I have made it no secret that I think the output of the Walker Farm in the late fifties and early sixties was terrific. They made several strips, of course Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, but also the seflreferential Sam and Silo. In 1957, they vreated a news strip for Walker assistant Frank Roberge, about a little old lady who runs a boarding house full of weird customers. Like Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, it had a very sitcommy feel, with a couple of great characters, along the lines of Phil Silver's You Never Strike It Rich. Somewhere in 1960 Roberge was allowed to do the strip on his own and changed it to a strip about two old pensioners. This may have been because the sales didn't allowed for walker's personal interference. Anyway, the strip lost it's brillinace and althug it ran for a few years after that, it never regained it's earlier silliness.
As long as a complete reprint of Beetle Bailey or Hi and Lois is still a pipedream, I won't hold my breath for a collection of this stri. But I will show as many as I can. If you like these, I have a couple of better scanned ones in earlier posts.
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