Sunday, February 28, 2010

Conchy part 4 of 4 - the last strip

Before we dive into the strips, a little oddity I found.


This is from the front page of the Tennessean, dated June 17, 1976. On the left side of the paper's name there would be a "today's weather" box. On that day it used a drawing from the strip. Childress mentioned that the Tennessean paper has been one of his first sale. This leads to a theory that the paper was very faithful to the strip. I don't think I've ever seen this with another strip. I might find one soon, though...




And with that note, here is the final Conchy daily. It was published on February 5, 1977, exactly two weeks after James Childress's death.



However, that's not the end yet. Because the Sunday comics are produced on a different schedule, the Conchy Sundays ran a month longer. Below is the last strip, which ran on March 13, 1977.



And that's it. Conchy ran just over 7 years (1970-1977). It was never a big hit and even today it's still obscure, but there's no denying that it had a small following, and still does. Here's hoping that the complete collection will be published eventually.

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