There are still comic strips, even though most of them seem to be on the Internet these days: the ones I read, anyway. However this art form, which arose about the same time as the movies, has spent more than a century in cross-fertilizing. Not only do comics provide source material for movies, from Buster Brown through the latest Garfield TV show, but a lot of film makers set up their movies in comic book form as a guide to scenes, composition and action.
In that context, this episode of MGM's long-running THE PASSING PARADE series, with John Nesbitt's amused but admiring survey of the origins of the comic strip, and its leading practitioners as of the year it was produced, is an interesting and nostalgic look at a form of amusement that seems to be passing away.
But not really. Good to see them.
