Comics from Yesteryear Trivia Quiz

Answer: Beetle Bailey

In 2016, at the age of 92, Mort Walker was still producing his strip although with the aid of his sons as well as a few other assistants. Thus, "Beetle Bailey" is one of of the longest-running strips produced by the same creator in comic history. When Walker began the strip, it focused on Beetle's life in college at Rockview University and was based on Walker's own acquaintances at a fraternity at the University of Missouri. Within a year, however, Beetle quit college and enlisted in the Army; he has remained at Camp Swampy for all this time.

At one point in the 1950s, the strip was dropped from the "Stars and Stripes", Tokyo edition, because it was thought by some to be encouraging insubordination. This marks the only time in the strip's history that the United States Army had any problem with Walker's "Beetle Bailey".

Answer: Shoe

Jeff MacNelly wrote and drew "Shoe" from 1977 to 2000, when he died. It was continued at that point by Chris Cassat, Gary Brookins, and Susie MacNelly, his wife. The title character, P. Martin "Shoe" Shoemaker, was based on Jim Shumaker, whom Macnelly worked for at the Chapel Hill Weekly in North Carolina. One of the characters who appeared with regularity was Sen. Batson D. Belfry (note the pun "bats in the belfry"), who was used by MacNelly for creating political satire; supposedly, Belfry was a combination of Sen. Ted Kennedy and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.

Despite the strip's being named after the editor, one could easily make the claim that the main character was "Perfessor" Cosmo, around whom most of the strip revolved. He worked as a columnist and was often seen wrestling with his computer at a desk ridiculously overflowing with stacks of papers.

In spite of his encyclopedic knowledge, he appeared to have settled for less than he was capable of or at least seemed to have no greater goal than to be where he was.

He also was the caretaker of his nephew Skyler, whose personality was very much like his uncle's. At one point in the strip's history, Skyler thought he was applying for a job in Paris, France, to work for the United States Marine Corporation; however, shock ensued when he found himself enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and stationed at Parris Island.

Answer: Peanuts

When Charles Schultz launched "Li'l Folks" in 1950, United Feature Syndicate decided to change the title of the strip to "Peanuts" to prevent any confusion between Schultz's work and two other strips at the time--"Li'l Abner" and "Little Folks". Schultz, however, despised the name "Peanuts" as he felt the name was extraordinarily silly and meaningless as well as demeaning to his characters and the humor that he was creating. Thus, all of the books and television specials he published had other titles with the names of Charlie Brown or Snoopy mentioned, and the Sunday strip was eventually called "Peanuts, Featuring Good Ol' Charlie Brown".

Answer: The Wizard of Id

The title "Wizard of Id" is a deliberate combination of "The Wizard of Oz" and the Freudian term for the primal part of the human mind--the id. Each of the cartoonists who created "The Wizard of Id" was responsible for separate titles. Johnny Hart was already well-known for his comic strip "B.C." before the creation of "The Wizard of Id", and Brant Parker would later help create the strips "Goosemyer" and "Crock". Johnny Hart also sparked controversy in his later years when he began to incorporate his understanding of Christianity into the themes, messages, and art of his work.

Some of his extreme views included the beliefs that those who did not know Christ would literally burn in the fires of hell and that homosexuality was a Satanic practice.

Answer: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D.

Philip Francis Nowlan created Anthony Rogers for his novella "Armageddon 2419 AD", which he published in "Amazing Stories" in 1928. After Nowlan got the idea to adapt his story to a serial in 1929, Anthony Rogers was given the new nickname of Buck, which supposedly was the idea of John F. Dille, president of the National Newspaper Service syndicate, who partnered with Nowlan and came up with the idea for a daily comic strip. "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D." inspired several other strips, including "Flash Gordon", "Brick Bradford", and "John Carter of Mars".

It later spawned a Buck Rogers radio serial, a movie serial, and two separate television series. Nowlan credited Buckminster Fuller, the American inventor, architect, and theorist, for several of the ideas that he used in the stories.

