July 11th, 2013

The Road Trip – Week One

by Brian Walker, Greg Walker and Chance Browne

I made an error in a previous blog post.  I stated that the cross-country road trip the Flagstons took in 1966 lasted for three weeks.  I just pulled the proofs and discovered that the journey spanned more than a month, from July 11 to August 13, 1966.  It is the longest continuity ever done in Hi and Lois.

We will be featuring all thirty daily strips and four Sunday pages during the coming weeks on this blog.  Although some of these strips were reprinted in the 1986 book, The Best of Hi and Lois, this is the first time the complete story has been released since its original publication date.

Producing this sequence was an ambitious undertaking.  Mort Walker researched a selection of top vacation destinations and Dik Browne illustrated some of the most detailed scenes ever done in the strip.  “I went to some places I’ve never been, doing that series,” Dik remembered.

Here is the first week of daily strips from the story.

I would like to thank Bill Janocha who scanned these strips from the original King Features proofs in our archives.

We hope you come back to see more strips from this historic series!

–Brian Walker