''Poor Arnold's Alamanac'' was a

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...

comic a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicat ...

strip by

Arnold Roth Arnold Roth (born February 25, 1929) is an American cartoonist and illustrator for advertisements, album covers, books, magazines, and newspapers. Novelist John Updike wrote, "All cartoonists are geniuses, but Arnold Roth is especially so." Care ...

. Each installment covered a single subject, with Roth devising gags on such topics as baseball, dogs, commuting, elephants, ice cream, smoking and the telephone. Roth wrote and drew ''Poor Arnold's Almanac'' from May 31, 1959, to May 14, 1961 and again from 1989 to 1990.Powell's Books
/ref> Roth initially created a color Sunday comic strip for the

New York Herald Tribune Syndicate The New York Herald Tribune Syndicate was the Print syndication, syndication service of the ''New York Herald Tribune''. Syndicating comic strips and newspaper Column (periodical), columns, it operated from c. 1914 to 1966. The syndicate's most no ...

, and nearly three decades later, it was revived for the

Creators Syndicate Creators Syndicate (also known as Creators) is an American independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns to daily newspapers, websites, and other digital outlets. When founded in 1987, Creators Syndicate became one of the few suc ...

as both a daily and a Sunday feature. Roth recalled:

Books

John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...

did the introduction when

Fantagraphics Books Fantagraphics (previously Fantagraphics Books) is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and (formerly) the Erotic comics, erotic Eros Comix imprint. They have managed sev ...

published a book of Roth's strip in 1998. Updike later reprinted that essay in his collection ''Due Considerations'' (2007). "All cartoonists are geniuses, but Arnold Roth is especially so," wrote Updike in his introduction.

References

American comic strips Gag-a-day comics 1959 comics debuts 1961 comics endings 1989 comics debuts 1990 comics endings Educational comics {{comic-strip-stub