Ten By Thaves

I just found this little collection of Bob Thaves' Frank And Ernest. I clipped from the newspaper when I was 12. I had to give up clipping Sunday Comics. I couldn't stand seeing the strips on the reverse side of the page being totally mutilated. The sight of a decapitated Andy Capp creeped me out.

One doesn't hear nearly enough in comic strip discussions about Frank and Ernest. It's good-natured brand of subversion was a welcome relief from "sitcom" strips like Beetle Bailey and Marmaduke in 1985, the year these particular strips appeared. I also liked how the characters occasionally would break the fourth wall.

Just for the record ( and according to several sources), F&E was the first panel cartoon presented in strip format, the first to present it's protagonists in an ever-changing array of forms, and the first to utilize digital coloring for it's Sunday edition.