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  • There's an online archive of public domain Golden Age comics here. You may need to download the programme you'll need to read the files - I haven't done this yet. The site has a British URL, and what's in the public domain can vary from country to country.

    The best archive I know of older newspaper strips is here. According to the homepage "most" of the comics are in the public domain.
  • Luke Blanchard said:
    There's an online archive of public domain Golden Age comics here. You may need to download the programme you'll need to read the files - I haven't done this yet. The site has a British URL, and what's in the public domain can vary from country to country.

    The best archive I know of older newspaper strips is here.

    Wow, those are two good sites. Captain Marvel, Blue Bolt, Little Nemo in the golden age site.

    I'm thoroughly lost in the newspaper strip section though. If I were only to read a couple of them what would you recommend?
  • I’m not deeply read in the archive there myself.

    The one-time very popular strips that appear there include The Katzenjammer Kids, Buster Brown, Barney Google, The Gumps and Bringing Up Father.

    The Katzenjammer Kids was one of the first US newspaper strips. The Captain and the Kids was initial artist Rudolph Dirks’s continuation of the strip for another syndicate. (When he took a long vacation the original strip was continued by Harold Knerr, and Hearst wouldn’t let him come back.)

    Buster Brown was the creation of The Yellow Kid’s creator, R.F. Outcault.

    I’m a fan of the panel Out Our Way, which was also very popular in its day. The site’s archive isn’t very large, but it has a couple of good ones.

    Phil Hardy has been named as the first true US adventure strip.

    Reportedly, Gus Mager’s Monk strips provided the model for the stage names of the Marx brothers. I found the site looking for Sherlocko the Monk/Hawkshaw the Detective.

    I’ve seen some nice Ella Cinders Sundays. Polly and Her Pals Sundays can be visually very striking.

    Darned if Hairbreadth Harry, which I’ve been looking at the for the first time today, isn’t pretty good. (“I spurn you as I would a last year’s onion!”)

    The Sorrows of Solomon Swellhead reminds me of Winsor McCay.
  • Well, for one thing, I'd like to cross-check the list with books like "A Century of Women Cartoonists," as I found some of the descriptions of early comic strips quite fascinating.
  • This site has many articles on old and obscure strips, with samples.
  • That's pretty cool. Thanks for the links, Luke.
  • Anyone look at any of the strips? I'd love to hear what you thought.
  • Regarding Golden Age strips, I have to recommend "Bringing up Father". I read many of those strips in my late teens/early 20's, and they're still funny.
  • Sorry, Disney retroactively claimed ownership of them all.
  • I took a look at Bobby Make-Believe. It's pretty much a one-note strip with a simple drawing style. I think some extremely young kids (Ages 6-7 or so) would even like it today. My only wish is that some of the scans were better.

    Also tried The Triplet Boys and Tweedledom, Twedledee and the other Triplet, neither impressed me much.
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