Thank goodness I had the foresight to avoid promising to update this thing on a regular basis!

This, as noted in the November 20 Today in Toons, is the anniversary of Bungleton Green, the longest-running comic strip ever to run in a newspaper serving its city's black community. I like to put up new articles on anniversaries, if I can, so here it is.

Comics running in such newspapers have a surprisingly rich history, as anyone who has ever looked into the subject knows. Unfortunately, it isn't well documented, so it's not easy for a dilettante like me, who gets most of his knowledge from secondary sources rather than primary research, to find out much more than the fact that it's there.

Fortunately, a cartoonist and researcher named Tim Jackson has done a great deal to remedy this lack, and shares much of his knowledge here. I won't go so far as to say everything I've managed to find out about Bung came from that source (there is other stuff to be found, just not enough of it), but it would've been a pretty thin article without him.

Just a little note acknowledging a very fine source of information. If you have any interest in "pioneering cartoonists of color" (as his logo says), check out his site. You can soak up a whole lot of knowledge there.

—DDM