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Newspaper Comic Strip

August 23, 2012 By Teresa Martinez

The newspaper comics strip has been one of the daily sources of entertainment in any newspaper.  It has provided readers with short snatches of humor with some extending to serialized and syndicated forms, creating loyal following in the process.  The familiar black and white strips found in daily newspaper as well as its full-page versions on Sunday newspapers are definitely hard to miss.

 

Comic strips are typically humorous presentations of a story shown as a sequence of interrelated panels featuring artists or cartoonists’ drawings with texts in balloons.  The Yellow Kid is acknowledged as the first comics strip to appear in any North American newspaper although its original form was not exactly similar to present-day cartoon strips.  It was  a “weapon” used in a historic newspaper circulation war which signaled the seriousness of what is commonly dismissed as a minor feature of newspapers.

The longest-running comic strip in the history of US newspapers is Katzenjammer Kids which first saw the light of day in the year 1897.  Other noteworthy comic strips by virtue of their staying power include Gasoline Alley as well as Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, which started in 1918 and 1919, respectively.  Who can forget Popeye and Little Orphan Annie?

Just like entities frozen in time, most comic strip characters do not age.  Their creators continue to present them in their original ages no matter how long the comic strip has been running.  This is probably due to the fact that comic strips are primarily intended for entertainment and allowing the characters to have a perpetual look benefits the familiarity factor. There are some exceptions though such as the characters in Gasoline Alley.

Comic strips do not only feature human characters.  This is where we will find animals or inanimate things interacting with people as if they had the human attributes of thinking, conversing, dancing, and singing, among others.  Judging from the long history of early cartoon strips, we can still expect to follow the life of our favorite cartoon strip characters for a long, long time.

 

Filed Under: Humour Tagged With: cartoonist, comic humor, comics strip, newspaper comics strip, newspaper entertainment

David As Santa?

December 8, 2009 By Ivo

Santa DavidI am sure that Santa Claus (Saint Nick, Santa, Father Christmas, or whatever you call him) has had more than his share of practical jokes in the past hundreds of years. It never occurred to me, though, that he would come out as muscular and naked! Apparently, I do not have as much imagination in me as Barry McBee of Big Spring, Texas.

McBee, who loves to make people laugh, decided to put up a replica of Michelangelo’s David (yeah, that ultra-muscular guy with no clothes on) on his front lawn. Following the spirit of Christmas, he decided to add a white beard and a pointy red hat (Santa’s garb, in case you didn’t get it). All the guy wanted to do was elicit a chuckle here and there, but he got more than he bargained for.

According to city officials, they received complaints from parents whose children were inquiring as to why Santa was naked. Seriously, if I were a kid, I probably would have first asked how he lost all that flab! Anyway, city officials didn’t find McBee of violating any city ordinances. However, in the interest of keeping peace in the community, they asked McBee to “put more clothes” on Santa David.

It seems that McBee is an easy going guy – he gave in easily and dressed his statue with black and white shorts. After all, we cannot have Santa suffering from frostbite, can we? Oh, and just for the record: I think he should have gotten red and white shorts to match the hat!

Photo courtesy of Yahoo News

Filed Under: Holidays, Humour Tagged With: Christmas, Christmas decor, Michelangelo's David, Santa Claus

The Best Job In The World

January 18, 2009 By Ivo

Barrier Reef

I want in! And so does the rest of the gazillions of people inhabiting this tiny planet of ours. Last week, an ad was placed online, encouraging people to apply for what is touted as the best job in the world. The job description?

Whoever “wins” the post gets to be the caretaker of a little island paradise in Australia. This is what is written in the job description as published in the official web site:

The role of Island Caretaker is a six-month contract, based on luxurious Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a live-in position with flexible working hours and key responsibilities include exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef to discover what the area has to offer.

You’ll be required to report back on your adventures to Tourism Queensland headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blogs, photo diary, video updates and ongoing media interviews.

But that is not all! There are other tasks which the caretaker might be asked to do, including (but not limited to) the following:

Feed the fish – There are over 1,500 species of fish living in the Great Barrier Reef. Don’t worry – you won’t need to feed them all.

Clean the pool – The pool has an automatic filter, but if you happen to see a stray leaf floating on the surface it’s a great excuse to dive in and enjoy a few laps.

Collect the mail – During your explorations, why not join the aerial postal service for a day? It’s a great opportunity to get a bird’s eye view of the reef and islands.

Now tell me if anyone can ever resist that job? Apparently, everyone and his mom visited the site after hearing about the job opportunity, making the web site crash.

Filed Under: Humour, Jobs, Travel, Website

Scientists: Santa’s Reindeers Are Female

December 21, 2008 By Ivo

Santa on sleigh

How many times have you wondered whether Santa’s reindeers are male or female? I am sure that if you have not thought about it lately, you wondered about it at least once when you were a child. We may never know the answer for sure but scientists over at Texas A&M University are trying their best to figure out the gender of the reindeer.

The Associated Press ran a story yesterday:

“Santa’s reindeers were really females, most likely,” said Alice Blue-McLendon, a veterinary medicine professor specializing in deer who cites the depictions of Santa’s helpers with antlers as the primary evidence. It turns out reindeer grow antlers regardless of gender, and most bulls typically shed their fuzzy protrusions before Christmas.

But Santa’s sleigh helpers might also be castrated males, known as steers, said Greg Finstad, who manages the Reindeer Research Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Young steers finish shedding their antlers in February and March, just as non-expecting females do. Bulls generally lose theirs before Christmas, while expectant mothers retain their antlers until calves are birthed in the spring. This allows them to protect food resources through harsh weather and to have enough for developing fetuses, he said.

Sledders most often use steers because they maintain their body condition throughout the winter, he said. Bulls are tuckered out from rutting season when they mate with as many as a dozen females in the months leading up to December. That leaves them depleted and too lean to pull a sleigh or sled through heavy snows, Finstad said.

Alright, but I really cannot see anyone naming their daughter Rudolph.

Filed Under: Animals, Holidays, Humour

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