Not being on the inside, I don't know what kept these strips out of sight all those years.īut finally Dean Mullaney and IDW have issued the complete story (well, sans Sundays, which oddly follow a different continuity and are therefore sort of beside the point). Or perhaps they were holding out for a lucrative publishing deal. Rumor had it that the Young estate bore some ill-will to the publication of these early strips, though it seems hard to imagine why. Yet never during all these years have we seen more than just a fleeting taste of those years, a week's worth of strips reprinted here or there.

We've all heard that Dagwood came from an ultra-rich family, of his infamous hunger strike to win Blondie, and of him turning his back on the Bumstead millions in favor of an air-headed flapper named Blondie Boopadoop. And the mythology of those early years, years in which the strip ran in very few papers, has long been whispered about not only among serious comics fans but by casual readers as well.

Chic Young's Blondie, which became staggeringly popular after a rough patch at the start, has long been one of the world's favorite newspaper strips. This is one of those reprint books that has been overdue for, oh, about fifty years or so. It would be another eleven years before another version would come in which CBS would revive the series in 1968,which was canceled after 14 episodes.2010, IDW Publishing, edited by Dean Mullaney In fact,'Blondie' stay on for a full season,a full 26 episodes before being canceled on July 5, 1957. However,the series came in as a midseason replacement for a recent canceled NBC show,but audiences didn't catch on quickly. Britton,who is better remembered as the nosy landlady in the later popular early-1960's TV series 'My Favorite Martian',was not the best choice here and it shows in some of the episodes. Actor Arthur Lake who starred in the theatrical features with Singleton in the 1940's who reprise his role as Dagwood Bumstead for the television version. Although actress Penny Singleton,who played Blondie in the theatrical versions of the films from the 1940's was chosen to repeat the role,the producers chose actress Pamela Britton for the title role as Blondie Bumstead.

The series produced 26 episodes,in black and white and was produced by Hal Roach Studios in association with King Features Syndicate and NBC-TV. The first of these aired on NBC-TV on Januand it was very short-lived. Based on the classic comic strip by Chic Young,the television series 'Blondie' was the first of two television series based on the characters.

Chic young blondie