Bicentennial Believe it or Not!

I always loved the Ripley's Believe it or Not comic strip growing up, an admiration that grew even stronger when the TV show hosted by Jack Palance premiered in 1982. That show set the stage for a lot of my personal interests through the years, so I still look back at it fondly (although I'm sure I would cringe if I tried to re-watch any of those episodes today).

How does all of this tie into the Bicentennial? Well, the Ripley's comic strip contained all sorts of Revolutionary War-type facts throughout 1976. The strip (drawn at the time by Paul and Walter Frehm) didn't take a very sensational approach to any of this material, but neither did it get as reverential as many other strips of the day.

Here are a couple of sample entries. I'll dig up more of these in the future, but for now these represent the tone pretty well:

January 1, 1976

July 4, 1976

July 5, 1976

Side note: I remember taking my very first cartooning class in 1985 or so from an artist named Frank Mack, whom, I recall, said he once worked on the Ripley's strip, either as the main artist or an assistant. There's precious little about Mr. Mack online or in any of the newspaper archives to which I have access. If anyone has any information to share about him, I would be eager to hear it.