Moovians

Hi friends, Gent here. Me has not been posting here since a long time, but with the "New & improved Go Comics" site (which is currently full of bugs), me noticed something about drop in follower counts for several comics... including "Alley Oop".

I bought a new computer this past week and have slowly been moving files over from the old computer. At the same time we are repainting our interior which has disrupted my computer setup. I doubt that I will be able to post strips either tomorrow or Friday and the weekend is uncertain given the status of everything. The painters have assured me that the job will probably be completed Monday and no later than Tuesday. The worst case scenario is everything will be back to normal Wednesday. Stay tooned.

For those who don't know, there is a private FB page dedicated to Alley Oop. In the last couple of days, Carole Bender, who wrote the strip for a couple of decades, sounded off about the current version of Oop. Here are her two posts with responses from current Oop artist, Jonathan Lemon: Carole : "What's become of this beloved strip breaks my heart. I unscribed over at gocomics, just couldn't take another day of it. And readers complained about the Benders?" "it's not the artwork that drove me away. I actually like the way that you draw Ooola. What drove me away is the writing. It's horrible. It just goes around in circles. Another thing is how do you expect the readers to just forget all of the Moovians that were part of our lives for decades. I am 64 years old right now and I grew up with Alley Oop. I miss the gang from Moo. The same three characters over and over and over on a yearly basis is boring. Bring back Guz, Umpa, The Grand Wizer and Foozy...

 I'm about ready to head off on a short trip up to the San Juans and just wasn't able to post any strips. I'll post once I get back but no earlier than Thursday.

Sometime back I posted about the Alley Oop Reprint Books. There are two separate series, one for the Hamlin strips and one for the Graue strips. I'm pretty sure there will never be a Bender book or, heaven forbid, Lemon / Sayers. The first six Hamlin books ran from the beginning of the strip through 1938 while the first six Graue books ran from 1974 through 1979. For the next set of Hamlin books, Chris Arrufo decided to skip ahead to 1954, which I liked because I had never read these strips. I have to say that all of the Hamlin books look great, and the Sunday strip book which include mid-1939 through the end of 1941 Sundays is absoltuely spectacular. It is clear that Chris loves Alley Oop and has done a tremendous job in presenting the material. Recently, the Strippers Guide Blog ran three articles that explains the laborious process that Chris went through to produce these magnificent books. Even if you have not bought any of thes books, I think you will find the articles interes...

  1939: 118 of 312 (+0) – 2 complete months 1946: 159 of 313 (-42) – 3 complete months 1947: 172 of 313 (-2) – 4 complete months 1948: 30 of 314 (+0) – 1 complete month 1949: 287 of 313 (+0) – 8 complete months 1954: 249 of 313 (+0) – 8 complete months 1956: 313 of 313 (+0) – 12 complete months 1963: 54 of 313 (+0) – 1 complete month 1968: 139 of 314 (+0) – 2 complete months 1969: 227 of 312 (+0) – 4 complete months 1970: 301 of 313 (+0) –11 complete months 1971: 221 of 313: (+0) – 7 complete months 1972: 303 of 313 (-1) – 10 complete months I decided to redo the numbers for 1946 / 47 taking into account that GO has posted the ‘47 strips in ‘46, eliminating the ‘46 strips that used to be there. This is more accurate and there are now 2,573 strips in the archive, spread over 13 years from Hamlin’s 40-year tenure on the strip. This means that there are now 63.23% of the strips produced during those 13 years at GoComics.

  1939: 118 of 312 (+0) – 2 complete months 1946: 201 of 313 (+0 – 3 complete months 1947: 174 of 313 (+43) – 4 complete months 1948: 30 of 314 (+0) – 1 complete month 1949: 287 of 313 (+0) – 8 complete months 1954: 249 of 313 (+1) – 8 complete months 1956: 313 of 313 (+0) – 12 complete months 1963: 54 of 313 (+0) – 1 complete month 1968: 139 of 314 (+0) – 2 complete months 1969: 227 of 312 (+0) – 4 complete months 1970: 301 of 313 (+0) –11 complete months 1971: 221 of 313: (+1) – 7 complete months 1972: 304 of 313 (+7) – 10 complete months I didn’t due an archives update in November because no new strips were added. I forgot to do the update last week and then was very much surprised to find that somebody has been busy. 52 (!) strips were added in November so there are now 2,618 strips in the archive, spread over 13 years from Hamlin’s 40-year tenure on the strip. Of course, It wouldn’t be GoComics if there wasn’t a screw-up. The 43 strips added in...

