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Jerry Marcus, creator of Trudy, had worked for many years as a magazine cartoonist before starting the strip. His work had appeared in places like The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post, and Trudy bears quite a resemblance to the things you might see in those publications. For most of its life it was a single panel, though on Sundays newspapers would do what they often do with panels and reprint several of them in one section. For a period of a year and a half in 1968 and 1969, Marcus decided to make it into a multiple panel strip, with some success, but returned to the single panel format in 1970, where it would remain until it ended in 2005.

I thought this particular panel would be appropriate today, as we approach the new year. Back in 1966 it may have seemed a bit odd for someone to say something like this, but these days there are several websites dedicated to tracking the new year as it goes across the world. It's crazy to think that, if you wanted, you could potentially speak to someone today that's living in an entirely different year than you are. Maybe those who have already celebrated the new year can let those of us still in the old year know whether it's an improvement or not.