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Searching for Hy Eisman at newspapers.com
Newspapers.com doesn’t carry the Newark News so I can’t get It Happened in New Jersey from there, but here’s a February 20, 1955 story from the New York Sunday News about Hy’s comic being exhibited.
After years of ghosting comic strips for Alfred Andriola (Kerry Drake) and Vern Greene (Bringing Up Father) Hy finally gets to sign a comic strip when he takes on the art chores of the Sunday Little Iodine on September 10, 1967.
In 1969 we learn that Hy rose out of poverty through his talents as a cartoonist.
In 1971 Hy sent a columnist an updated drawing of J. P. Bigdome.
In 1972 Hy and fellow comic artist Kurt Schaffenberger get name-checked in the Joe Palooka comic strip.
Cartoonist Tony DiPreta repeats the shout out five months later:
In 1976 Hy and Bob Dunn were profiled as cartoonists on Little Iodine.
A detour as Hy’s daughter Mindy Eisman is celebrated as an up and coming cartoonist in her own right.
The Glen Rock Library hosts an exhibit of Hy’s Little Iodine and The News Beacon profiles the cartoonist.
1983 saw The News cover a dapper Hy and others at the Bergen Mall offering free caricatures.
A few months later saw the last Little Iodine comic strip appear:
Even without a comic strip Hy still managed to get onto the funny pages:
Even without a syndicated comic strip Hy kept busy with comic books which he had always kept an inkpen in.
Hy continued with Archie Comics into the 1990s but in 1986 he returned to the newspaper comics pages by taking over the oldest running comic strip, The Katzenjammer Kids. By this time The Sunday-only Kids were running in three, maybe four, U.S. papers and a in handful or two of foreign markets.
None of those few papers are carried by newspapers.com (and Comics Kingdom doesn’t carry that era of The Katz Kids), but for some reason Pennsylvania’s Lancaster Sunday News carried the September 25, 1988, and only that issue, The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip.
In 1985 King Features began their King Features Weekly Service (KFWS) servicing weekly newspapers, offering columns, puzzles, and comics. Eventually, not sure when, the syndicate would add The Katzenjammer Kids to that lineup and Hy and The Kids would be seen by a larger segment of newspaper readers.
Meanwhile…
Since 1976 Hy taught comic art at The Joe Kubert School, a job he would stay with until 2019.
In 1994 Bud Sagendorf retired, At that time he was only doing the Sunday edition of the Popeye comic strip, the dailies having gone into Sagendorf reruns. King Features tagged Hy to take over the Popeye Sunday which had a much higher profile in newspapers and in the public’s mind than The Kids did. After a month of unsigned (but still credited to Bud) strips Hy Eisman’s signature and credit appeared on the November 13, 1994 Popeye page.
In 1997 Hy got into the news as the current cartoonist of The Katzenjammer Kids on the occasion of the strip’s 100th anniversary.
A few years later it was Hy again in the news as Popeye’s 75th anniversary rolled around.
A year after Popeye’s 75th Hy is celebrating his upcoming 78th with a feature profile in a local newspaper.
In 2006 King Features stopped producing new Katzenjammer Kids Sundays (the strip continued as reruns for KFWS). Kristian Hellesund believes that July 16, 2006 was the last new Katzenjammer Kids comic strip.
That still left Hy with the Sunday Popeye and The Joe Kubert School as this 2012 profile shows.
And, backing up a year, for some special projects.
In 2019 Hy celebrated the 90th anniversary of Popeye’s debut.
Then, later that same year, Hy made comic art history by drawing the Thimble Theatre/Popeye strip 100 years after it first appeared on December 19, 1919 after doing the same for The Katzenjammer Kids 22 years earlier.
Two and a half year later Hy Eisman retired from comics with the May 29, 2022 Popeye.
Sadly Hy came a couple years short of celebrating his centennial. Rest in peace, Hy.
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