Answer: Gasoline Alley

"Gasoline Alley" began in the "Chicago Tribune" on its black-and-white Sunday page before it was picked up by the "New York Daily News" and then became a daily strip. When it was only a Sunday strip, the primary focus was a weekly discussion about automobiles by Walt Wallet and his neighbors Avery, Bill, and Doc. Avery was especially worthy of notice because, after everyone else had begun using cars with starters, he stubbornly held on to his car that used a crank (fittingly, Avery was quite a crank himself). Frank King was the creator of the strip and the first writer and artist; he worked on the strip from 1918 to 1959.

Other writers and artists include the following: Bill Perry (Sundays only) from 1951-1975, Dick Moores from 1956-1986, and Jim Scancarelli, who began in 1986.

The strip inspired two films: "Gasoline Alley" and "Corky of Gasoline Alley", both released in 1951.

Answer: Miss Peach

Mell Lazarus was inspired to create "Miss Peach" because of a contest launched by United Features Syndicate, which was searching for new comic strips; Lazarus examined several different strips being published around the country and could find nothing that revolved around children attending school.

He didn't win the contest, but he did catch the attention of the publishers of the "New York Herald Tribune". For the forty-five years that "Miss Peach" was published, the dailies were usually only one lengthy panel.

Interestingly, the strip was pulled from publication on November 29, 1963, because one of the students was fantasizing about saving the United States President and Kennedy had been assassinated only a week before. Lazarus had written and drawn this strip weeks ahead of time. During the 1990s, Lazarus changed the title to "Ms. Peach" to create a more politically correct feel to the strip.

He ended the strip in August 2002 because of his health and so that he could continue his work on his other strip "Momma", which he began in October of 1970.

Answer: Pogo

Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. began work as an animator for Walt Disney's Donald Duck cartoons as well as for the entertainment company's animated films "Pinocchio", "Fantasia", "Dumbo", and "The Reluctant Dragon". Walt Kelly started drawing Pogo the Possum and Albert the Alligator in 1941 for Dell's "Animal Comics".

However, in 1948, after he was hired by the "New York Star" to draw political cartoons, he used some of his characters from "Animal Comics" to start a daily comic strip he called simply "Pogo".

He wrote and drew the series from 1948 until his 1973 death, due to complications from diabetes. Kelly's wife and son then attempted to continue the strip but decided to conclude it in 1975 because of the decreased size of strips now being published in America's newspapers. Bill Watterson, the writer and artist of "Calvin and Hobbes", struggled with the same issue in the 1980s and 1990s.

Interestingly, he considered Walt Kelly and "Pogo" to be one of the primary influences on his own career.

Answer: FoxTrot

Bill Amend's "FoxTrot" was launched in April of 1988 as a daily comic strip; however, on December 31, 2006, he began running "FoxTrot" as only a Sunday strip. Amend is an Eagle Scout and also holds a degree in physics from Amherst College. "FoxTrot" is known for its social commentary and its frequent references to fan and pop culture as well as to contemporary fads and consumer interests.

Answer: Mark Trail

Ed Dodd, Jack Elrod, and Tom Hill (Barbara Chen was also responsible for the lettering of the script for several years) shared various duties of the strip's art and script until 1978 when Tom Hill died. Ed Dodd, consequently, retired and passed on full responsibility to the younger Jack Elrod, who in turn retired from the strip in 2014 and passed it on to his assistant James Allen. Ed Dodd grew interested in wildlife conservation after working as a national parks guide when he was young, and the personality of the main character Mark Trail is supposed to be somewhat based on a U.S. forest ranger named Charles N. Elliott.

However, the physical depiction of Mark Trail is based on Dodd's neighbor when he lived in Atlanta, a man by the name of John Wayt.

As Dodd smoke a pipe himself, he also consistently drew Mark Trail smoking a pipe; however, after a complaint from a reader in 1986, Elrod made the creative decision to abandon depicting Trail's pipe. Jack Hill, Tom Hill's son, has stated that he believes the quality of the strip's plots, characterizations, and art has declined since the late 1970s.