  Archives Update 1939: 118 of 312 (+0) – 2 complete months 1946: 201 of 313 (+1) – 3 complete months 1947: 129 of 313 (+1) – 1 complete months 1948: 30 of 314 (+0) – 1 complete month 1949: 287 of 313 (+0) – 8 complete months 1954: 247 of 313 (+0) – 7 complete months 1956: 313 of 313 (+0) – 12 complete months 1963: 54 of 313 (+0) – 1 complete month 1968: 139 of 314 (+0) – 2 complete months 1969: 227 of 312 (+0) – 4 complete months 1970: 301 of 313 (+0) –11 complete months 1971: 220 of 313: (+0) – 6 complete months 1972: 291 of 313 (+0) – 6 complete months No strips were added in April so there remains 2,559 strips in the archive, spread over 13 years from Hamlin’s 40-year tenure on the strip. That keeps the Archive at 62.87% of the strips produced during those 13 years.

  1939: 118 of 312 (+0) – 2 complete months 1946: 201 of 313 (+1) – 3 complete months 1947: 129 of 313 (+1) – 1 complete months 1948: 30 of 314 (+0) – 1 complete month 1949: 287 of 313 (+0) – 8 complete months 1954: 247 of 313 (+0) – 7 complete months 1956: 313 of 313 (+0) – 12 complete months 1963: 54 of 313 (+0) – 1 complete month 1968: 139 of 314 (+0) – 2 complete months 1969: 227 of 312 (+0) – 4 complete months 1970: 301 of 313 (+0) –11 complete months 1971: 220 of 313: (+0) – 6 complete months 1972: 291 of 313 (+0) – 6 complete months Two strips were added in March so there are now 2,559 strips in the archive, spread over 13 years from Hamlin’s 40-year tenure on the strip. That pushes the Archive to 62.87% of the strips produced during those 13 years.

  Archives Update 1939: 118 of 312 (+0) – 2 complete months 1946: 200 of 313 (+0) – 3 complete months 1947: 129 of 313 (+1) – 1 complete months 1948: 30 of 314 (+0) – 1 complete month 1949: 287 of 313 (+0) – 8 complete months 1954: 247 of 313 (+0) – 7 complete months 1956: 313 of 313 (+0) – 12 complete months 1963: 54 of 313 (+0) – 1 complete month 1968: 139 of 314 (+0) – 2 complete months 1969: 227 of 312 (+0) – 4 complete months 1970: 301 of 313 (+0) –11 complete months 1971: 220 of 313: (+0) – 6 complete months 1972: 291 of 313 (+0) – 6 complete months Just one 1947 strip was added in February so there are now 2,557 strips in the archive, spread over 13 years from Hamlin’s 40-year tenure on the strip. That pushes the Archive to 62.84% of the strips produced during those 13 years.

Yesterday I received the first book in the new Alley Oop reprint series titled "Book One - Dinny". It prints the first version of the strip that was syndicated by Bonnet-Brown Syndicate and ran for 20 weeks, 120 strips, from December 5, 1932 to April 24, 1933. That syndicate folded but fortunately the much bigger NEA syndicate picked it up and the rest is history. The first NEA strip is dated August 7, 1933 and Hamlin begins the story over with a slightly different slant, much like "Pogo" had two  different starts with its first syndicate folding and Walt Kelly starting over.  The reproduction is top notch and there had to been a lot of effort on the BB strips but they are crystal clear. A very good start to this series but I have a few quibbles; 1) the first volume is only 104 pages and that includes the title page, contents page and house ad. If you buy the first six books at $85, you can get the price down to $14 / book which is sort of okay. Personally, I would ...

