Garry Trudeau has been creating Doonesbury since 1968 (although its first couple of years as a college strip it was titled Bull Tales). While there are certainly older strips still running (The Katzenjammer Kids has been running for 115 years) most of them are no longer being produced by their original creator.
Is there a current comic strip creator who’s been doing it longer than Trudeau or is he the current “dean” of comic strips? (Probably having inherited the title from Johnny Hart)
Thought of one myself. Mort Walker is still involved with the creation of Beetle Bailey, which has been running since 1950.
So I guess the question should be whether Mort Walker is the longest active current comic strip creator?
I went to wikipedia, found the oldest 5 comic strips, then checked whether their original creator was alive 62 years after the strip was started. No, they were not.
5 oldest strips:
Citation inside wikipedia: At 75, Blondie's more modern now, but still ageless - CSMonitor.com
Mort still is at it: “It’s holding its position pretty well” six decades later, Walker says. “I got the largest royalty check I ever got last month.” http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/2010-05-27-Beetle27_ST_N.htm
Jules Feiffer began his cartoonist career in 1947 as an assistant on Will Eisner’s The Spirit; this led to his own strip in the Spirit section, Clifford, which ran from 1949-51. His best-known strip, known alternately as Sick, Sick, Sick, Feiffer’s Fables and ultimately Feiffer, ran in the Village Voice from 1956-1998. These were all weekly strips. He hasn’t ever been “nose to the grindstone” on a daily strip and it’s unclear if he considers himself at present to be active or retired, but he’s still in print in some form or another and possibly a contender for this.
Second place goes to the creator of Hi and Lois, which began syndication in 1954. The silver trophy is awarded to… Mort Walker.
Hi and Lois was actually a spin-off of Beetle Bailey. They’re relatives of his of some sort (I want to say aunt and uncle), that he visited once when on leave.
Beetle and Lois are siblings.
Al Jaffee started in comic books in 1941. He still works for Mad Magazine.
Actually, the strip is now written by his sons, Brian and Greg, and drawn by Dik Browne’s son, Robert.
Jack Elrod has been writing and drawing Mark Trail since 1978, and before that was involved with it as a background artist dating back to 1950.
…at the age of 91. He’s drawn the Mad fold-in since 1964.
Holey moley.
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That’s a good point about Al Jaffee.
Sergio Aragones hasn’t been around quite as long as Jaffee but he’s been working continuously at Mad since 1963.
I’d certainly be willing to give it to Al, as long as you don’t count him out on a technicality since his work in MAD isn’t published in a newspaper… but that’s not actually stipulated in the OP.
I scrolled down specifically to see if somebody would mention Sergio. Editor Mark Evanier once said Sergio was the only cartoonist he knew that made himself less attractive when he drew himself in caricature.
RIP Dave Berg, Don Martin, Antonio Prohias, and Bill Gaines.
Does Charles Schulz count as ‘active’? Sure, he died 12 years ago, but his *Peanuts *strips are still running daily in 2000-odd newspapers…
I’m willing to consider people who are semi-retired and maybe even fully retired in a discussion of who’s still considered active. But I’m going to draw the line at dead.
Vitalist!