Born on this day in 1901: yet another cool guy in comics named Chic (and not to be confused with that stony Marvel inker who had his birthday a few days past), the cartoonist who created Blondie: Chic Young! (Short for, if you'll believe Wikipedia, and why not) "Chicken!"
Here's a couple comics text pages that, if probably not by Chic Young, are at least kinda about him!
text page from Blondie Comics Monthly #17 (Harvey, April 1950)
text page from Blondie Comics Monthly #22 (Harvcey, September 1950)
Happy birthday, Chic Young, and thanks for all the giant sandwiches, naps on the couch, running into the mailman, sneaking in late past Mr. Dithers, and trying to get one up on Herb Woodley fun that we've all loved since (looks it up) whoa, 1930?!
It's anniversary time, folks! I want to wish a happy 80th birthday to Blondie!
NO NO NO NO NO. Start again.
It's anniversary time, folks! I want to wish a happy 80th birthday to Blondie!
That's right...eighty years ago today, August 8, 1930, the comic strip Blondie, created by Chic Young, debuted! That's eight decades of giant sandwiches, sleeping on the couch, getting beaten up by Mr. Dithers, and being interrupted in the bathtub! But all that came a little later: Blondie originally started as a comedy/romance strip in which rich boy Dagwood Bumstead woos chorus girl Blondie Boopadoop, under his father's threat of being disinherited if he goes through with the wedding.
They do, he does, and that wedding guest is wrong...they're off on the road to decades of laughs and adventure.
Over the years, in addition to the daily and Sunday strip (now written by Chic Young's son Dean and drawn by Dean Marshall), Blondie, Dagwood, Baby Dumpling aka Alexander, Cookie, and faithful dog Daisy have been featured not only in the comic but as toys, books, dolls, sandwich restaurants, movies...
...television...
...cartoons...
...and even advertisements!
And of course...comic books. Here's some covers from only a few of the Blondie-related comic books:
If you're a fan of the strip, you'll like the comic books as well: comedy with good art (by the talented Paul Fung Jr.), funny scripts, sharp timing and longer plots. But the situations hapless Mister B gets into aren't completely unfamiliar:
There are of course the familiar giant sandwiches:
...and mishaps so...wide...that you wouldn't see them in the daily comic strip:
Here's one of my favorites—the final three pages of a story in which Dagwood and neighbor Herb Woodley belabor each other with increasingly Rube Goldbergian mayhem. Looks like comic artist Paul Fung's having a ball with this story, and so am I:
Charlton's Blondie #200 (October 1972) celebrated the 40th (more or less) wedding anniversary of Mister and Missus B., with modern-day reminiscence and flashbacks to the couple's most memorable moments.
The framing sequences are drawn in the comic's modern style:
...while Paul Fung deftly imitates the look of the strip from yesteryear in the flashbacks.
Happy 80th, Blondie and Dagwood! And may you have many, many more. The world definitely needs more of this:
...there was another all-the-rage clan of domesticated pets who caught the nation's fancy and became beloved icons of man's best friend in the funny papers: Daisy (faithful dog of Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead) and her pups. What, you say you don't even remember seeing Daisy have pups in the Blondie comic strip? Well, Daisy's still in residence, but the pups haven't been around for many years. I like to assume they all went to fine homes like Herb and Tootsie Woodley, Elmo Tuttle, Mr. Beasley (one of my Top Ten Fictional Mailmen)...but not, we hope, to slave-driver Julius Dithers, who would no doubt work those hounds to death. Boo, Mister Dithers!
How popular were the pups? So popular that a lengthy sequence of the strip was based around their birth (you kids today with your worrying over who Elizabeth Patterson will ultimately choose would do well to check it out), toys were created of them, they got their own movie, and oh yeah, their own comic book from Harvey. (Beat that, Andy, Olaf, and Marbles!)
But what's this got to do with Friday Night Fights? Why, open your eyes wide and behold the sheer spectacle and splendor that is dogs fighting in a boxing ring:
POW! * Why, that's almost a punch of Kirbyian proportions there! Does Elmer triumph? Are the orphans saved? Is there a happy ending to Daisy and Her Pups #7? Well, I don't have the comic book in question in my collection, but knowin' comics, at least of that time, I'm gonna venture: yes, there's a happy ending. Do you really need to ask? Because when dogs put on boxing gloves, we are all winners.
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