/16 since first strip has the Baron knowing orange trees take five years to produce fruit before he learns it in the next strip.

6/19/16
This reveals that the Baron & Grimes have had wives since before the strip began. Which is odd considering there were a few storylines of them trying to find wives.

8/12/16
Jerry gives the Baron a $2.40 bill, instead of 2 dollars and 40 cents.

12/6/16
Two days ago his name was Sandy MacGinzberg, now it's MacGinsberg.

12/18/16
The Baroness, after learning that she is descended from one of Egypt's most ancient and royal princesses, has decided that the house will follow the Oriental* tradition of not wearing shoes in the house. Here we see the Baroness wearing her high heels in the house.

* I believe, at that point in time, that Egypt was considered Oriental.

Li'l Abner

3/17/58 Reprinted in Li'l Abner volume 24

We last saw Mammy & Pappy Yokum on 12/25/57 (in the dailies, at least, the book doesn't print any Sundays) and at that time gunmoll the Lady in Red and Daisy Mae had switched places and Lady in Red threatened to shoot Honest Abe if Abner didn't do as she said and he ordered Mammy & Pappy away as Daisy Mae's order. Here Li'l Abner is believed dead and Daisy Mae is planning to marry J.P. Sweetpants so that Honest Abe's future would be taken care of & Mammy & Pappy are there by her side.
Now you'd think some kind of scene explaining what really happened would be a natural cartoon to show given how sad they were at being ordered away, but apparently the cartoonist didn't think it important to show.

Dick Tracy: America's Most Famous Detective

In the section where they reprint the return of Haf-and-Haf, pages 7 & 8 (3/31/78 - 4/5/78) are reversed.

In the 4/5/78 strip Zela describes the snake that bit her as having "rings, black, red, yellow..."
Now she might just be listing the colors overall and not describing the pattern, but there's an old rhyme, "Red on black, venom lack, red on yellow or white, kill a fellow or might." so a snake that has red on both yellow & black seems highly unlikely.

Donald Duck

3/1/43 Reprinted in Walt Disney's Mickey And The Gang: Classic Stories In Verse

In the final panel a group of dogs are waiting for Donald, one of which looks like Daisy from the Blondie comic strip.

I wonder if all the dogs are supposed to be from other strips. They seem to be done in different styles, especially a chihuahua done as a black silhouette.

Flash Gordon

All strips reprinted in Mac Raboy's Flash Gordon volume 2

NANJAO. These are all Sunday strips, no dailies.

6/7/53
Earth has discovered a habitable satellite behind the moon.
Errrrrrg... that's as bad as the cliche of another planet on the opposite side of the sun. If there were such an object it would have been spotted long ago for the same reasons.


6/14/53
The new moon's name... Titan.
There's already a moon of Saturn with that name.


6/28/53
On 6/14 & 6/21 the guy's name was Mydas, but from now on it's Midas.

Also it's revealed that Midas had been on Titan briefly before, which ties in with why the mission had giant handcuffs in the 6/14 strip, but contradicts 6/21's statement that he "shall be the first earthman to set foot on" [Titan], and the government's reason for Flash going on 6/7, to explore & claim it for Earth.


8/23/53
They capture a giant human on Titan and Midas says they can make a lot of money off of him & later strips has him claiming to own the giant.
When was slavery re-established?


9/13/53
Landing on Earth they find themselves tiny-sized and the giant is the size of normal humans, then Flash & the crew return to normal size, Titan having shrunk all earth matter.
So why doesn't the giant's handcuffs start expanding?

For that matter I wouldn't want to be that close to the space ship as it starts expanding as well.

1/24/54

Panel 2. Flash thinks, "Callisto's no longer a mystery planet!"
Callisto is a moon.


4/4/15

Panel 6. "An exploding meteor pulls the drifting patrol ship off its course"
Pushes, not pulls. The mistake also comes up in the next comic.

Panel 2. Flash thinks, "Callisto's no longer a mystery planet!"
Callisto is a moon.

True, but it's larger than Mercury and would be considered a planet if it orbited the Sun instead of Jupiter. I guess it all depends on what your definition of a planet is.

