Here’s another comic strip that I never knew existed, let alone lasted for nearly thirty years. Created in 1944 by cartoonist Buford Tune (he had a lot of credits but the most interesting, to me anyway, was a stint painting giant balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade) under the name Dotty Dripple. Renamed Horace and Dotty Dripple in 1952 and ended it’s lengthy run in 1972. It appears to have been a pretty standard issue family strip…as well as a clear and obvious imitation of Blondie.

I usually shy away from outright accusations of out and out intellectual property theft, but Horace and Dotty Dripple looks for all the world like a National Lampoon Newspaper Parody version of Chic Young’s legendary strip. It seems to have existed for the express purpose of giving smaller newspapers who couldn’t get (or afford) Blondie s perfectly adequate factory second version of it I mean, check out the panels below…

Maybe more interesting than Horace and Dotty Dripple is the window it provides on the Harvey Comics of the 1950′s, which appears to have been a much different publisher than the one dominated by Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost. Please to note the letter from Alfred Harvey.

Here’s another peak at the world of Harvey Comics back in the 50′s. Me, I’m hoping to some day to come across copies of Paramount Comics (I have a strange and abiding passion for the Herman & Katnip cartoons ) not to mention Jiggs & Maggie as well as The Katzenjammer Kids. Obviously the inexplicably success of Mutt & Jeff as a comic for kids made someone think, “You know what kids would like as a comic book? Really, really old comic strips”.