Timeline – 1974 Part 2

Hi and Lois Sunday page color proof, June 2, 1974.

I have told the story about how Mort Walker came up with the idea for “the thinking baby” in previous posts.

Click these links to review this history.

http://hiandlois.com/2013/01/29/trixie/

http://hiandlois.com/2014/05/16/the-thinking-baby/

A few years after Trixie started sharing her thoughts with readers, her fantasies became even more surreal. Here is a panel from a 1960 Sunday page when her dreams looked like something from a Dr. Seuss book.

In the Sunday page above, Trixie thinks about what the sunset might be like if she was in charge. She imagines clouds that loop, curve and zig zag, go straight up and down and form pictures, numbers and letters. Dik Browne obviously had fun drawing this sequence of images, which are shown in panels, not the usual thought balloons. The colors are critical to getting the gag across and the last panel suggests the setting sun with dramatic shading. Overall, it’s a bold graphic composition that must have stood out on comics pages when it was first published.

Next week we will feature another episode from 1974, so come back here and check it out.

– Brian Walker