How many newspaper comic strips have killed off characters?
I can think of several Doonesburry characters who died (Lacey Davenport, Andy Lippincott, Phil Slackmeyer, etc.).
I know Chester Gould killed off Moon Maid in “Dick Tracy”, and even Sylvia from “Gasoline Alley” finally died.
Any other cases you can think of? (Only comic strips, not comic books.)
Farley (snif) from “For Better or For Worse.”
Didn’t Bloom County kill off a character?
Doesn’t really count, but it’s the only one I can think of:
Uncle Max was retired from Calvin and Hobbes a long while back.
In addition to the dog, I believe Elly’s mother also died in For Better or For Worse.
Didn’t Clive from Safe Havens just pass away?
Uncle Walt in “Gasoline Alley” also recently died.
Bill the Cat supposedly died, for awhile (either after a car wreck, or “of acne”), but was brought back to life.
And Milo Bloom’s been MIA for a decade, now.
No, that was his wife Phyllis. Walt is still alive and kicking.
People died in the adventure strips all the time.
As Krokodil points out, death in the adventure strips was very common. In Dick Tracy, Chester Gould killed off bad guys all the time, usually in very gruesome ways.
But I assume that astorian is referring to major, sympathetic characters. In that case, no comic strip death has ever been as wrenching, affecting or heartbreaking as the loss of Farley the sheepdog in Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse. The heroic pooch suffers a fatal heart attack after saving April from drowning.
“I didn’t think a heart that big could stop beating.” <sniffle>
As far as I’m concerned, John Arbuckle is still under suspicion for the disappearance of Lyman.
Chester Gould killed off a lot of people in “Dick Tracy,” including nearly all the villains, most of them in rather unnerving ways.
Who else remembers how The Brow bought the farm?
I’ve never read Dick Tracy in my life. What was so unnerving about the way they were killed off?
Some of them die pretty graphically.
**The Brow- ** impaled on a flagpole
Breathless Mahoney - (Madonna’s character in the movie) died in prison
Flattop- his clothing gets caught on a spike beneath a ship and he drowns
Gargles- Tracy puts him through a plateglass window and he’s cut to pieces
Mumbles- 'nother drowning
Sphinx- crushed to death beneath an elevator
Shakey- slowly froze to death while attempting to elude Tracy
Mrs. Volts- stuffed in an oven and asphyxiated by gas
Especially in the early strips, Tracy gunned down a good many henchmen, lackeys, and gunsels. The bizzarre deaths were set aside for major characters.
I think Snoopy and Peppermint Patty killed off just about everyone else in Peanuts…
The strip John Darling was about a small-town anchorman who always longed to hit the national six o’clock news. In the last, out-of-the blue, strip, he got his wish: He was killed, and his murder was reported across the country.
Interestingly, many years later, Les Moore of Funky Winkerbean (written by the same fellow) ended up solving the murder.
For other examples, I think that the grandparents in Family Circus (who now occasionally appear as ghosts) were once alive, and I think a grandparent died in For Better or for Worse, too.
Yeah, but who’s responsible for killing Jim Davis’s talent?
:dubious:
It was on life support from the beginning.
Actually, Shakey was the one I had in mind when I typed “unnerving.”
He was hiding from Tracy and the cops underneath a pier in what we should probably assume was Lake Michigan (while Tracy’s hometown was never specified, there are lots of Chicago hints).
It was the dead of winter, and the breakers that washed in over him slowly froze and entombed him in a suffocating icy grave.
Doonesbury has killed off several:
Lacey Davenport’s bird-watching husband, Dick Davenport.
Congresswoman Lacey Davenport; and
Joanie Caucus’s law school friend Andy Limpicott (sp).