Monday, June 06, 2022

Today in Comics History, June 6: Happy birthday, Ring Lardner!

Born today in 1885: prolific and acclaimed author Ring Lardner [Sr.], sports writer, journalist, satirist and author of dozens of books including You Know Me Al: A Busher’s Letters, Gullible's Travels, Etc., The Big Town, June Moon, Young Immigrunts, Regular Fellows I Have Met, and The Lardner of the Rings. I made up that last one to see if you were paying attention, because Ring doesn't get a lot of play in the comics books. i guess he isn't popular today among the kids. Or is it the children who are wrong?


"The Purple Prose of Springfield" from Simpsons Comics #9 (Bongo, March 1995), script by Andrew Gottlieb, pencils by Luis Escobar, inks by Tim Bavington, colors by Electric Crayon, letters by Richard Starkings

Happy birthday, Pop Ring! Tune in again on August 19 to see if I can find any comic book references to his song, Ring Lardner, Jr.!

2 comments:

Dave said...

Lardner -- one of my favorite writers and one of the few who can make me laugh out loud -- died in 1933, so that makes Skinner, what? 100 years old?

James Langdell said...

Ring Lardner's surreal short plays are some of my favorite things I've ever read. I'd like to see comics adaptations of some of them. The comparatively straightforward dialog of "The Tridgit Of Greva" could be presented well by Roger Langridge.

I just now found an edition online of more Ring Lardner scripts than I've known of before. Enjoy!

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2394&context=dissertations

Ring Lardner also scripted a comic strip version of "You Know Me Al" that was collected a few years ago.