Western Publishing Co. produced a daily Little Lulu newspaper strip syndicated by the Chicago Tribune-New York News syndicate from 1950-1969. These comic strips were not created by Marge, but rather, like the comics, were written by others. This strip is from the Chicago Tribune December 31, 1951, which is the earliest I found in that newspaper. (You may click on it for a larger version).
Information about the writers/artists of the daily comic strips.
Little Lulu Daily Comic Strips from the newspaper.
Information I have indicates three different writers/artists for these strips:
Roger Armstrong: I received an email that stated: "Thought you might like to know that an artist named Roger Armstrong drew the 1951-1953 comic strips you show. Even though they're signed by Marge, he was what is called a "ghost" artist who did the actual drawings."
Woody Kimbrell: According to information in The Stanley Steamer, No. 19, April 1985: "We're going to be reproducing in the second set of the [Little Lulu] Library (Set V) some strips from the early years by Kimbrell and will, in the meantime, be digging up as much information about the artist that we possibly can." However, in the LLL along with some of the comic strips is the information that the artist of the strips is at this time unknown. It appears the information was not conclusive enough to put in the LLL. I did find an article in Near Mint #14, August 1981, in which Woody Kimbrell is featured and his work on the Little Lulu comic strip is mentioned: "His two years at the art center ended when he entered a contest to locate a cartoonist to illustrate Little Lulu. His dedication, and years of preparation paid off when his name was announced winner.... Kimbrell and Little Lulu had a 15-year association. He was responsible for creation of daily strips and Sunday panels of the comic. It appeared in most major newspapers in the United States and in leading foreign publications....Kimbrell's illustrated booklet "Marge's Little Lulu" is a collectors item."
I will include additional information about the artists for the daily comic strip as I get it.
The first comic strip appeared June 5, 1950. However, when I looked in back issues of the Chicago Tribune, the first strip I found appeared December 31, 1951, with the strips appearing Monday through Saturday except for a few days in which the strip didn't appear. Here is that comic strip. (You may click on it to see a larger version):
As I was looking for the Lulu strips, I found an article, "Lulu's No Lamb, But to Millions She is Lovable" by Leslie Monypenny, in the Chicago Tribune Monday, February 4, 1952, that stated about Lulu: "She was 'born' in 1935 in the Saturday Evening Post, in which for many years she occupied a panel on the last page. The magazine's readers spread her fame far and wide - so much so that Lulu was taken over for newspaper comic pages in 1950 by The Chicago Tribune-New York News syndicate...."
This article appears to confirm the appearance of the newspaper strips in 1950, so I will continue to look for some in the earlier papers. So far, I have found them in the Chicago Tribune from December 31, 1951 through September 12, 1959, Monday through Saturday. However, according to the information above about Woody Kimbrell, I'll have to go back and look for a comic panel in the Sunday papers. If you have any of the strips or panels that appeared in the newspaper before December 31, 1951, I would love to hear from you.
Here are some of the strips I found in the Chicago Tribune. (Please note: I made copies of these from microfilm, so the quality of some of them is not very good.) I will continue to add more of the strips to this page as I get them scanned.
December
1951
December 31, 1951
January
1952
January 1, 1952
January 2, 1952
January 3, 1952
January 4, 1952
January 5, 1952
January 7, 1952
January 8, 1952
January 9, 1952
January 10, 1952
January 12, 1952
January 14, 1952
January 15, 1952
January 16, 1952
January 17, 1952
January 18, 1952
January 19, 1952
January 21, 1952
January 22, 1952
January 23, 1952
January 24, 1952
January 25, 1952
January 26, 1952
January 28, 1952
January 29, 1952
January 30, 1952
January 31, 1952
Page last updated 27 Jan 2005.
Email comments to dmmaki@MichelesWorld.net
