This one's a bit more of a deep cut, but I think it's relevant. It's certainly very interesting.

I don't know how popular or well known the Marx Brothers as a whole are with most Americans these days, but from my experience Groucho Marx is a very familiar name and certainly a familiar face. At the very least, everyone knows what Groucho glasses are. They're those glasses with the big eyebrows and giant nose that you put on to look like Groucho, although the cigar is normally not included.

Now, Groucho, along with Chico, Harpo, Gummo, and Zeppo, were of course not the real names of the Marx brothers. Would you believe that the idea for their stage names came from a comic strip? Would you also believe that one of them in particular was lifted wholesale from said comic strip? It's true.

Gus Mager is best known among comic strip enthusiasts as the creator of the great strip Sherlocko The Monk. Sherlocko was, as you can guess from his name, a great detective, and he also had an assistant named Watso. Neither o…

Okay, let's start off with an easy one. Everybody knows what a Rube Goldberg machine is, right? It's one of those things that through a convoluted series of actions and steps finally accomplishes a simple goal. A fan blows a windmill which pulls a string which makes a ball drop, etc. You've seen them. There are tons of videos on YouTube with people who have built them. In fact, just Google "Rube Goldberg" and you're likely to find more information on those machines than you are about the man himself. In fact, Rube Goldberg is literally synonymous with doing something simple by way of many convoluted steps. Really. It's in the dictionary.

But how many people actually know who Rube Goldberg was or what he did? Most people probably figure he was a guy who built weird machines. I did a search of Reddit, just because, and found a large number of posts on the "Today I learned" subreddit about people learning that Rube Goldberg never actually built any Rube Goldberg machines himself. People clearly don't know who…

I have an obsession. I'm obsessed with newspaper comic strips. I not only love reading them, but I love to study them, to study their creators, to study their history. It's fascinating to me. Unfortunately, I feel a little weird about it. It's not something that many people really seem to know about or be interested in. I know there are people that study them. Books have been written, and I've read many of them. Somebody who was interested in comic strips must have written them. But I've never met anyone in real life who really cared. I find that not only disappointing but also frustrating, as whenever I feel like having a conversation about it I have to go back to the turn of the 20th century and begin with something as simple as "Comic strips used to take up a whole page of the newspaper!" That little bit of knowledge does tend to impress people, but it's really the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more to it! There's such a deep and expansive world! It's an important part of history!

In fact, I'd posi…

Duluth News Tribune: What do you think about handing off strips to family members when the creator gets old or dies?

Stephan Pastis: The strips written by the grandsons, at least they’re alive. There is someone there who can respond to current events. There should be no repeats on the comics page, ever. I’m the biggest Sparky (Charles Schultz) fan ever. But “Peanuts” and “For Better or For Worse,” they’re repeats. That goes against my own syndicate, so I might get in trouble for saying that.

DNT: A few years ago, Aaron McGruder, who did “Boondocks” and was one of the very few black syndicated cartoonists, stopped doing it to concentrate on his TV show and didn’t hand it off. If he had mentored someone, he would have preserved at least some diversity.

SP: I don’t like the handing off. That’s like saying, “Picasso has stopped doing his work but he has a son, so what does it matter?” We’re not Picasso, but it does take something away from the individuality of the art.

DNT: There have been successes. If ther…