Gasoline Alley

Gasoline Alley is a comic strip created by Frank King that was first published on November 24th, 1918.

Related Topics:
Comic strip - Frank King - November 24th - 1918

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The Chicago Tribune ran a page on Sundays called The Rectangle. Staff artists would do one-shot panels, or continuing plots or themes. A small, humble corner of The Rectangle was home to Frank King's Gasoline Alley, where weekly Walt, Doc, Avery, and Bill had a conversation on cars. This black-and-white panel of the page slowly gained recognition and either on August 25 of the same year or in January of 1919, the daily Tribune picked up the panel.

Related Topics:
The Chicago Tribune - Sunday - Frank King - Black-and-white - August 25 - January - 1919

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It became a strip, then the Sunday version moved from The Rectangle to a page of its own, full color.

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The Sunday pages, particularly of the 30's, had neither traditional gags nor fantastic adventures, but instead presented a gentle view of nature or imaginary daydreaming with expressive art.

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Captain Joseph Patterson, the Tribune's editor, wanted to attract women to the strip and had Walt Wallet, the protagonist, find a baby on his doorstep -- the only way to introduce a baby into the strip since Walt was a confirmed bachelor at the time. Ten years later, another confirmed bachelor, Popeye, star of the comic strip Thimble Theatre, found a similar basket containing the infant Swee'pea. Walt Wallet eventually married Phyllis Blossom.

Related Topics:
Joseph Patterson - Women - Walt Wallet - Protagonist - Popeye - Comic strip - Thimble Theatre - Swee'pea

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The baby, Skeezix, grew up, the first occasion where real time elapsed in a major comic strip. The Katzenjammer Kids never grew up! Granted, Hairbreadth Harry had grown up from an infant, but stopped doing so in his early 20s. Even today, Charlie Brown lives in perpetual childhood. Only a very few strips allow their characters to age, notably Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury and Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse.

Related Topics:
Katzenjammer Kids - Hairbreadth Harry - Garry Trudeau - Doonesbury - Lynn Johnston - For Better or For Worse

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Gradually, the Gasoline Alley characters married, had kids, and it became the first comic strip-soap opera in the post-War babyboom 1940s, before there was even such a genre as the soap opera.

Related Topics:
War - Soap opera

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The strip is still published in newspapers today. Skeezix has become an octogenarian. Walt's wife Phyllis, aged an estimated 105, died in the April 26, 2004 strip, leaving Walt a widower after nearly eight decades of marriage.

Related Topics:
Octogenarian - April 26 - 2004

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King was succeeded by his former assistants Bill Perry and Dick Moores. Since 1986, Gasoline Alley has been written and drawn by Jim Scancarelli, fomerly assistant to Moores.

Related Topics:
Bill Perry - Dick Moores - 1986 - Jim Scancarelli

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The strip has been reprinted from time to time. There are some beautiful examples of Sunday full pagees in Bill Blackbeard's The Comic Strip Century and many years of Dick Moore's dailies and Sundays have appeared in Comics Revue monthly, as well as the first strips by Jim Scancarelli. In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative US postage stamps. In 2005, the first of a series of books reprinting the series has begun, published by Drawn and Quarterly and edited by Chris Ware. The series is called "Walt and Skeezix", and the first volume covers 1921–22, beginning when baby Skeezix appeares.

Related Topics:
Full page - Bill Blackbeard - Comic Strip Century - Comics Revue - Comic Strip Classics - Postage stamps - Drawn and Quarterly - Chris Ware

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• Walt and Skeezix: Volume One, 1921–22, ISBN 1896597645
• Walt and Skeezix: Volume Two
 
Gasoline Alley: External links ►