For many years, I've relied on a blog called The Stripper's Guide, written by Allan Holtz, for much of my information on very obscure and unknown comic strips. Most times, when I'm researching various comic strips or creators, things that I find there can generally also be found in at least one or two other places online. Unfortunately, in the case of Bob Kane, I must rely solely on the information from The Stripper's Guide, because it seems to be the only place on the open Internet that any solid information can be found on the newspaper comic strips he created.

Bob Kane was the artist and co-creator, along with Bill Finger, of the comic book character Batman. Kane drew the Batman newspaper strip for three years, starting in 1943, and that's fairly well known. While writers and artists behind comic books didn't always work on the newspaper strips with their characters in them, it wasn't unheard of. Certainly nothing about that is obscure or unexpected. Going a bit deeper, Kane also worked on some project…

Fans of mainstream comic books will no doubt be familiar with the name Kubert from one place or another. Younger readers may be familiar with either Andy or Adam Kubert and their comic book work, and older readers will most likely know of Joe Kubert, their father, and his extensive contributions to the medium. It's possible, however, that they may not be aware of Kubert's history with newspaper comics, and especially how extensive it is.

Joe Kubert is probably best known for his work on war comics with characters such as Sgt. Rock and The Haunted Tank, his Silver Age revival of Hawkman, or his work on various DC Comics titles over his 70 year career. He's also fairly well known for founding the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, located in Dover, New Jersey. The school boasts some fairly famous and successful alumni, and is still in operation.

Interestingly, the school's mascot, Tor, is actually a comic book character that Kubert originally created for the St. John Publishing Company, and wh…

One of the most interesting periods comic strip history, to me, is the the late 19th and early 20th century, because of the fierce batttles for supremacy between the various newspapers, especially in New York. One of the biggest feuds by far was between the newspapers owned by Joseph Pulitzer and those owned by William Randolph Hearst, and involves one of the earliest newspaper comic strips, "Hogan's Alley," and its most famous character, The Yellow Kid. The strip was created by Richard F. Outcault, but was also drawn for a period by a different artist, the American realist painter George Luks.

Luks is best known for his paintings, which have been featured in many high profile museums in the United States. He is most commonly associated with the "Ashcan" school of realism, which also included artists such as Edward Hopper and George Bellows. Like those other American realists, Luks mainly created art that depicted the common, working class residents of New York City, and the real lives that they lived. Th…