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Curated playlist

American comic strips

  • The Addams FamilyThe Addams Family appears in a Christmas cartoon from 1946 in which the household greets a group of carolers by pouring boiling oil on them. Charles Addams drew the scene, and readers liked it enough that it was later sold on Christmas…
  • PopeyePopeye the Sailor Man began as a hired hand who was supposed to leave the story. In 1938, the newspaper strip that carried him ran in 500 newspapers. Over 600 licensed Popeye products were on sale, and his creator, Elzie Crisler Segar, was…
  • GarfieldAs of 2013, the comic strip Garfield ran in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals. That reach earned it a Guinness World Record as the world's most widely syndicated comic strip. American cartoonist Jim Davis created it, and it grew into a…
  • Hägar the HorribleThe Viking in Hägar the Horrible pillages Paris, then can't make his stolen palace plumbing work at home.
  • Flash GordonGeorge Lucas made Star Wars after he could not get film rights to Flash Gordon. Producer Dino De Laurentiis refused.
  • PeanutsPeanuts, the comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, filled 17,897 installments before it ended. One description called that run "arguably the longest story ever told by one human being." The strip began in 1950, and its stars were small…
  • The ShadowThe Shadow is a fictional crime fighter whose catchphrase has outlived most of the stories told about him. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" Those words opened the radio adaptation and earned a lasting…
  • DilbertDilbert first appeared in newspapers on the 16th of April 1989, written and drawn by Scott Adams. By 2013 the strip ran daily in 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries and 25 languages. It follows an engineer who works in a micromanaged…
  • Calvin and HobbesCalvin and Hobbes ended on Sunday, the 31st of December 1995, with a boy and a tiger on a sled. Fresh snow covered the hill below them. Calvin spoke the last lines of the strip: "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... Let's go…
  • Buck RogersBuck Rogers tells the first part of his own story from inside a collapsing mine near Pittsburgh. The opening three frames of his newspaper strip are narrated in his voice. "I was 20 years old when they stopped the world war and mustered me…
  • Betty BoopSinger Helen Kane sued the makers of Betty Boop in 1932, claiming they stole her voice. The studio won the 1934 trial.

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