Well, given that, I believe, Flash Gordon was set in the "present" rather than the future, you'd probably go with the 1950s view of a planet rather than 2006's definition. No strict definition of the time, but a general "if it goes around the sun it's a planet*, if it goes around a planet it's a moon.

* except for asteroids & meteoroids which were considered too small, or comets which had noticeably eccentric orbits.


7/18/54

Stoney couldn't take Pebbles to Earth because Stoney's heart was too weak for Earth's gravity, but Pebbles, who was born in the asteroid belt, doesn't have a problem moving about when he's on Earth in the next story.


8/15/54

Dale is mesmerized by the star tree and walk toward it, but is the only person in the story to be so affected.


1/23/55

Flash & Zarkov's ship was caught in the Antomni time migration and have ended up one million years in the past and encounter a dinosaur. Later on they encounter a pterandon and a dimetrodon or edaphosaurus.
All these creatures were extinct long before one million years ago.


3/13/55

The antmen of Antomni worry that a brush fire will destroy their time migration machine (and in a later comic, it does).
You'd think a scientifically advanced civilization might have developed fire-proofing, or super-cooling devices to prevent such a thing?


4/3/55

Venus has humanoids living on it.
Science marches on.


11/13/55

Here it's mentioned that Earth has "Station Crossroads", "A sort of Ellis Island for traffic through space" and later (11/27) Hildy mentions that she's "toured the galaxies searching" for her lost husband.
Makes it sound like Earth is quite advanced in space exploration, which conflicts with their recently discovering a moon behind the moon, or exploring a moon of Jupiter and the first visit below the clouds of Venus happened in the 4/17/55 strip when Flash & Dale flew there.


1/15/56

Flash "adopts" Doris at this point... and we don't see or hear of her in the next three stories.
Geeze, did they ship her off to wherever they sent Pebbles? Should the police dig up Flash's basement?


9/23/56

Flash dives into the freezing waters of Northern Mongo and thinks, "I won't last 30 seconds in here!" which is clearly an underestimate as after he gets out of the water, he runs through a cavern which couldn't be that warm, dives back into the water, gets carried downstream, climbs onto a boat, dives back into the water and climbs aboard another boat and doesn't complain about being cold & wet once.


10/14/56

In the previous comic the winged people were called dactyl-men, but from this point on they're just called dact-men.

12/2/56

Duplicates of Flash are made and Flash recognizes his own voice.
Errrrrrrrrg... people don't usually recognize their own voices unless they've heard a lot of recordings of themselves. I believe most of us don't recognize our own voices because in addition to heaing the vibrations in air, we also have the vibrations of our larynxes traveling through our bodies to our eardrums which distorts the voice we hear.


3/17/57

On Mongo, they encounter an interplanetary fair, with a rocket race. Ramor of Kalthi is a two-time winner and it is said, "One more win and they'll be rich enough to make Mongo a moon of Kalthi"
Bwa?
1. Is Kalthi big enough to sustain a planet the size of Mongo as a moon?
2. What kind of technology do they have to even attempt such a stupid thing?
3. This never would have happened when Ming was in charge! Sure he was an evil and ruthless dictator, but he understood the importance of keeping planets planets! ;-)


3/31/57

Despite being out in space Ramor's ship encounters meteors which you would only encounter in a planetary atmosphere. In space they are meteoroids or asteroids.


4/28/57

To prove they've reached star DDS3, the Kalthians drill for some mongolinium ore.
Wouldn't it be easier if there was a race official to record their arrival?

For a "star" this body is more like a planet, solid with atmosphere, and not a ball of burning hydrogen.

For a "star" this body is more like a planet, solid with atmosphere, and not a ball of burning hydrogen.

Some stars do have solid surfaces, like white dwarfs and neutron stars. Of course, gravity on such stars is so great that anyone attempting to land on them would be crushed to near oblivion. Although, a civilization with the technology to turn planets into moons might have a solution to that problem

5/19/57

Flash gets a new spaceship and immediately they head for Earth.
Bwa? You'd think they'd want to, at least, say hi to some of their old friends whom they haven't seen yet on this return to Mongo.


