The only thing I remember about Dondi was that those kids didn’t have pupils. Can anybody give me a synopsis? Hubby tells me it was like Peanuts without the humor-- Which sounds like Peanuts at the end, if you ask me.
What about the The Girls in Apartment 3G (or something similar)? Melrose Place without the sex?
Hi and Lois? I remember that they were funny. Were they the typical married couple fighting comic strip?
That’s a lot of questions. Thanks in advance to any comic expert who gives them a try.
Smokey Stoffer. Very odd-looking firemen (not “firefighters”, not in those days!) riding around in one-axled, two-wheeled cars, and the words NOTARY SOJACK in every strip.
Dondi – his actual name was supposed to be Dante, but that wasn’t brought out until about ten years after the comic started – was a little dark-haired Italian orphan rescued by a couple of G.I.'s during World War II, one of whom ended up adopting him. The strip was basically centered on his family’s life in post-WWII America, with a focus at first on his adjusting to life in America – by the time I was old enough to read it, it’d become a “continuity” strip about the life of a little boy and his family, with no real reference to his war-orphan status.
Dondi was an Italian war orphan brought back to the United States. More like Little Orphan Annie than Peanuts, never a joke strip. By the time the '70s rolled around he had lost all relevance. I remember a story arc where kids were suing to divorse their parents. I finally lost interest during the Clone Saga (that would have been around 1978, when David Rorvik’s book about the cloning of a man was published).
Hi and Lois is still published. It is almost as funny as Family Circus.
Dondi was a totally unfunny toon-as much a knee-slapper as Nancy. Mary Worth, Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon, Rex Morgan, M.D. were all about as amusing as watching paint dry. At least Prince Valiant and Mark Trail had some limited educational value, and PV was lavishly illustrated.
Hi and Lois weren’t fighters-Beetle and Lois were cousins. Domestic strife would be the Lockhorns, and occasionally the Better Half.
Smokey Stover was a hoot! The outrageous puns were something to look forward to. (Picture of a fellow placing a row of fish in front of him. Caption: Laying his cods on the table.) That strip gave birth to a spinoff: Spooky-a strip about the firehouse cat.
The Dondi I remember was he and his dog Queenie solved mysteries like the Hardy Boys.
I read that strip every day in the early 70s and that is about all I remember.
It was better when Trixie talked. I don’t remember if it was funny or not, this was in a paperback reprint of a collection of early strips that I read several years ago.
To turn to something much more positive, who remembers Li’l Abner and Pogo? Two of the greatest strips going – Li’l Abner was a caricatured hillbilly, Pogo an opossum from the Okeefenokee Swamp – but both did brilliant satire on American culture, including the politics of the day.
