This Day in Drabble History: May 24th

1979, 1990, 2005 (plus Alaskan Vacation Photos)

Hi friends!

Every once in a while, cartoonists need to get out to do a little research. It’s important to be on the lookout for ideas the world over. So when my wife booked a cruise to Alaska, I made sure to take my camera. Not necessarily to take pictures of the scenery, but to take pictures of potential comic strip material. So before we look at today’s 3 vintage comic strips, let’s look at a few of the photos I took on our vacation last week:

Our first stop was Seattle. Thats where we caught our ship. But first we paid a visit to the famous Space Needle!

The view from the top was amazing, as my wife discovered once she stopped looking at her phone.

Once we boarded our ship, signs like this helped us prepare for the fun and excitement.

Cruise ships are famous for their buffets. It figures that the one slice of chocolate cake they had left was in the far back where I couldn’t reach it.

We saw lot of ice on our Alaskan cruise, especially in our diet sodas.

While on the pool deck, I always go for the used towels because they’re cheaper.

“Caution while opening?” What could go wrong here? I’m imagining all sorts of terrible things. They shouldn’t make it so dangerous to recycle!

OK, so there isn’t much of Alaska yet. It took a while to get there. I’ll show more of my vacation photos on Thursday. We actually do get off the boat!

But now let’s take a look at our three original Drabble strips from May 24.

May 24, 1979

I’m kind of surprised 22 year-old me even did this one.

May 24, 1990

That strange looking guy at the desk is Cactus Jack, Ralph’s arch enemy in the wrestling ring. Years later, there actually was a wrestler named Cactus Jack in real life. (Not that big-time wrestling is real life.) In this story line which ran for a couple of weeks, Ralph goes to complain about his shoddy cable service only to find it’s being run by the evil Cactus Jack. I’m sure you never thought there could be this much drama in Drabble! The great animator Bill Melendez always wanted to do a Drabble show. He did test animation of this story line. It’s fun to watch, but you’ll have to trust me on that because I’m probably the only one who has ever seen it.

May 24, 2005

Now this was a strange week of strips. Ralph breaks the fourth wall to explain to the new readers what Drabble is all about! After six days, I’m not sure he clarified anything.

You can see today’s Drabble strip at www.gocomics.com/drabble

Thanks for reading. See you Thursday!

—Kevin Fagan