Sluggy Freelance: 1997-present. It went all Cerebus years ago, starting out as a gag-a-day comic and descending into longer, darker story arcs.
(I gave up on it ages ago when he changed the page format into an unreadable mess. Whhyyyyy…)
There’s a distinction between purely episodic series and those that have a single over-arching story arc. Plus, there’s a wide range in between, with story arcs of various lengths and how much story events affect the future direction of the series. There’s also the issue of output (Burlew’s output is low, but his quality is very high, which yes is ironic given that he works with stick drawings).
Newspaper comic strips tend to be highly episodic, though there are series such as Brenda Starr (71 years, 1940-2011), Mary Worth (1938 -now, 86 years so far), and Prince Valliant (1937-now, 87 years so far).
Golgo 13, as I understand it, works with many story arcs. The creator was never sure when the strip would be cancelled, so he always had an ending planned. Once they found their footing, Oots, Cerebus, Full Metal Alchemist, and Girl Genius are at the more chronological end of the spectrum. JoJo has a story that started I think in the 1700s, reached contemporary times after a couple of volumes, and has multiple generations of living protagonists:
I wondered about that as well but I think @DesertDog is referring to “gaslamp fantasy.”
Thanks for the discussion!
The longevity of the Strip Fritzi Ritz is complicated. Started in 1922.
In 1933 Fritzi’s niece Nancy was added to the strip. Originally intended to be a brief throwaway character, she took over the strip and became the star. The strip, renamed as Nancy is still running.
But is it still the same strip? Did the strip Nancy begin in 1922? Is the strip Fritzi Ritz still running under a changed name?
Similar to Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. The strip started in 1919 with Google as the star of the strip, then in 1934 Smith was introduced, his name was added to the title in the late 1930s, and Google was pretty well written out in 1954, making appearances years apart until 2021 when he became a more frequent, recurrent character.
Also Popeye, which started out as Thimble Theater in 1919: the Popeye character was introduced in 1929. Daily strips ended in 1992, though Sunday strips continue to this day. There have been almost a dozen authors. I say it’s the same strip because why not? Olive Oyl and Ham Gravy were the original main characters.
I see that parts of Popeye have entered the public domain, though he is still trademarked. Consult with your nearest IP lawyer.
Wiki says Popeye was based on a real person:
The person believed to have inspired Popeye was Polish born Frank “Rocky” Fiegel, a tough laborer from Chester, Illinois who was always getting in fights. It was believed he could have been a professional boxer. However, he also gave out candy and treats to children, including E.C. Segar, who remembered Fiegel when he created Popeye. Fiegel was described as “[j]ust like the fictional spinach-loving mariner … a one-eyed, pipe-smoking curmudgeon with a jutting chin.”
Regarding my previous post, I’d like to know what some of the longest serialized story arcs were, but that’s a tricky concept to define and research. Rich says that he had in mind Durkon being an undead creature way back in #3, but while that’s an interesting connection it doesn’t reflect a large amount of detailed plotting. Wiki says that there were hints of a longer storyline in strip 13.
That’s not how those sentences read. By the 2000s, steampunk was a well-established genre, there was nothing proto about it.
I guess Nale is coming back to the mortal world, probably as some kind of hell-forged monstrosity.
Should the speech bubbles match their eye colors?
I really hope Nale doesn’t come back. It won’t make me rage-delete my bookmarks or anything but I will be disappointed. I expected Sabine to make some sort of play for his soul in the Lower Planes so just seeing him doesn’t bother me but seeing him return to the world of the living in some fashion after all the “He’s dead & disintegrated” would just feel like sad superhero cheese.
So we’re just gonna not talk about how awesome it is that we got two strips a week apart? OK.
I’m guessing some form of Nale is the “vessel” that the IFCC will be using for the aforementioned artifact.
Any good ideas what’s in the string bag by Sabine’s side in the monochrome panel?
My guess is they’re going to use Nale as a hostage to control Sabine when they order her back to the mortal world.
And let’s notice the dangling plot point; Sabine had to do something she doesn’t want to talk about in order to rescue Nale. I’m guessing she had to make some sort of promise to the IFCC.
1318 - Sensitive Discussion
Yellow Eyed guy is Lee, and he says these are “his” windows; we know that Nale is Lawful Evil, so I think that supports the theory that Lee is the LE Director, and that Sabine is a Chaotic fiend working for Lawful supervisors.
IIRC the three fiends are Lee, Nero and Cedric, with the first two letters of each name indicating alignment.
Color coded for your convenience.
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0207.html
And the title of that strip mentions fiends.
‘I promise I believe…’ is some great weaseling.
“now, if only we could organize the fiends somehow”.