Inexplicable but Forgotten Newspaper Comics

 

Number One: The Adventures of The Kooky Owl,

created by famed cartoonist Raymond Alexander, whose famous work on the sci-fi comic strip Willie Lorman and the World of the Futures transitions into a more gag-a-day-strip. This strip proved to be, although an interesting experiment in the artistic field, something of a regrettable failure. Often the main character of The Adventures of the Kooky Owl would sit on a branch for long stretches of the comic’s short run of 57 years, and would complain about not being on the moon, and how much he missed being on the moon.

Number two: The comic strip Adventures of Captain America.

A little known fact: for a brief time in the ‘70’s Captain America was a newspaper comic strip. This was true, and all the famous enemies were there – Red Skull, Hydra, Captain America, but he was a werewolf. With a superstar writing and art team of Stan Lee’s brother Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby’s brother Larry Kirby, it proved to be something of a tough sell. Captain America, traditionally depicted as the idealized American who served in World War II and was discovered in the ice later, had all those classic traits with him, but also brought an inexplicable love of filling time, complaining about the Kooky Owl comic strip’s inability to stop talking about the damn moon. Many strips would be pored over as Captain America would be shaking in rage at the Kooky Owl’s latest diatribe about how it should live on the moon, and he explained as it made no sense, as owls, everyone knows, live on Mars, not the moon.  The strip ran for a short 85 years.

Number Three: The Rabbit Who Didn’t do Anything Else but Rabbit Things.

Internationally-renowned  cartoonist Tommy Tomerson decided he would bring realism to the genre of funny animal strips by stripping away any possibility for character or character interaction or story lines or pretty much anything except random-drawn pictures of rabbits because he would spend years in the wild drawing them. His strip was derided by the public at large, but praised by art critics as a brutal attempt at validating nature in its most intimate detail. The strip lasted for a very short 103 years.

Number Four: This comic strip was called George W. Bush but What if his Middle Name Started with an M?  

This was another seemingly inexplicable strip from Raymond Alexander, who many people assumed was dead at this time, but wasn’t, we assumed. This strip would just talk about how it would be really funny if instead of George W. Bush whose middle name was Walker, we would have George Malker Bush. all thought it a short run of 150 years of this strip were just hardy laughs.

Number Five: Can you Draw? Draw your own Comic Strip.

Now this one was just pure laziness on the part of Raymond Alexander, who was still doing great work up to this point, but also he got just really bored for a couple of years, and instead of doing his normal strip of  The Inexplicable Owl or Flash Gordon, or the detective one whose name I don’t remember at the moment, he just combined all those strips into one, and then, he just didn’t draw them for 6 months, and said “draw your own damn strip if you want another strip; I’m not your monkey.” So it would just be a collection of blank pages. Folks were very angry at this one, and even though I said it only lasted for 6 months, inexplicably they were reprinted over and over again – not new blank pages, but the ones he did. Those reprints lasted for one of the shortest reprint runs ever - 235 years.

Number Something: This one was called Wow, Man.

This one was sweet as hell, man. There’s a number for this one, I’m sure. What if your dog was a cat?  What if a dog and a cat fell in love? It was so cute, and then a damn meteor came and destroyed the earth and that comic. I don’t get it. What the hell were they trying to do with that one? The strip ran for a short 1085 years.