Mike Smith

For Father’s Day, we did something a little different on Inside the Kingdom. Instead of sitting down with one cartoonist or creator, I gathered a few of our King Features editors for a roundtable about dads, father figures, family strips, and the comics that shaped how we think about all of it. That sounds more formal than it was. Really, it was a group of people who spend their days reading, editing, thinking about, and caring for comics, talking about the funny-page dads who stuck with us. The ones we grew up reading. The ones who remind us of our own families. The ones who are trying their best, even when their best involves a bad joke, a nap, a sandwich, or an absolutely doomed attempt to understand their kids. And that became the heart of the conversation: comics are really good at showing dads in small, specific, human moments. Not perfect dads. Not grand speeches. Not the polished version of fatherhood that only exists in commercials where everyone is wearing linen and the grill somehow works. Comic strip dads are funnier than that. Messier than that. More familiar than […]