Topper (comic strip)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A topper in comic strip parlance is a small strip within a full page Sunday strip drawn by the same artist as the larger strip. Toppers usually ran at the top of the page (hence their name), but sometimes ran at the bottom of the page. The purpose of a topper was to allow newspapers to drop the topper and crowd an additional strip or an additional ad into the Sunday comics, or to reformat a strip from full page to tabloid by adding or dropping the topper. Toppers became rare after World War II, when there were fewer full page strips, and vanished a few decades later. Maw Green in Little Orphan Annie was the last Sunday strip topper, except for the brief use of the topper Sawdust in Dick Tracy.

Some underground and alternative comic artists have used toppers in their work, though not in the context of a Sunday strip. The strip Fat Freddy's Cat appeared as a topper in the underground comic book The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Tony Millionaire's weekly comic strip Maakies is perhaps the only contemporary syndicated strip to run a topper (which appears at the bottom of the main strip and lacks a consistent title). Toppers have also been used in some comics by Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes that mimic the format of a Sunday comics page.

[edit] List of toppers

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.