6/23/57

Flash escapes from the Space Tomb through a time warp that takes him back to his ship before the ship crashed, but Dale, Zarkov & himself from that point in time aren't there and he has to rescue his friends and the other trapped spacemen.
I wonder if Brannon Braga read the Space Tomb storyline as a kid?


10/20/57

Flash identifies the planet he comes from (Earth) and the Wheel Person says, "Planetoid 4 of star XZ492!"
That would be Mars, not Earth.


11/10/57

Flash says, "Well, Zarkov, now that we've gotten the Wheel People together, there may be some peace around here!"
It's the Wheel People and the Gyromen that he's brought together in peace.


1/19/58

Neptune is at war with Pluto. To prove to the Plutonians that they can destroy Pluto easily they fire a test missile at the third planet from the sun (which they seem to think is uninhabited).
Why not just destroy Pluto with this missile and end the war now?

The inter-planet ballistic missile blows up near Earth, rather than actually hitting it (as does the second missile in the next comic.)
So much for the Neptunian targeting systems.


2/2/58

Flying to Neptune Flash detects a third missile and fires a cobalt bomb to intercept and Flash says, "Go get him, baby... while he's still a couple of light years away!"
Light seconds, light minutes or light hours sure, but light years would mean Neptune is outside of our solar system.


2/16/58

NNAN. Since Neptune & Pluto don't think life can exist on a "water planet" they assume Flash comes from another solar system. Flash tells them he comes from Terra Firma which is a million light years away.
Now in Earth light years that would put his fictional planet in intergalactic space, although a Neptunian light year would be much longer so maybe it could be right? ;-)


2/23/58

Grungy nitpicking. Neptune is said to only have two moons.
Science marches on. ;-)


Annoyingly the volume ends before the end of the story.

Flash identifies the planet he comes from (Earth) and the Wheel Person says, "Planetoid 4 of star XZ492!"
That would be Mars, not Earth.

There could be an explanation. Our Moon is quite large, it would in fact be considered a planet if it orbited on its own. So maybe they are listing it as one of the planetoids, making no distinction between moon and planet.

Neptune is at war with Pluto. To prove to the Plutonians that they can destroy Pluto easily they fire a test missile at the third planet from the sun (which they seem to think is uninhabited).
Why not just destroy Pluto with this missile and end the war now?

Presumably they wanted to avoid genocide, hence the demonstration on an uninhabited planet. Or they wanted to enslave the Plutonians, which would be tricky if they were dust.

So why not just destroy Sedna or one of the other Dwarf Planets out there? ;-)

Another nit I forgot about. In the Star Tree storyline, the Star Tree was brought by Plutonians and it was revealed that the inhabitants of Pluto had evolved on Earth during the Ice Age and left Earth as the Ice Age was ending (they like the cold). Now I don't think the Plutonian ambassador on Neptune actually stated that Earth was uninhabited, but he had to know there were people on it and he didn't tell the Neptunians this.

Non Sequitor is a comic that does random one shots and series of varying lengths. Sometimes the various series cross over.

Captain Eddie's cat is called both Paulie & Pauly.

In her earliest appearances Danae's hair is brown, but for most of her appearances blue is used as the highlight color.
Girls that young shouldn't be using hair dye. *shakes head* ;-)

Non Sequitor's Sunday Color Treasury

This book collects and separates the various series that Non Sequitor does and puts them together in categories.

One of the book chapters is called Danae and Jeffery and the text introduction refers to the boy as Jeffery.
Problem is the actual comics spell his name Jeffrey.

Oddities Of Science was a Ripley's Believe It Or Not-style strip that ran in the pages of Modern Mechanixs.

Vol 12 #4 (August 1934)

"Man knows more about the Moon than the Earth. Much of the Earth has never been seen by human eyes, but the entire moon's surface has been minutely explored by astronomers."

Uhhhh... in 1934? At most astronomers would have only been able to see about 56% of the moon's surface. (As the moon orbits the Earth, astronomers can see a slight bit of the moon on the far side.)

Now if the writer had said the visible surface of the moon instead of the "entire moon's surface", no problem.

The final factoid calls a dolphin a fish.