What do you think?
Rate this book
Rocky and Bullwinkle: The Complete Newspaper Comic Strip Collection - Volume 1
This is the complete first two years of Rocky and Bullwinkle newspaper comic strip dailies! If you think you've read every single moose and squirrel adventure, think again! Over 400 daily strips have been collected into this volume for the very first time! The stories presented here are the complete comic strip run from 1962 -1963. These timeless classics have been sought over by newspaper historians for years and are just as great as the show! Join Rocky and Bullwinkle as they face off against Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale in Washington DC, Get TV commercial careers, head to Transylvania and learn the story of how Rocky and Bullwinkle first met! The book also contains exclusive intro's for each story and contains rare pictures from the Al Kilgore archive!
120 pages, Paperback
Published July 8, 2022
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 4, 2023
'Lost' Rocky & Bullwinkle adventures mysteriously reappear
I'm a lifelong journalist and that has led to a lifelong commitment to the preservation and appreciation of newspaper comic strips from Uncle Wiggily and Alley Oop to Brenda Starr and others.
Unlike most other American art forms, including comic books and animation, the first century of newspaper comic strips is fading into the same black hole into which so many newspapers themselves have disappeared. This may be hard to believe in this world of vast digital forms of preservation but there are many newspapers that either closed, or dumped their libraries, without anyone properly scanning their entire archives. In some cases, the newspapers were preserved in some digital form, but those preservationists skipped the comics often reasoning that they contained syndicated content that was not unique to that local paper.
This is frustrating to those of us who love this specific artform of comics that appeared within daily newspapers. It also provides a rich field to investigate with lots mysterious fun for comic preservationists like myself. I'm in my 60s and I'm forever discovering "lost" gems. And, that's why I'm a big supporter of the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum and I commend that amazing institution to other comic fans.
So I was intrigued when I spotted someone on Goodreads reviewing a two-volume set of reprints of the short-lived Rocky & Bullwinkle newspaper comic strip. I had no idea that there ever was such a comic strip. As it turns out, the strip was conceived in the popular heyday of the cartoon series on TV. However, the strip stumbled to the starting line of syndication and apparently only appeared in a handful of regional newspapers from 1962 to 1965. One stumble in the early marketing was that a proposed Sunday color strip did not find a market, so the creators were left with a lame launch of a six-day black-and-white strip to small papers.
The project seems to have been doomed from the start, despite the inspired artwork of Al Kilgore (1927-1983). Nevertheless, the series produced more than 900 daily strips. Then, it disappeared and, despite the legion of Rocky & Bullwinkle fans out there, no one seems to have collected and preserved the run of this comic—until the last year or so.
And therein lies the mystery.
In early 2021, the highly respected animation-and-cartoon historian Jim Korkis published an extensive online tribute to Al Kilgore's work on some Rocky & Bullwinkle-related projects and Jim told other comic fans that he wished someone would collect all of those newspaper strips and preserve them for the rest of us.
Someone did. However, whoever created these books apparently does not want credit. This may be because the creator of these two books is concerned about rights and permissions issues and doesn't want to be known as the creator. These two paperbacks were produced through the Lulu self-publishing platform and no name is credited in the books or at the Lulu website. In fact, there's an attempt, now, to simply credit these books to Kilgore himself, because they do reproduce his comic strips.
But that still does not answer the question: Who unearthed all those comic strips, cleaned them up for publication and wrote introductions throughout the book? Despite my exploration of various online comic websites and databases, I can't find out this author's identity.
Another reason the creator of these books may not want to be known is that, beyond giving us "the true gold"—the entire run of the series in crisply reproduced strips—the introductions in this volume are amateurish. There are copy-editing errors galore. There are signs the author may have come more from the animator/cartooning side of the profession, because he or she does not know much about newspaper comic strips. One example: The author says that one place he looked to try to find a complete run of these strips was The New York Times, when anyone who knows the history is aware that The Times never ran a syndicated comics section.
So, who is this author? If you're out there on Goodreads, please do add a comment to this review and identify yourself. Although I am clearly critical of your introduction to this book (you should have found a copy editor, my friend), I am deeply thankful that someone has resurrected a newspaper comic series that was so "lost," I didn't even know it existed.
So, if you're a Rocky & Bullwinkle fan, should you ante up for these two volumes, which are a bit pricey on Amazon for black-and-white paperbacks?
In my own exploration of comics, I am not a "completist" and have given up, years ago, trying to collect "everything." However, I am happy I bought these books and I'm giving them 5 stars on Goodreads. Just like my love of the recent series of Pogo reprint volumes, I enjoy the political commentary on that era. These Rocky & Bullwinkle comic strips are definitely satiric commentaries on everything from the Cold War to the twisted culture of TV commercials in that era.
Thanks to whoever namelessly created these volumes. If you are offended by my comments on your introductions, then please add a comment and explain yourself. I understand that self publishing is a tough process. I'd just like to solve the mystery of who gave us these two delightful books and extend a word of thanks to you.
I'm a lifelong journalist and that has led to a lifelong commitment to the preservation and appreciation of newspaper comic strips from Uncle Wiggily and Alley Oop to Brenda Starr and others.
Unlike most other American art forms, including comic books and animation, the first century of newspaper comic strips is fading into the same black hole into which so many newspapers themselves have disappeared. This may be hard to believe in this world of vast digital forms of preservation but there are many newspapers that either closed, or dumped their libraries, without anyone properly scanning their entire archives. In some cases, the newspapers were preserved in some digital form, but those preservationists skipped the comics often reasoning that they contained syndicated content that was not unique to that local paper.
