This Day in Drabble History: November 21st

1985, 1990, 2002

Hi everybody!

I was looking through a drawer in my studio the other day, and boy did I find a lot of neat stuff! If you follow me on social media, you may have seen this quote from Mr. Schulz which was on an ad for Drabble that my syndicate did in 1993.

It was fun to see it again. It brought back a lot of memories. One of the things he said there was that all the characters in Drabble were nice people. We talked about this on the phone once. He said “All of your characters have something funny about them. Norman can’t win at anything, Ralph has his dumb job at the mall, Wendy doesn’t seem to like Norman but I think she does. Everyone in the strip is basically a nice person, even the crazy next-door neighbor. I think that gives your work a lot of charm.”

It was extra nice to see that quote again as we approach the 100th birthday of Charles M. Schulz. It’s next Saturday. I’ll hope we’ll see some tributes.

Here are our three strips for today.

November 21, 1985

November 21, 1990

November 21, 2002

I found something else in that drawer that brought back memories. Its a flyer from a book signing I did.

Ray Bradbury was one of our greatest science-fiction writers. Of course, he also wrote horror, mystery, fantasy as well as realistic fiction. His signing at the same book store was 4 hours before mine, but when I got there, he was still signing books and happily conversing with his fans. Such a nice guy. I knew he was because my mother was a waitress in Hollywood and waited on him a time or two. He was friendly and down to earth.

To my astonishment (and a little embarrassment) he knew all about my work. (I couldn’t imagine what a creative genius like Bradbury would’ve thought of my dumb sense of humor.) He was very nice. We even exchanged signed books!

And he drew a picture inside!

Mr. Bradbury

Thanks for reading!

—Kevin Fagan