Tag Archives: Calvin and Hobbes

Hey Dick Tracy: Read this

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The blow, when it came, was like a swift punch to the kidneys: Dick Tracy, the peerless comic strip detective, doesn’t read newspaper comic strips anymore.

My first thought: They’re still publishing Dick Tracy?

My second thought: Maybe ol’ Dick is right.

Let me fill in the backstory: I was perusing the Interwebs today when I saw a link to a story on Examiner.com in which writer Brian Steinberg notes the current Dick Tracy strip, in which the sharp-chinned cop, when asked if he reads comic strips, replies, “Usually don’t have time.”

At first I thought, “Well, the hell with Dick Tracy. If he’d turn in that two-way wrist radio and get an iPad or even an iPhone, maybe he’d keep up with the news a little better.”

Then I thought, well, to be honest, I’m not reading newspaper comic strips every day either.

Regular readers of this blog might have noticed that I’ve mentioned Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, a long-gone adventure strip along the lines of Dick Tracy, as well as classics like Calvin and Hobbes and the inexplicably popular Family Circus.

But since Calvin hurtled off this plane of existence on his sled, I haven’t spent a lot of time with the funnies.

That’s a shame too. I work for a newspaper and read it, in print and online, every day. But I haven’t paid as much attention to the comics since the heyday of not only Calvin but the Far Side.

So when I realized that I was no better than Dick Tracy in my inattention to newspaper comic strips, I decided to rectify the situation.

Beginning tomorrow, I’m going to take a few minutes and check out the comics, both in print and online. I’m going to find some new favorites. Maybe I’ll catch up on Funky Winkerbean. Are those crazy kids still in high school?

I’ll let you know how the comic strip reading is going.

I can’t promise I’ll read Dick Tracy every day, however, That guy’s attitude is just annoying.

 

Calvin, Kmart and the Blue Light Special

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For some of us of a certain age and with a good memory, that “Calvin and Hobbes” strip — in which Calvin’s dad tells him he came not only from a store, but from Kmart, where he was a Blue Light Special — is particularly funny. Because some of us grew up at least within earshot of the Blue Light Special.

For a kid growing up south of Muncie, the center of  my shopping universe was the Southway Plaza, where I bought comics and had my first — and only — shoplifting experience (a story for another time).

But right up there with the Southway — figuratively and geographically — was the nearby Kmart.

Considering the sad state of Kmart today — struggling financially and spurned by even discriminating Walmart shoppers — it’s hard to imagine that Kmart was once the retail powerhouse that it was.

But my whole family shopped there. My toys came from there, I bought records there — vinyl LPs — and a lot of our clothes came from there.

And if you went to Kmart often enough, you were familiar with the Blue Light Special.

At random times during the day, the management decided it was time to push some slow-moving product. An employee was assigned the task of rolling out the Blue Light Special, which was a metal cart with a pricing gun and a metal pole with, literally, a blue light at the top. The lights were not unlike those at the top of a police car.

Some store employee would get on the P.A. system and announce, for example, a Blue Light Special on baseballs in the sporting goods department. A special price on baseballs would be available for the next 15 minutes, they would note. Customers who wanted to buy baseballs — or ham sandwiches from the deli, or sneakers from the shoe department — would make their way there and fill their carts.

I don’t remember my family often buying Blue Light Specials and to this day it seems like a curious marketing strategy. While the promise of a Blue Light Special might draw shoppers to Kmart, there was little to attract them but the hope that sometime while they were there a random item might go on sale. It was kind of like an internal Kmart lottery.

Apparently the Blue Light Specials, introduced in 1965 — during my early Kmart shopping experience — held on until 1991. A couple of years ago, the retailer tried to appeal to Baby Boomer memories by referencing Blue Light Specials and adopting a blue lightbulb mascot. But it was a little like when KFC made Colonel Sanders a hip-hop granddad; it’s hard to imagine who they thought they were appealing to.

Where have you gone, Mike Nomad?

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I was a newspaper fan from childhood, years before I would have guessed my writings would appear in print on a nearly daily basis. Decades before the Interwebs made it possible to connect with the big, wide world on an instantaneous basis, TV, radio and newspapers were my connection, my contact, to everything out there that was bigger than me.

Just as Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” was the avenue for a kid from Central Indiana to learn about the finer points of Jewish comedians and great jazz, so newspapers were a way for a Cowan elementary-schooler to begin to form a rudimentary grasp of current events.

And newspaper comic strips were the icing on that cake of information.

I read virtually all the comic strips, from the beautifully drawn but kind of impenetrable, plot-wise, “Prince Valiant” Sunday strips to the bread-and-butter comedy of “Hagar.” I read the comics page from the top down every day.

I can’t say I loved every single one — sorry, “Andy Capp” — but some of the strips I savored like cold Chocola on a hot afternoon. Even well into my adulthood, “Calvin and Hobbes” was the highlight of my day. I probably should have saved it for late in the evening so the day didn’t peak too early. I still mourn Dec. 31, 1995, when Bill Watterson ended his strip. I don’t think the comics page has been the same since.

But while the funny strips were probably the most enjoyable and the most accessible, I loved the drama strips. Well, I can’t say I spent a whole lot of time dawdling over “Mary Worth” or “Apartment 3-G,” but I read them.

The adventure strips, though, are another matter. A particular favorite was “Steve Roper and Mike Nomad.”

The strip began in 1936 — back then it was “Big Chief Wahoo” — which was well before my time. Journalist Steve Roper was introduced in 1940 — still well before my time — and eventually took over the strip. Adventurer Mike Nomad was introduced in 1956.

Roper and Nomad were the kind of duo that remains popular to this day, particularly in mystery novels that feature a more cerebral lead character and his quick-with-his-fists buddy. Roper was, fittingly for a journalist, the kind of guy who could not only investigate a crime but think his way out of a tight spot.

Nomad, with a flat-top haircut that looked like you could drive a pick-up truck across it without mussing a single hair, was the funnier, flashier character. He was known to hang out in Chinatown or down at the docks and usually ran afoul of some bad guys who wanted to prove they were tougher than Nomad. They weren’t.

I have to admit I lost track of Roper and Nomad after the duo disappeared from our local papers. I reconnected with their adventures, in a daily, incremental way, when I was out of town and picked up a newspaper that still carried the strip.

And I’m a little surprised that the strip continued until the day after Christmas 2004. By that time, the strip had allowed Roger and Nomad to age gracefully, although Nomad could still get into and out of a scrape or two.

He couldn’t get out of the slow fade of adventure comics as published in newspapers, though. While a few daily action strips remain, most have gone the way of Roper and Nomad.