This is frustrating to those of us who love this specific artform of comics that appeared within daily newspapers. It also provides a rich field to investigate with lots mysterious fun for comic preservationists like myself. I'm in my 60s and I'm forever discovering "lost" gems. And, that's why I'm a big supporter of the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum and I commend that amazing institution to other comic fans.
So I was intrigued when I spotted someone on Goodreads reviewing a two-volume set of reprints of the short-lived Rocky & Bullwinkle newspaper comic strip. I had no idea that there ever was such a comic strip. As it turns out, the strip was conceived in the popular heyday of the cartoon series on TV. However, the strip stumbled to the starting line of syndication and apparently only appeared in a handful of regional newspapers from 1962 to 1965. One stumble in the early marketing was that a proposed Sunday color strip did not find a market, so the creators were left with a lame launch of a six-day black-and-white strip to small papers.
The project seems to have been doomed from the start, despite the inspired artwork of Al Kilgore (1927-1983). Nevertheless, the series produced more than 900 daily strips. Then, it disappeared and, despite the legion of Rocky & Bullwinkle fans out there, no one seems to have collected and preserved the run of this comic—until the last year or so.
And therein lies the mystery.
In early 2021, the highly respected animation-and-cartoon historian Jim Korkis published an extensive online tribute to Al Kilgore's work on some Rocky & Bullwinkle-related projects and Jim told other comic fans that he wished someone would collect all of those newspaper strips and preserve them for the rest of us.
Someone did. However, whoever created these books apparently does not want credit. This may be because the creator of these two books is concerned about rights and permissions issues and doesn't want to be known as the creator. These two paperbacks were produced through the Lulu self-publishing platform and no name is credited in the books or at the Lulu website. In fact, there's an attempt, now, to simply credit these books to Kilgore himself, because they do reproduce his comic strips.
But that still does not answer the question: Who unearthed all those comic strips, cleaned them up for publication and wrote introductions throughout the book? Despite my exploration of various online comic websites and databases, I can't find out this author's identity.
Another reason the creator of these books may not want to be known is that, beyond giving us "the true gold"—the entire run of the series in crisply reproduced strips—the introductions in this volume are amateurish. There are copy-editing errors galore. There are signs the author may have come more from the animator/cartooning side of the profession, because he or she does not know much about newspaper comic strips. One example: The author says that one place he looked to try to find a complete run of these strips was The New York Times, when anyone who knows the history is aware that The Times never ran a syndicated comics section.
So, who is this author? If you're out there on Goodreads, please do add a comment to this review and identify yourself. Although I am clearly critical of your introduction to this book (you should have found a copy editor, my friend), I am deeply thankful that someone has resurrected a newspaper comic series that was so "lost," I didn't even know it existed.
So, if you're a Rocky & Bullwinkle fan, should you ante up for these two volumes, which are a bit pricey on Amazon for black-and-white paperbacks?
In my own exploration of comics, I am not a "completist" and have given up, years ago, trying to collect "everything." However, I am happy I bought these books and I'm giving them 5 stars on Goodreads. Just like my love of the recent series of Pogo reprint volumes, I enjoy the political commentary on that era. These Rocky & Bullwinkle comic strips are definitely satiric commentaries on everything from the Cold War to the twisted culture of TV commercials in that era.
Thanks to whoever namelessly created these volumes. If you are offended by my comments on your introductions, then please add a comment and explain yourself. I understand that self publishing is a tough process. I'd just like to solve the mystery of who gave us these two delightful books and extend a word of thanks to you.
October 8, 2023
The Zany humor of Rocky and Bullwinkle in Black and White Newspaper Dailies.
Good background on the strip and a decent introduction to each storyline flush out the book.
Good background on the strip and a decent introduction to each storyline flush out the book.
February 11, 2023
An esoteric comic strip from America’s past. The Bell-McClure syndicate was interested in distributing a Rocky and Bullwinkle strip. Al Kilgore (1927- 1983) had done Dell Bullwinkle comics and written some Bullwinkle and Dudley Do Right scripts. If there was a writer for the strips, he was not given credit in this brief volume. Kilgore later won a National Cartoonist Society award. But, I do not think he made much money for R & W.
The strip used story arcs, rather than the gag a day model, although there was also a gag a day.
The feature was not widely distributed and only about 925 strips are known to exist, apparently dailies only. It was a privilege to make them available.
Bullwinkle was the star, but Rocky was there as well as Captain Peter Wrongway Peachfuzz, Boris and Natasha. I can almost hear their little television voices when I read the strips.
This is a fun compilation. I did not even know the strip existed and having the complete work in my hands is pure gold.
As the mystery deepens, the name of the publisher and the author/compiler of this book are not credited. It could not have been Al, since he died in 1983.
Enjoy.
The strip used story arcs, rather than the gag a day model, although there was also a gag a day.
The feature was not widely distributed and only about 925 strips are known to exist, apparently dailies only. It was a privilege to make them available.
Bullwinkle was the star, but Rocky was there as well as Captain Peter Wrongway Peachfuzz, Boris and Natasha. I can almost hear their little television voices when I read the strips.
This is a fun compilation. I did not even know the strip existed and having the complete work in my hands is pure gold.
As the mystery deepens, the name of the publisher and the author/compiler of this book are not credited. It could not have been Al, since he died in 1983.
Enjoy.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews