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Earlier this month I posted an Off The Record Sunday, noting that it was still a mystery to me why the Lambiek Comiclopedia listed the creator of the strip as Carl Kuhn, when I could find nothing about him drawing or writing the strip or even being a cartoonist.
The plot has thickened.
On December 23, Lambiek updated their page on Ed Reed, which is where it says Carl Kuhn created the strip, to say that Kuhn passed the strip to Reed in 1940. This is impossible, given that the strip I posted earlier in the month is from 1938 and has Reed's name on it. Since posting that strip, I had wanted to go back and find out for myself who really did start it, so I took today's strip as an opportunity to find out once and for all.
Allan Holtz in American Newspaper Comics lists the start date as November 19, 1934. So, I went to Newspapers.com, searched for Off the Record by Carl Kuhn on that date, and found nothing. I did the same search for Ed Reed, and found out two things: One, Ed Reed is credited for Off The Record on November 19 and Carl Kuhn is nowhere to be found, and two, Allan Holtz is wrong about the start date, because I found Off The Record running as far back as October 29 of that year. This means that both Holtz and Lambiek are wrong, and I still have no idea who this Carl Kuhn is. I guess I'd better contact Lambiek with my findings and see what they say.
Anyway, here's a Christmas comic strip that I thought was mildly funny.