Daily Comic Strip - Archival Clippings

Archival Clippings

The popularity and accessibility of strips meant they were often clipped and saved or posted on bulletin boards or refrigerators. Authors John Updike and Ray Bradbury have written about their childhood collections of clipped strips. Many readers related to J. R. Williams' homespun humor and clipped his long-run daily panel, Out Our Way. As noted by Coulton Waugh in his 1947 book, The Comics, anecdotal evidence indicated that more of Williams' daily cartoons were clipped and saved than any other newspaper comic strip.

Strips had an ancillary form of distribution when they were clipped and mailed, as noted by the Baltimore Sun's Linda White: "I followed the adventures of Winnie Winkle, Moon Mullins and Dondi, and waited each fall to see how Lucy would manage to trick Charlie Brown into trying to kick that football. (After I left for college, my father would clip out that strip each year and send it to me just to make sure I didn’t miss it.)"

Collections of such clipped daily strips can now be found in various archives, including Steve Cottle's online I Love Comix Archive. Comics historian Bill Blackbeard had tens of thousands of daily strips clipped and organized chronologically. Blackbeard's San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection, consisting of 2.5 million clippings, tearsheets and comic sections, spanning the years 1894 to 1996, has provided source material for books and articles by Blackbeard and other researchers. During the 1990s, this collection was acquired by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, providing that Ohio State museum with the world's largest collection of daily newspaper comic strip tear sheets and clippings. In 1998, six 18-wheelers transported the Blackbeard collection from California to Ohio.