COMIC RELIEF

We’d be remiss in these gloomy times if we didn’t remind you of three monthly newspapers full of comic relief:

Funny Times publishes gag and political cartoons, alternative strips, and various humor columns, $25/year, 12 monthly issues; P.O. Box 18530, Cleveland Heights, OH 44118; or with credit card by phone, 1-888-386-6984, ext. 2348.

Humor Times is mostly editoons with a few columns, $18.95/year, 12 monthly issues; P.O. Box 162429, Sacramento,CA 95816

And Cartoon News is all editoons from top cartooners, $25/year, 12 monthly issues, Santa Cruz Comic News,P.O. Box 1335,Santa Cruz,CA 95061; see also thecomicnews.com. Most of these offer a free sample issue.

And if you want to see classic comic strips, do your shopping at specproductions.com. SPEC Productions produces an impressive array of publications reprinting vintage works of comic strip artistry — Alley Oop, for instance, Moon Mullins, Dick Tracy, Smilin’ Jack, Joe Palooka, and on and on. And Missing Years magazine, which reprints such classics as Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby, Captain Easy (Leslie Turner’s hard to find opus), Terry and the Pirates (George Wunder’s), and, in rotation, others of equal nostalgic and artistic merit. A just-launched project, a 3-issue series of Kerry Drake featuring the toothsome temptress Madam Adam.