''Sesame Street'' is a nationally syndicated

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics ter ...

inspired by ''

Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop until June 2000 ...

''. Written and drawn by veteran Sesame animator Cliff Roberts, the earliest

concept art Concept art is a form of visual art used to convey an idea for use in films, video games, animation, comic books, or other media before it is put into the final product. Concept art usually refers to world-building artwork used to inspire th ...

was created in 1970, and by 1971, a promotional booklet was created as the comic entered the market, courtesy of

King Features King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial ...

. The strip debuted on November 15, 1971, in more than 175 newspapers, and ran until 1975. The strip, which ran both daily and on Sundays, was conceptually similar to the series in its pedagogical goals, but, in the first year of the strip, conspicuous by the absence of

the Muppets The Muppets are an American ensemble cast of puppet characters known for an absurdist, burlesque, and self-referential style of variety- sketch comedy. Created by Jim Henson in 1955, they are the focus of a media franchise that encompas ...

. Instead, the strip featured several new characters created by Roberts, such as Jasper and Julius, Christopher Clumsy, and Miss Fortune; in 1972, all of these characters appeared in animated inserts on ''Sesame Street'' itself. Also regularly seen was Professor Drummond Bugle, a lecturer, similar to more generic characters used in Roberts' animated segments. Roberts fleshed out the strip's cast with a vast menagerie of newly minted animal characters. Amongst them were Lotta Elephant, Richard Bird, Hedda the frog, Balderdash the mouse, Titus the snake, Thomas Turtle, Crawley the worm, and an errant spider. A pair of nameless, Muppet-esque monsters also skulked through on occasion. Though the earlier version of the strip avoided the Muppets,

Big Bird Big Bird is a Muppet character designed by Jim Henson and built by Kermit Love for the long-running children's television show ''Sesame Street''. An eight-foot two-inch (249 cm) tall bright yellow anthropomorphic bird, he can roller skat ...

Oscar the Grouch Oscar the Grouch is a Muppet character created by Jim Henson and Jon Stone for the PBS/ HBO children's television program ''Sesame Street''. He has a green body, no visible nose, and lives in a trash can. Oscar's favorite thing is trash, as e ...

and

Cookie Monster Cookie Monster is a blue Muppet character on the long-running PBS/ HBO children's television show ''Sesame Street.'' In a song in 2004, and later in an interview in 2017, Cookie Monster revealed his real name as "Sid". He is best known for hi ...

joined the cast in December 1972, and appeared through the end of the strip's run in 1975. Like ''Sesame Street'', the comic strip was largely educational, using broad humor to relate learning concepts. The most frequent topics were parts of the body,

shapes A shape or figure is a graphical representation of an object or its external boundary, outline, or external surface, as opposed to other properties such as color, texture, or material type. A plane shape or plane figure is constrained to lie o ...

, and identification of objects. Other subjects included opposites or pairings (up and down, here and there, etc.) and

emotions Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...

. Letters and

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual number ...

s surfaced rarely. Many strips were pure

comedy Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...

, revolving around the characters' eccentricities and foibles.

References

Sesame Street American comic strips Comic strips started in the 1970s 1975 comics endings {{comic-strip-stub