For the first twenty years of their existence-from their beginnings as a stylish flapper and a millionaire playboy to their Depression Era marriage that moved them from city to suburbs to their role as poster children for nuclear energy after World War II-Blondie and Dagwood evolved in lockstep with the times. How can Blondie articulate the passage of time while eliding history?īut Blondie hasn't always been Blondie. There are over 314,000 individual strips-and yet, Dagwood is still sleeping. Blondie's ubiquity and Taylorist consistency has no other rival in the United States. ? Or are Blondie and Dagwood reliving the 1950s? Operating quietly and without controversy, what kind of story can a daily newspaper strip tell over the course of a century? Starting on 18 September 1930, the comic has been published continually for over eight decades while a handful of other newspaper strips, such as Katzenjammer Kids (1897) and Gasoline Alley (1918), can claim greater longevity than Blondie, they are not published daily.
Is life in the 2010s so similar to life in the 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s. Blondie continues to ask how the chores are going and Elmo continues to seek advice, but still Dagwood is sleeping. Whether through copying and pasting of digital illustrations or the industrial repetition of the printing press, there are more frames, but history stands still. A decade of daily strips doesn't make a difference as the frames and punchlines of Blondie repeat. Ten years earlier, it's 2006, and Dagwood is sleeping (see Figure 2). (2) In the endless repetition of Blondie, Chic Young's daily newspaper comic that has been published by King Features Syndicate for the last eighty years, time passes, but nothing changes. Like the rolled-up newspaper sitting on the table, Dagwood's body signifies the serial rhythms and banal comforts of suburban life in which the 9-to-5 grind always gives way to simple pleasures: a kiss on the way to work a good sandwich or a stolen nap (be it at the office or at home). As Blondie and Elmo attempt to revive the half-conscious man, Daisy the dog is usually tucked behind the armrest, her elliptical eyes opening and closing to punctuate the comic timing of the strip. (1) Whether avoiding household chores, ignoring his wife, exhausted from the mundanities of suburban life, or evading the neighborhood latchkey kid, Elmo, Dagwood can be found curled up on the couch, his signature cowlicks and kaleidoscope sweaters standing out from the static geometry of the orange pillow and blue upholstery. It's 2016 and Dagwood is sleeping (see Figure 1).
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