At the beginning of the year, David42 used to publish stats on the changes in the numbers of followers for certain comic strips, including Alley Oop. He doesn't post here anymore and I don't think I've seen it in the new year so hear are the numbers for a few of your "favorite" strips:                                                       12/31/20                              12/31/21                         Change 9 Chickweed Lane                 76,643                           77,139                      ...

  1939: 118 of 312 (+0) – 2 complete months 1946: 200 of 313 (+0) – 3 complete months 1947: 128 of 313 (+1) – 1 complete months 1948: 30 of 314 (+0) – 1 complete month 1949: 287 of 313 (+0) – 8 complete months 1954: 247 of 313 (+0) – 7 complete months 1956: 313 of 313 (+0) – 12 complete months 1963: 54 of 313 (+0) – 1 complete month 1968: 139 of 314 (+0) – 2 complete months 1969: 227 of 312 (+0) – 4 complete months 1970: 300 of 313 (+0) –10 complete months 1971: 219 of 313: (+0) – 5 complete months 1972: 291 of 313 (+2) – 6 complete months Three strips were added in October so there are now 2,553 strips in the archives, spread over 13 years from Hamlin’s 40-year tenure on the strip. That pushes the Archive to 62.74% of the strips produced during those 13 years.

 Rick Norwood posted a sample strip on Facebook from the first "Alley Oop" book to be released in January. The sample is strip #14 from the Bonnet-Brown Syndicate first run of the strip before it folded and NEA picked up the strip and it restarted. The quality of the sample looks really good. The books can be purchased at:  www.aruffo.com/alleyoop .

 Rick Norwood, editor of the long-running Comics Revue , announced on Facebook that he is doing a two-pronged approach to reprinting Alley Oop strips, with separate series for both V.T. Hamlin and Dave Graue. Here is the announcement:

  Comics Review is a bi-monthly magazine that prints old comic strips in chronological order and has been carrying "Alley Oop" Today I discovered that they have a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1620181231604719/). In a recent post Editor Rick Norwood posted an old Oop Sunday very nicely in color. Rick also mentioned that he is working on an "Alley Oop" porject but he didn't say what it was. You don't have to be a FB member to look at the page and it has a number of other posts that may be of interest showing strips like "Prince Valiant", "Phantom" and "Doonesbury". For those who don't like to visit FB:

 Hey, Wootie posted on the "Mark Trail" board today. Maybe he's going to start doing reviews again.

 A month ago, I sent the April 9 "Alley Oop" strip to CIDU and, finally, it was posted today. At the time, I questioned how using a time machine made it easier to steal Wonmug's wallet since Lady Worthless would still need to lift it out of his pocket without him noticing it. Check it out plus the comments from the regular posters who don't seem to read the strip. https://comicsidontunderstand.com/

A sad news for email subscribers of Moovians. Unfortunately, the bright idea wiseguys at Google decide to shut down the email subscription feature of Feedburner (which is what powers the email subscription feature for all blogs on Blogger, including this one). This means that if you were subscribed by email to receive updates on new posts, that is going to stop from July this year. I dunno of any free alternatives to this service, so unless we finds one that works (and I really don't like relying on more third parties because they come at the expense of  making new accounts headaches and maybe privacy concerns for some readers as this would mean subscribing your email i.d. through yet another third party service) this means that we has to say bye bye to the email subscription feature on Moovians here. Anyway, you'd still be receiving emails from Moovians till July, until Feedburner shuts down this feature. We recently received this notification from Blogger : Follow...

 I read "Son of Stuck Funky" (https://sonofstuckfunky.com/) every day which provides a look at the next day's Funky Winkerbean plus advance commentary by a cast of regulars. Today King Features hit them with a "cease and desist" order so they will be undergoing some big changes. I don't know if this portends a similar fate for this blog but it is worth knowing what is going on. Tomorrow (4/1), the revised blog will appear at    www.comicstripsnarkblog.com .