Yo, friends. This is one bizarre comic strip advertisement for Pepsi, from May 1941. Read it and let me dissect this one for you. Sorry for the poor quality scan but that’s how these rare ones often are.

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Panel 2, the opening of the story. Pepsi (the bigger fat one) and Pete fall from the sky after passing through “the wrong door” into a magical tropical world of speed-planes and palm trees.

Panels 3 and 4. A grass skirt, top hat wearing native asks for a match so they can cook a “fat explorer” for a banquet. The similarities in the explorer’s body type to Pepsi worries him though it doesn’t seem the natives are interested in eating the two cops. The native is quite polite and not using his spear in attempt to capture the new fat people that fell from the sky (obviously their food source).

Panel 5. Pete shows his sympathy for the poor explorer while Pepsi just focuses on the act of running. You know, getting into the zone.

Following this so far? Does it make you thirsty for an ice-cold soda pop? It should.

Panel 6. Strange birds fly around with a somewhat Dr. Seussian looking fish and cat.

Panel 7. The two cops have captured one of these exotic birds, presumedly by Pete grabbing its legs as it flew by while Pepsi jumping it from the nearby tree, his weight pinning the bird down. Time for a drink, eh? For only 5 cents, they were able to afford to force the bird to swallow some Pepsi (the drink, not the man. You never know who may be eaten in this magical world.)

Panels 8. With the power of a sugar rush, the bird is able to help capture the happy fat explorer from becoming “fricassee” (a word not used enough in comics today).

Panel 9, the end of the story. Can the bird read English? If not, is it just coincidence that they happen to be heading back to America? The dazed bird doesn’t seem to care what happens to him now that he got his soda buzz. What will happen to them when they arrive back in Long Island with a naked fat man? Pepsi and Pete actually look worried about it.

But it doesn’t matter because all that is supposed to sell you on a big big bottle of Pepsi. Print out this comic strip and present it at your local grocery or email it to pepsi.com to get your 66 year old bottle for only 5 cents!

Here’s the first Garfield comic strip to feature lasagna, dated 7-15-1978, about a month after the debut of the first strip. Upon reading it, it’s not really that funny. But try to erase your mind of the fact that popular culture has known about Garfield and lasagna for almost 30 years. If this was the first time you saw a cat have a thing for a pasta dish, maybe you’d laugh. I mean, the lasagna thing caught on, right? Garfield readers in the late 1970s musta popped a rib laughing at this stuff. Ha ha, lasagna. Get it? Lasagna! Ha ha ha ha…

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Yo! I introduced the ‘Krazy Kat‘ komic to you yesterday. Here’s another one to wet your whistle with some odd facts about the strip.

Krazy has no specified gender and has been referred to as both male and female throughout the life of the strip. Ignatz the mouse and Officer Pupp have generally been konsidered male.

Strangely koincidental, it was for a while unknown of kartoonist George Herriman’s race. He was a New Orleans Creole man from two mixed-race parents. But during the racially ignorant first half of the 20th century, people just didn’t know what to make of him.

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Today’s komic strip from 2-1-1922 features Ignatz working as an insurance agent. That’s not really his job but he’s writing a policy for the sake of another brick-tossing zinger.

Yo! One of this bird’s faves is George Herriman’s ‘Krazy Kat’ komic strip which ran from 1913 to 1944. The strip focuses on a relationship triangle between Krazy Kat, Ignatz the mouse and Officer Pupp, a dog. Here’s the rundown. Krazy is in love with Ignatz. Ignatz acts as his nemesis by throwing bricks at Krazy which the kat takes as a sign of affection. Officer Pupp tries to keep order by protecting Krazy and often locking Ignatz in jail.

The amazing thing about ‘Krazy Kat’ is that nearly every single komic strip is about Ignatz beaning Krazy’s noggin with a brick. It’s the same freaking gag over and over and over! But each strip plays it out in a new, klever way. It’s brilliant!

Here is a sample from 3-8-1922 with a few interesting things to note. The strip itself for this day has a title (upper right) and the panels are numbered.

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I’ll be bringing you more Krazy komics in the future and discuss other amazing things about this highly unique comic strip.

Yo! I’ve introduced Pogo to you before. This Pogo comic strip is perhaps the most famous of all the work by cartoonist, Walt Kelly. It was done for Earth Day in 1971. I’m not going to talk about this one today. I’ll just let the strip speak for itself. Click it to enlarge and see the amazing artistry.

This is the final post on our series of WWII anti-Japanese comics. Check out Terry and Pat strip searching a Japanese POW. That’s right, have the juvenile Terry be the one to remove the guy’s “g-string”. There’s nothing weird about that!

