27 AMAZING Facts About Comics - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.49)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my fancy new salon, including my totally real fireplace

This is Metal Floss on YouTube. Did you know that Gary Trudeau, who created Doonesbury

won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975? That was the first comic strip ever to win a Pulitzer

or possibly Pulitzer, and that is the first of many facts about newspaper comic strips

I'm going to share with you today. In 1945, conservative Harold Gray used his comic to show just how much he despised FDR's

New Deal policies. He killed off a star in his strip, Little Orphan Annie, Daddy Warbucks

Eventually, Warbucks came back to life, but only after FDR died. The character claimed

Somehow, I feel that the climate here has changed since I went away

The comic Cats and Jammer Kids was the first to use speech bubbles

It's also the oldest comic strip ever. It started in 1897 and still puts out new comics today

In 2008, a Tumblr by the name of Garfield minus Garfield was getting 300,000 views a day

All the creator did was remove Garfield from Garfield comic strips, leaving a sad and slightly

insane looking John. Jim Davis, who makes Garfield, was really cool about it, actually

He claimed that some of the strips on the blog actually worked better than his originals

If I can make one recommendation, Internet, Spider-Man without Spider-Man. And we'll stay here on the wall to discuss Peanuts

Charles Schultz originally called his comic strip Lil Folks, but that had to be changed

because there was already one titled Little Folks. Off topic, I just want to say how grateful I am that there's no rapper named Lil Wayne

Anyway, Schultz once admitted that he hated the name Peanuts. He said, it's totally ridiculous, has no meaning, is simply confusing, and has no dignity

I think my humor has dignity. My humor has dignity too, Charles Schultz

See my earlier Little Wayne joke. And incidentally, Charlie Brown never did kick that football in the 50 years that Peanuts ran

which by the way was almost 18 strips from 1950 to 2000 In a 1975 speech Gerald Ford said there are only three major vehicles to keep us informed as to what is going on in Washington The electronic media the print media and Doonesbury

Not necessarily in that order. One of Mindy Kaling's first forays into comedy was a comic strip for Dartmouth College's

daily newspaper titled Badly Drawn Girl. In 2005, Blondie's 75th anniversary was celebrated in the comic strip with a huge party that featured

tons of other comic strip characters with months of buildup and lots of interaction

The characters in the comic Pearls Before Swine weren't invited to the party, but they

still played out a story arc about their plans to crash it. When Farley, the beloved sheepdog in For Better or For Worse, died, creator Lynn Johnston

received 2,500 letters, some positive and some angry. The Ontario Veterinary Medical Association even named a charity after him, the Farley Foundation

Seth MacFarlane also had a comic strip, but a little earlier in life. He was being paid to cartoon when he was 9 years old

His strip was called Walter Crouton, and it ran weekly in his local newspaper

There's a park in Monterey, California containing a statue of Dennis the Menace, but it isn't

the original. In 2006, a bronze Dennis was stolen from the park

It was 3 feet tall, 125 pounds, and worth $30,000. It never turned back up, so it had to be replaced

So if you're looking for some Dennis the Menace-style mischief and you also want $30,000, Monterey, California

Though artist Mort Walker has since been given the Army's highest civilian honor

Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service, the Army didn't always love the comic Beatle Bailey

In fact, the Pentagon had previously used Walker's comics as an Army training guide

for how not to act. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, decided to start a food company in the late 1990s

They produced frozen vegetarian burritos using his title character as the mascot

They were of course called Doberitos. Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson is famous for his refusal to let anyone adapt

his comic to another medium. He's even turned down meetings with legends like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas

One more fact about Calvin and Hobbes because the internet loves Calvin and Hobbes In 2008 students at Washington University in St Louis organized a Calvin Ball club which attracted 40 students The one rule of Calvin Ball of course is that you can never play it the same way twice

And the club has honored this, using everything from hard hats to water balloons

to footballs during Calvin Ball games. In 1996, when the mom on Family Circus

best known as Mommy, got a drastic haircut, it was big news

And by that, I mean it was an actual, literal news story

The LA Times went above and beyond with their coverage, getting quotes from famous stylists about the look

The comic The Wizard of Id was a collaboration between Brant Parker and Johnny Hart

After getting the idea from a deck of cards, they spent three days in a hotel room working on it

They scheduled a meeting with hotshots from their syndicate, who showed up early

They were greeted by Parker, Hart, and a hotel room littered with food, booze, and scrap paper

The president of the comic syndicate reportedly told them, We think you guys are disgusting, but we'll take The Wizard of Id

Speaking of The Wizard of Id, it was one of Jim Henson's favorite comics. He even considered adapting it into a TV show shooting a pilot in 1969

He ended up being too busy to pursue the project, but you can watch some of it if you click here

Okay, if you're ever at Islands of Adventure and the line for everything at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is super long

which, spoiler alert, it will be, check out Toon Lagoon. I mean, you can eat the favorite food of comic characters, like a sandwich at Blondie's or ice cream at Kathy's

Speaking of Kathy, when it was announced that Kathy would be ending in 2010, hashtag ways Kathy should end was a trending topic on Twitter

By the way, I apologize for using the word hashtag, but at least I didn't follow it with YOLO

But speaking of only living once, people often wonder why Bill Murray agreed to voice Garfield

given that he only has so much time on this earth. Well, he told GQ that he took the role because the film was written by Joel Cohen

and he'd already done a day of voice work before learning that this was not the Joel

Cohen of the famous Coen brothers, but rather a different Joel Cohen

Which is all fine and good, Bill Murray, but how do you explain Garfield 2 A Tale of Two Kitties

But it not fair to throw Bill Murray under the bus when it comes to comic strip adaptations because the real villains of that story are Betty White and Don Rickles who were in the straight Dennis the Menace sequel which also starred Carrot Top

In news of a slightly better movie, Owen Wilson, William H., Macy Kiefer Sutherland, and tons of other esteemed actors voiced animals in the 2010 Marmaduke movie

George Lopez was also in it, but his career technically ended when he did the movie Balls of Fury

Anyway, you can't blame any of these people for being in the Marmaduke movie because one, paycheck, and two, the premiere was a beach party that featured actual surfing dogs

Comic strip character Zippy the Pinhead appeared in graffiti form on the Berlin Wall. When the wall was torn down, that piece sold for $10,000 in an auction

According to rhymes with orange cartoonist Hilary Price, the word crap is still considered inappropriate on the comics pages

In January 2014, she had to give newspaper editors an alternative strip to the one she

designed that contained the word crap, just in case they'd rather use, you know, a G-rated strip

Well, I for one say that sucks. Apparently you can't use the word sucks either. What is this, Maoist China

How does Garfield express his frustration when he can't have lasagna? And lastly, I return to my fancy salon to tell you about the unlikely friendship between

Farside creator Gary Larson and primatologist Jane Goodall. One of Larson's comics had one chimp asking another

Are you conducting a little more research with that Jane Goodall tramp

The Jane Goodall Institute was outraged, but Jane herself stopped them from getting lawyers

involved because she thought the comic was funny. The chimps perhaps were not so amused

Gary Larson later visited one of Goodall's research locations where a chimp named Frodo

attacked him. Larson was only slightly injured. from Nick, who asks, where does Bill Clinton reside today

Well, Nick, not that I'm recommending that you stalk the Clintons, but they live in Chappaqua, New York

If you have your own mind blowing question, please leave it in comments. We'll endeavor to answer as many as possible

Thank you again for watching Metal Floss, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome