Today’s premiere of Heart of the City 2.0 prompted me to think about other “first strips” and how, for better or worse, they set the tone for everything that would follow.
Peter Zale hooked me with the very first Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet
Basically, Milholland was telling us on Day One that if you’re capable of being offended, you should leave now.
(And don’t worry: the “baby” is now in his late teens, a regular in the strip, and Davan’s surrogate son)
Perhaps somebody who has a Comics Kingdom membership can supply the very first Hagar the Horrible, which I also remember as setting the stage for the next half century.
Does anybody remember any other significant Day Ones?
Shrug suggested this for this morning’s upbeat music, noting “We’ll assume the vase that one of them ‘bought today’ was delivered via Amazon”*
To which we’ll add this self-quarantine-appropriate song:
If you have anything that might help us get our Monday or Tuesday morning off to a lively start (earworms permitted), please let me know at
*Graham Nash later recalled:
“I came to live in America in 1969 and stayed with David [Crosby] for a couple of nights. He threw me a party and invited Joni [Mitchell] whom I hadn’t seen since meeting her when I played with the Hollies. After that party I went home with Joni and spent a couple of years with her in her home in Laurel Canyon.
“One day Joan and I got up and went to breakfast at a delicatessen on Ventura Boulevard, and a few doors away there was a little antique store, and in the window Joan saw this vase, went inside, fell in love with it, bought it and brought it back to the house.
“It was a kind of a cold gray morning as it sometimes can be in Los Angeles, and I said, ‘Why don’t I light the fire and you put some flowers in the vase that you just bought.’ So she’s cutting stems and leaves and arranging flowers in this vase, and I’d lit the fire. Now, my and Joan’s life at the time were far from ordinary … and I thought, ‘What an ordinary moment.’ Here I am lighting the fire for my old lady and she’s putting flowers in this vase that she just bought. And I sat down at Joan’s piano and an hour later, ‘Our House’ was written.”
Comics I Don't Understand 