Showing posts with label comic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comic. Show all posts

January 17 – Popeye Day

Posted on January 17, 2018

I know a few things about Popeye:

He was a Sailor Man with a TV show and a rather annoyingly catchy theme song called "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man."
He adored Olive Oyl.
His nemesis was Bluto.
He got his strength from spinach. Actually, he got his strength from what I think is the very worst form of spinach: canned spinach. It was usually eaten straight from the can in a crushed-tin-can geyser that plops down into his eager throat!



Here are some things I didn't know:

* Popeye was introduced on this date in 1929 as just a very minor character in a newspaper comic strip named Thimble Theater.

* Popeye was so popular, he quickly became the main character of that strip. And that strip then went on to become one of the most popular and profitable strips of its time.

* About nine years after Popeye's introduction to the world, his creator died; Thimble Theater (which was eventually changed to the name Popeye) was carried on by several other writers and artists.

* Over the years, Popeye also appeared in comic books,  theatrical and TV cartoons (as I mentioned above), arcade and video games, ads, and products like spinach. He was also the inspiration for radio shows and a 1980 live-action movie Popeye!





* The movie set for the movie Popeye is now a tourist attraction called Popeye's Village.



Also on this date:
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October 2 – Peanuts Day

Posted October 2, 2017

Today is not about a yummy legume:


Instead, it is about a lovable comic strip that grew into an empire of books, TV specials, movies, and even a stage show.

Some people call the Peanuts comic strip "the longest story ever told by one human being." The storyteller is cartoonist Charles M. Schultz. He wrote about a gang of kids, including Charlie Brown (a character based loosely on himself), plus Charlie's dog Snoopy and Snoopy's best friend Woodstock the bird.




Today is the anniversary of the start of the Peanuts comic strip, in 1950. The last original comic was published in 2000, the day after author Schultz died. The comics are still reprinted - get this! - in almost every newspaper in the U.S.

Here are some stats on the long-running Peanuts:

The comic ran in more than 2,600 newspapers
It ran in 75 countries
It was published in 21 different languages
More than 335 million people read Peanuts
Schultz earned more than $1 billion!!




There have been a LOT of Charlie Brown specials on TV! Check out all the title cards for the various shows here. 

To get you in the mood for the upcoming Halloween holiday-times, here is "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."


Here is a simple (and free) online jigsaw of the Peanuts characters, and here is a much more challenging one. 

Here are some videos about how to draw the Peanuts characters.





Also on this date:




Day after the National Day of the People's Republic of China in Macau
 










































First Monday in October





First Monday in October








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June 18 – Clark Kent's Birthday

Posted on June 18, 2017

Clark Kent, above, might celebrate his birthday on a
different date than Superman, below.

Even though they're the same guy!


 
If you're a fictional character, should you even HAVE a birthday?

When we talk about some fictional characters' birthdays, like Mickey Mouse's birthday, we really mean the release date of their first movie or book or comic strip what have you.

But sometimes a fictional character has such an extensive backstory, the writer / creator of that character has even invented that character's birthday.

In the case of Superman, there are at least four birthdates!

According to Action Comics #149, in 1950, Superman, also known as Kal-El, was born on Krypton sometime in October, but later comics of the 1960s through 1980s gave Superman a rarer birthdate: February 29.

Clark Kent - the human that Kal-El pretends to be - supposedly celebrates his birthday today (June 18), but that is really the anniversary of the Kent family finding him. But one comic, 2009's Superman: Secret Origin #1, depicts Kent celebrating his birthday on December 1, for some unknown-to-me reason.

Kal-El (aka Clark Kent AND aka Superman)
when he was first found.

Actually, according to the DC Multiverse Historian, there are even more possible Superman / Clark Kent birthdays bandied about! 

But let's skip away from fiction to real people, and talk about real birthdays!

Did you know...?

Many people from war-torn areas don't actually know the date of their birth. For example, a LOT of Syrians are recorded as being born on January 1, but the fact is that those who don't know their actual birthdate are assigned January 1 birthdays in the year they were born (or the best estimate of the year they were born). 

Some people, including observant Jehovah's Witnesses, don't celebrate birthdays for religious reasons. Some other people, including some Muslims, have no birthday celebration traditions in their culture and are reluctant to adopt Western traditions. Still others just don't have extra money for throwing parties, buying gifts, or even making a cake.


Although almost all of the peoples in the world have much more contact with one other these days than they used to, and to some extent popular traditions have spread far and wide, in some Asian and African nations celebrations of individual birthdays are uncommon.

In Vietnam and Korea, actual anniversaries of births are not acknoledged much. Instead, part of the New Year's tradition is adding one more year to everyone's age. In a way, it's like everyone in the entire nation having the same birthday!

Check out more birthday traditions here.
 

Also on this date:
















































 



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