May 13th, 2018

Timeline – 1996 Part 1

by Brian Walker, Greg Walker and Chance Browne

Hi and Lois Sunday page color proof, May 5, 1996.

For the past sixteen months, beginning on January 20, 2017 and continuing until April 28, 2018, we featured here on our web site 64 outstanding color Sunday pages from 1960 to 1975 in our Timeline series. King Features stopped sending color proofs to their artists in 1975 and for the next twenty years we received prints in black-and-white.  Beginning in 1996, King started producing color Sunday pages in a digital format.  We have decided to continue our Timeline series from that point onward.

Our first selection from 1996 features a scenic walk through the neighborhood on a perfect spring day with Chip and his friend Jerry.  Chip is complaining about how his new allowance came with strings attached.  Hi is obviously trying to teach him some fiscal responsibility, which is more than we can expect from our government.

The federal deficit is the amount a government’s expenditures exceed the tax revenue collected.  It was $107 billion in 1996.  By 2016 it had ballooned to $587 billion and now hovers around $666 billion.  Here’s a chart showing its rise.

With the new tax law passed in 2018, the federal deficit is expected to exceed $1 trillion in 2020.

Who would have guessed in 1996 that Chip Flagston’s prediction would come to pass more than twenty years later?   Comic strips can be prophetic.

Next week we will continue our Timeline series with another classic Sunday page from 1996, so stay tooned.

– Brian Walker