February 25th, 2017

Timeline – 1961 Part 2

by Brian Walker, Greg Walker and Chance Browne

Hi and Lois Sunday page color proof, May 21, 1961.

The creators of Hi and Lois continued to explore the many facets of Trixie’s imagination in the early 1960s. The clever page above shows her misinterpreting Hi’s conversational phrases about an old friend he bumped into on his way home from the office.

In conceiving this gag, Mort Walker provided Dik Browne with a series of visual puns to transform with his pen into clever vignettes. It is interesting to see in the color proof the gray-blue tones used in Trixie’s dream balloon. They look like scenes from an old black-and-white movie.

By the time this page appeared, Trixie had become the star of the strip. The year following its publication, Dik Browne won the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society as “Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year” for his work on Hi and Lois.

Stay tooned for more 1960s classics from our archives.

– Brian Walker