Captain Boner and associates. Artist: Frank Johnson.

BONER’S ARK

Medium: Newspaper comics
Distributed by: King Features Syndicate
First Appeared: 1968
Creator: Mort Walker (aka "Addison")
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Mort Walker is best known as the creator of Beetle Bailey, a syndicated comic strip about men in an all-male environment. But he's done strips with a variety of other themes, as well, including …

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… family life (Hi & Lois, in collaboration with Dik Browne), a woman on her own (Mrs. Fitz's Flats, with Frank Roberge), and at least one that has to be seen to be believed (Sam's Strip, with Jerry Dumas). Boner's Ark was the only one where most of the stars were animals.

Walker used the pseudonym "Addison" (his actual first name) as a byline when Boner's Ark debuted, on March 11, 1968. This is a common practice among prolific creators who have more than one item published in the same place, and King Features Syndicate, Boner's distributor, was already offering several Walker strips. The basic premise was to create a closed society in which talking animals of various species mingled with one another, and with a human authority figure. A zoo, in which the animals would be confined to cages, was out, tho that doesn't seem to have deterred the Tennessee Tuxedo crowd a few years earlier. Instead, they (Walker and his large studio) decided on an ark, kind of like Noah's but with a more modern and less patriarchal guy in charge.

At first, the cast was very large — but this seems to have diluted reader interest in any single character, which may be why the strip didn't catch on right away. Only after it was pared down to a relatively limited number of regulars (among others, Priscilla (a pig), Aarnie (an aardvark), Cubcake (a koala) and of course, Captain Boner, no relation) did it begin to take off. It quickly passed the 100-paper mark, and kept on climbing.

Walker's studio continued to produce Boner's Ark for years. One of his many assistants became particularly identified with it — cartoonist Frank B. Johnson, whose uncredited work appeared not just in Walker strips like Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois, but also in completely unrelated newspaper comics, such as Hubert, Mutt & Jeff and Moose. In 1982, which was also the year he took over one of King's longest-running strips, Bringing Up Father, Johnson began signing Boner's Ark.

Tho Boner's Ark sold well, it never reached the upper echelon of King's most popular strips. When, at age 69, Johnson retired, the syndicated folded the strip rather than pass it on to a new writer and artist. The ark struck land on May 27, 2000, and that was the end of the strip.

— DDM

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Text ©2002-08 Donald D. Markstein. Art © King Features.