1976 as a demographically targeted strip originally
based on Guisewite’s own life. Nearly everyCathy
strip revolved around the main character, a single
professional woman, and her ordeals involving
weight, career, and boyfriends. Joining Guisewite as
another of the few successful women on the comics
page was Canadian Lynn Johnston, creator ofFor
Better or For Worse.For Better or For Worse, with a large cast
of characters revolving around Elly and John
Patterson and their children, first appeared in 1979.
It was particularly notable for characters that aged in
real time and for making fewer concessions to the
American audience than did most foreign strips. Like
Guisewite, Johnston drew on her own life history and
family for her material. In 1985, she became the first
woman and the first Canadian to win the Reuben
Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.
The late 1980’s also saw a surge in comic strips
devoted to African Americans, traditionally under-
represented on the comics pages of mainstream
newspapers. Ray Billingsley’sCurtismade its first ap-
pearance in 1988, to be followed the next year by Ste-
phen Bentley’sHerb and Jamaland in 1990 by Robb
Armstrong’sJumpstart.
Weekly Comics Most newspaper comics appeared
daily, with a larger strip on Sundays. Weekly periodi-
cals such as New York’sVillage Voiceprovided an out-
let for comic strips whose subject matter was too con-
troversial or whose formats were too experimental
for daily newspapers and the dominant syndicates.
Comics appearing in the alternative media included
Alison Bechdel’s lesbian epicDykes to Watch Out For,
which began in 1983, and Ben Katchor’s surrealJul-
ius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer, which began in
- In 1983, film director David Lynch began pub-
lishing one of the oddest of the alternative strips,
The Angriest Dog in the World. The strip featured ex-
actly the same images every week; only the speech
bubbles changed. The alternative market provided
greater creative control than daily newspaper syndi-
cation but little money.
Impact Comic strips were a widely circulated cul-
tural product during the 1980’s, providing a com-
mon topic of conversation that ranged across ethnic
and demographic groups. Although the comics page
was slow to change, it reflected such 1980’s develop-
ments as the mainstreaming of the countercul-
ture and the increased cultural presence of working
women, gay people, and African Americans.
Further Reading
Nordling, Lee.Your Career in the Comics. Kansas City,
Mo.: Andrews and McMeel, 1995. An exhaustive
study of the newspaper comics business, geared
for the aspiring cartoonist.
Walker, Brian.The Comics: Since 1945. New York:
Harry N. Abrams, 2002. A standard history of
the medium since World War II that includes
many reproductions. The author is both a comics
scholar and a comic strip creator himself, part of
the team that producesBeetle BaileyandHi and
Lois.
Watterson, Bill.Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages,
1985-1995. Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews McMeel,- This catalog from an exhibit at the Ohio
State University Cartoon Research Library con-
tains reflections by Watterson on his inspirations
and the process and business of making newspa-
per comic strips.
William E. Burns
See also Bloom County; Journalism.Compact discs (CDs)
Definition Digitally encoded, laser-read discs for
storing music and information
Manufacturer Sony and Philips
Date Introduced in 1982
CDs replaced vinyl records as the primar y medium of music
storage and distribution to consumers. Their popularity
helped revitalize the recording industr y, and their versatil-
ity as a storage medium resulted in the discs being adapted
to store computer data and applications as well as music.
When the first commercially available compact discs
(CDs) arrived on record stores’ shelves in 1982, the
music industry was experiencing one of its increas-
ingly frequent sales slumps. While there was always
a handful of million-selling albums or singles, the
industry as a whole seemed to be stagnating. Simul-
taneous, for instance, with the compact disc’s debut
was Warner Bros. Records’ headline-making over-
haul of its artist roster, in which the company
dropped Arlo Guthrie, Van Morrison, and other
highly regarded but relatively low-selling perform-
ers in an effort to increase its financial viability. MTV,
which would soon revolutionize and revitalize the in-
dustry, had not yet been launched, and neither hip-The Eighties in America Compact discs (CDs) 235