1971 Editor & Publisher Syndicate Directory

Here's a blast from 1971: the E&P 46th annual Syndicate Directory. Hang on! It's more fun than it sounds.


These annual directories list all of the syndicated newspaper features, and there are ads from the syndicates. promoting their wares.

Above: out of the 20 comic strips listed above, I only knew about 5. I enjoyed looking at these old comics -- GUMMER STREET, PIXies (with its odd half-capitals, half lower case spelling), THE COLONIALS -- and wondering what these strips were like!


Above: Something I didn't know: SKIPPY was revived by a syndicate! Percy Crosby was the best. He was the cartoonist behind the comic strip SKIPPY for 20 years. The strip ended in 1945. Mr. Crosby was Charles Schulz' favorite cartoonist. Look at the motion and energy in that strip. Skippy is alive. Go to Joan Tibbetts Crosby's SKIPPY site to see more of one of the best strips ever.

"LIPPY THE YIPPY provides adults and youngsters the opportunity for laughter at human foibles." You gotta love the hat flying off the old man's head in the final panel! I have to admit, I did not "get" this gag. This strip may or may not have actually run in papers, so says Allan Holtz at his Stripper's Guide blog. Explanation of his "Mystery Strips" project here.


Hey, I never noticed that Harriet Parker of THE BETTER HALF has the same hairdo as the Mom from THE FAMILY CIRCUS. Again, a bounty of strips, a good portion I have not heard of, represented in this ad from the Register & Tribune. LAUGHS FROM EUROPE, with that sad long-faced fellow with the incongruent Prince Valiant haircut, sitting on a box, ice-fishing, doesn't look particularly side-splittingly hilarious.

Here's Universal's tree of syndicated goodness. The 1971 dot pattern caused my color-reading scanner to strobe. Obviously, that effect was not in the original. What's up with 22-year-old Garry Trudeau wearing what looks like a pimp outfit? And what's up with the SHADOW GOODNESS feature? "Drawn by Dr. Richard Smith, a dentist ..." it says. Is this a cartoon feature? My favorite title of any feature is JELLY SIDE DOWN by Nancy Stahl, who both wrote and cartooned her feature. There were 2 paperback collections of her work in print, easily findable via used book outlets listed on ye olde search engines,