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Then we get a nice little summary of military propaganda with a humiliated Japanese man in his g-string. Also mentioned is the “short, squat, fairly heavy beard”. Beard? There is no earlier mention of a beard but if you look at the previous pages, one would conclude it is meant to say “build”. Oops, someone must have forgotten to proofread.

Purely on speculation now, one would conclude that the US military commissioned this little piece from cartoonist Milton Caniff due to the popularity of his strip. Are these Caniff’s sentiments? Most likely not but he was a serious American patriot as seen throughout his career. And during the war, political enemy-hating is what brought prejudices like this to life.

Caniff himself often drew ethnic characters with stereotypical exaggerations like the Chinese guide, Connie here from the ‘Terry and the Pirates‘ comic strip. Then again, Connie is the humor relief character in a serious adventure strip so a sillier execution of style is more appropriate. Even still…

It’s not an excuse but it was a different time, you know. At least today our culture has the decency to respect Arab and Islamic people while we’re at war with them.

Yesterday we introduced this series to you drawn by famous adventure strip cartoonist Milton Caniff. This is part of a guide for American soldiers to be able to tell the allied Chinese from the Japanese enemy. These comics are absurdly racist.

Did you know that all Japanese people have buck teeth? Did you know that they all shuffle when they walk? Did you know they all wore wooden sandals before entering the military, thus having mutated, calloused feet? Gee, I’ll just have to check with my Japanese friends about this. They all seem pretty normal and cool to me but maybe I just haven’t noticed that they “usually expect to be shot”. Come to think of it, Ichiro does expect to be shot when playing Halo 3 on his Playstation.

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Oh and look at Terry, the light-hearted blonde American who pokes fun at the Japanese. Make them talk funny, what a laugh! It really is a disgrace that these comics were passed out, not to mention even made in the first place.

I’ve got the final installment of this series for you tomorrow. Do you think there are secret comic strip guides today telling US military how to tell Iraqis from Saudis? Or terrorists from regular airline passengers like old ladies that get “randomly chosen” for security checks?

Let’s now jump from discussing sexism to racism in comics. Today we’re showcasing a series from cartoonist Milton Caniff who drew the famed adventure strip, Terry and the Pirates. This series was drawn for the U.S. Military and printed the “Pocket Guide to China” which was given to soldiers during their stay in China.

Remember, Japan was a political enemy and the derogatory term “Jap”, was not generally considered offensive during WWII, unless of course you were Japanese. What this comic attempts to do is distinguish the physical differences between Chinese and Japanese persons. While they are indeed two different nationalities, the points made are absurd. People come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, no matter where one is from. To indicate that the Japanese are always shorter is a gross generalization, the heart of racism itself.

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Not only should the Japanese find this offensive, but Chinese as well. If any of you out there know Terry and the Pirates, you’ll also agree how strange it is to call Terry “an average American.” He’s a kid! This is only the beginning. We’ll feature more pages of this series tomorrow. What do you think of these?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Charles Schulz died on Feb. 12, 2000. He personally wrote and drew every single Peanuts comic strip without an assistant for nearly 50 years. His death should have marked the end of Peanuts’ syndication.

Now I know what you’re asking. “But Marilla, don’t lots of comics continue after an artist’s death?” Yes they do and unfortunately, it is quite common. However in these cases, another artist picks up the brush and continues the saga. Schulz’s personal dedication to his craft would have been quite dishonored if someone else were allowed to continue the strip.

The newspapers, so fearful of losing readership don’t want to give up the immensely popular Peanuts whom millions of readers adore. United Feature Syndicate distributed it to thousands of newspapers for decades, certainly one of their top money-makers. Afraid to lose that revenue, they (along with Schulz’s estate) decide to reprint old strips as “Classic Peanuts”. This is what you see in the papers today.

Now here is the main reason why this is bad for the funny pages: There is less room for new comics! How are they (syndicates and newspapers) to find the next Peanuts level success if they limit their opportunities? Do they plan on running Classic Peanuts for another 50 years? How deep in fear will they get before readers simply get tired of rerun comics? Has this terrible precedent been set and will we one day be reading Vintage Doonesbury, Retro Ziggy, Antique Garfield and Archaic Dilbert?

Yo! You shoulda heard Marilla griping last night about “Classic Peanuts” being printed in the papers these days. She was so fired up she wrote a blog post about it for tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll wet your whistle with a good ‘ol Peanuts comic strip from 1961. This one made me laugh.

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