Birmingham Historical Comic Strips -- Papers with No Comics

Like most cities of any size, there were quite a few newspapers that came and went from the Birmingham landscape between 1880 and 1920. The last of these was the Birmingham Ledger, which merged with the News shortly before that paper began publication of its comics page. None of these had regular strips, although several of them ran one-offs on an off-and-on basis from about 1905 on.

Also missing comic strips was the Birmingham Independent, which ran on a semi-weekly basis from 1964 to 1968. The Independent was either funny, scary, or both, depending on how distant you are from it -- it was a far right paper at a time in Birmingham politics when the far right was pushing an interesting combination of faith and slightly veiled racism. It started as the suburban (in the days before white flight was fashionable, remember) Cahaba Valley News and then tried to become more mainstream as the Civil Rights Movement continued. Sample headline from the first edition: "Communism Which Brought About Kennedy Assassination Spawned By Our Indifference To Christ".

Last Updated: August 7, 2008