Two Wild and Crazy Guys

Today I remembered something I was going to write about nearly a year ago. I was reminded of it when going through last year’s collection of daily cartoons received as e-mail from Harry Bliss, a cartoonist based in Vermont. Besides being a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Harry has a syndicated panel that appears daily, except Sunday. Which is sort of the opposite of strips like ‘Doonesbury’, with every day except Sunday being reprints. For the past year Bliss has had some help with gag writing from a guy named Steve Martin. Yes, that Steve Martin.

This one proves, as if there were any doubt, that Martin is familiar with Swamp Thing.

This one is charming. I like charming comic strips.

Speaking of ‘Doonesbury’, I am also late talking about something else. The Boston Globe raised its home delivery rates again, so as of this month I am getting the Globe only on weekends, along with my digital subscription. The long, slow death of paper papers continues. But, wouldn’t ya know it, the one time ‘Doonesbury’ had to be printed perfectly in the Sunday comics, it looked like this on 2/2.

There, that’s better.

By the way, ‘Doonesbury’ has been syndicated for as long as ‘Peanuts’ had been at the time of Charles M. Schulz’s death.

E.nterprising C.ochran

Physics professor turned publisher Russ Cochran of West Plains, Missouri, has passed away. Cochran’s friendship with MAD magazine’s Bill Gaines made it possible for him to reprint every E.C. comic book from the 1950’s in hardcover box sets, starting with Weird Science in 1978. I subscribed to the series and received each set as they were published, which took upwards of ten years to complete, as I recall.

Some of the finest pieces of original comic strip art found today on Heritage Auctions passed through Cochran’s hands decades ago, from his own art auctions as well as his personal collection. In 2005 Cochran published ‘Les Paul In His Own Words’ in collaboration with his brother Michael.