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Ella Cinders by Bill Conselman and Charles Plumb is another example of a comic strip that started out with a very particular premise but that drifted away from that premise as it continued. It's one of those strips that I don't think the creators thought they would be doing for a long period, so they pitched the idea as something that would have a clear ending point. However, as it happened, the strip just ended up being popular enough that it continued long past that point.

As the title of the strip and the name of the main character may suggest, it began as a 1920s retelling of the story of Cinderella, though instead of Ella wanting to meet a prince at a ball, she wants to be a Hollywood star and meet an agent at a beauty contest. She does end up going to Hollywood and has various adventures there, though she never becomes a star. She just ends up living there with her husband Patches and has different interactions with various members of her family. The strip e…

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Caroling has always been one of those things that seems like a good idea when you see it in movies or on TV but never really works out the way you want in real life. I remember going caroling with my youth group when I was young, and while I enjoyed the singing, I felt like the visit and the gift we brought was more meaningful to the people than the songs we sang. Maybe they enjoyed it, but I feel like some people would rather skip the unsolicited singing and just invite people in for a chat. Then, if they asked for it you could leave them with a song, but if they didn't you could just leave them with a hug and a warm feeling. That said, maybe these days people would be more likely to just sing outside and not go in given certain safety concerns.

In this case, a visit from a nice dog on Christmas Eve is probably more enjoyable for the woman than hearing people sing, especially when you add in what I imagine is questionable guitar playing. Besides, given that Uncle…

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Annibelle, created by Dorothy Urfer, was a comic strip that seemed to care more about its look and feel than its actual content. The jokes, as they were, generally centered around the social lives of women and how they appear to each other in society, and the gossip about other women in their social circles. These tended to be women on the upper crust of society, whose lives were not particularly relatable to the general public. Still, the artwork by Urfer, and later by Virginia Krausmann, was some of the best on the newspaper page. The women and their lives looked glamorous and exciting, so it didn't matter that what they talked about was vapid and uninteresting, and even though it may be a life you would never have it was a way to dream about having it.

This particular strip is a good example of the gossipy nature of the humor. The joke doesn't necessarily seem to be that Annibelle finished all her shopping early, but her cat messed up her handmade sweater, so s…

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Mickey Finn by Lank Leonard is a comic strip that has been described by comic strip historian Allan Holtz as "so low-key as to be practically no key at all", but I think that was part of its appeal. The titular Mickey is an Irish-American policeman who does police work, but never really gets into anything too exciting or dangerous, and has family and romantic drama, but never anything too serious. It's one of those comfort strips that, were it still around, would be much like a Rex Morgan or Mary Worth, endlessly rehashing the same stories year after year and that people never actually read but appreciate that their local newspaper still carries them. Besides, Charles Schulz is reported to have said that it was his father's favorite comic strip. What more do you need?

So yes, the joke in this particular strip is old and tired (man refuses to give the same thing to his girlfriend for Christmas that he gets her every year, looks for something different, and finally…

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Harold Teen by Carl Ed was one of the first comic strips to feature a main character and cast who were all teenagers. Starting in 1919, long before characters like Archie and his Riverdale friends were around, Harold was showing people what it was like to be a teen in the early 20th century. Ed claims that there weren't any comic strips that were doing that at the time, and I'm inclined to believe him. At the very least there weren't any that reached the height of popularity that Harold Teen did, or spawn nearly as much merchandise as it did. Most comic strips at that time dealing with younger folk were centered around young children, but after Harold Teen the popularity of strips about teenagers grew quite rapidly. It was a pioneer to be sure, if not creating a genre of strip then at the very least popularizing it.

Here we see one of Harold's best friends, Shadow Smart, trying to think of a Christmas present to get the local girl all the guys have a crush on, Lil…