Wee Pals - Background

Background

Wee Pals first appeared on February 15, 1965. Syndicated by the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate, the strip originally appeared in only 5 daily newspapers, as many papers refused to run a strip featuring black characters. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, the number of papers carrying the strip grew to 60; today it appears in over 100 dailies.

The strip is centered on the activities of a group of children from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The regular characters include:

• Randy (African-American)
• Pablo (Chicano/Mexican-American)
• Diz an African-American boy who's never without his sunglasses and beret, he plays trumpet like his namesake Dizzy Gillespie and often narrates the Funky Fables strips.
• Ralph (Caucasian) He is the neighborhood bigot & ruffian who frequently gets his racist, sexist, rear handed to him when he insults the other kids in the neighborhood.
• Nipper an African-American boy who always wears a blue or grey American Civil War kepi, has a dog named General Lee.
• Mikki (African-American; about four years old)
• Oliver, a chubby, bookish white boy with glasses. Sometimes referred to as "Lil' Ebert" for his resemblance to a young Rober Ebert. He's usually the straight man in strips where one of the kids misinterprets an idiom or makes a pun.
• Connie, an athletic white girl who frequently clashes with Ralph over his misogyny and racism. She's an outspoken member of the neighborhood "Girls' Lib" organization, a play on the Women's Liberation Movement.
• Sybil, an African-American girl who is also in the Girls' Lib organization.
• Rocky (Native American)
• George (Asian-American of Chinese origin)
• Jerry (Jewish)
• Trinh (Vietnamese)
• Sally (nationality unstated, but deaf-mute)
• Wellington (nationality unstated, dark hair covering eyes)

The strip is currently distributed by Creators Syndicate. Turner still writes and draws the strips.