* Alphonse " Big Boy " Caprice, character in the comic strip Dick Tracy

* Alphonse and Gaston, French duo in a comic strip created by Frederick Burr Opper

* Ambrós ( Miguel Ambrosio Zaragoza ( 31 August 1913 – 30 September 1992 )), a distinguished comic strip cartoonist, most famous for the comic book series Capitán Trueno ( Captain Thunder ).

* Alfred, a fictional penguin in the comic strip Zig et Puce

Alfred Gerald Caplin ( September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979 ), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li ' l Abner.

Among his earliest influences were Punch cartoonist – illustrator Phil May, and American comic strip cartoonists Tad Dorgan, Cliff Sterrett, Rube Goldberg, Rudolph Dirks, Fred Opper, Billy DeBeck, George McManus and Milt Gross.

His younger brother Elliot Caplin also became a comic strip creator, best known for co-creating the soap opera strip The Heart of Juliet Jones with artist Stan Drake, and conceiving the comic strip character Broom-Hilda with cartoonist Russell Myers.

The comic strip stars Li ' l Abner Yokum — the simple-minded, loutish but good-natured and eternally innocent hayseed who lives with his parents — scrawny but superhuman Mammy Yokum, and shiftless, childlike Pappy Yokum.

Capp peopled his comic strip with an assortment of memorable characters, including Marryin ' Sam, Hairless Joe, Lonesome Polecat, Evil-Eye Fleegle, General Bullmoose, Lena the Hyena, Senator Jack S. Phogbound ( Capp's caricature of the anti-New Deal Dixiecrats ), the ( shudder!

The technique — as invigorating as it was unorthodox — was later adopted by cartoonists like Walt Kelly and Garry Trudeau ," wrote comic strip historian Rick Marschall.

Li ' l Abner was also the subject of the first book-length, scholarly assessment of an American comic strip ever published.

( Siegel and Shuster had earlier poked fun at Capp in a Superman story in Action Comics # 55, December 1942, in which a cartoonist named " Al Hatt " invents a comic strip featuring the hillbilly " Tiny Rufe.

Capp briefly resigned his membership in 1949 to protest their refusal of admission to Hilda Terry, creator of the comic strip Teena.

" In 1950, Capp introduced a cartoonist character named " Happy Vermin "— a caricature of Fisher — who hired Abner to draw his comic strip in a dimly lit closet, ( after sacking his previous " temporary " assistant of 20 years, who had been cut off from all his friends in the process ).

" The article recounted Capp's days working for an unnamed " benefactor " with a miserly, swinish personality, who Capp claimed was a never-ending source of inspiration when it came time to create a new unregenerate villain for his comic strip.

Fisher retaliated clumsily, doctoring photostats of Li ' l Abner and falsely accusing Capp of sneaking obscenities into his comic strip.

Another " feud " seemed to be looming when, in one run of Sunday strips in 1957, Capp lampooned the comic strip Mary Worth as " Mary Worm.

In the Golden Age of the American comic strip, successful cartoonists received a great deal of attention ; their professional and private lives were reported in the press, and their celebrity was often nearly sufficient to rival their creations.

Besides his use of the comic strip to voice his opinions and display his humor, Capp was a popular guest speaker at universities, and on radio and television.

He wasn't a dwarf but he was a bit of a comic figure.

Alexis (, c. 394 BC – c. 288 BC ) was a Greek comic poet of the Middle Comedy period.

The public opinion of voters was remarkably influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theatres.

Salieri would also write several bravura aria's for a soprano playing the part of a middle class character that would combine coloratura and concertante woodwind solos, another innovation for a comic opera that was to be widely imitated.

Again a classic of Renaissance literature was the basis of the libretto by Boccherini, in this case a comic mock-epic by Tassoni, in which a war between Modena and Bologna ensues over a stolen bucket.

Gluck feared that the Parisian critics would denounce the opera by a young composer known mostly for comic pieces and so the opera was originally billed in the press as being a new work by Gluck with some assistance from Antonio Salieri, then shortly before the premiere of the opera the Parisian press reported that the work was to be partly by Gluck and partly by Salieri, and finally after popular and critical success were won on stage the opera was acknowledged in a letter to the public by Gluck as being wholly by the young Antonio.

( This fable-like story was collected into an educational comic book called Mammy Yokum and the Great Dogpatch Mystery !, and distributed by the Anti-Defamation League of B ' nai B ' rith later that year.

As is usual with collaborative efforts in comic strips, his name was the only one credited — although, sensitive to his own experience working on Joe Palooka, Capp frequently drew attention to his assistants in interviews and publicity pieces.

There was also a separate line of comic book titles published by the Caplin family-owned Toby Press, including Shmoo Comics featuring Washable Jones.

Cartoonist Mell Lazarus, creator of Miss Peach and Momma, wrote a comic novel in 1963 titled The Boss Is Crazy, Too which was partly inspired by his apprenticeship days working with Capp and his brother Elliot at Toby.

Li ' l Abner was one of 20 classic American comic strips honored with a USPS commemorative postage stamp.

In the comic, minor characters like Earl, Billy Bob, Clark Cobb, and Mistress Cora Anthrax would get repeated appearances ; Earl was quite regular, and Anthrax was in two issues and got to answer a letter's page.

William " Bill " Boyd Watterson II ( born July 5, 1958 ) is an American cartoonist and the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, which was syndicated from 1985 to 1995.

Later, when Watterson was creating names for the characters in his comic strip, he allegedly decided upon Calvin ( after the Protestant reformer John Calvin ) and Hobbes ( after the social philosopher Thomas Hobbes ) as a " tip of the hat " to the political science department at Kenyon.

On December 21, 1999 a short piece, written by Watterson to mark the forthcoming end of the comic strip Peanuts, was published in the Los Angeles Times.

* In the Judge Dredd comic stories, originally published in 2000 AD, the megalopolis of Mega-City One consists of many hundreds, if not thousands, of City Blocks, in which a citizen can be born, grow, live, and die without ever leaving.

From 1994 to 1996, Marvel Comics published a monthly Beavis and Butt-Head comic under the Marvel Absurd imprint by a variety of writers, but with each issue drawn by artist Rick Parker.

The Beano is a British children's comic, published by D. C. Thomson & Co and is arguably their most successful.

The comic first appeared on 30 July 1938, and was published weekly.

On 15 February 2007, the first issue of a monthly comic entitled BeanoMAX was published.

* Rasmus Klump, a comic strip published as Bruin

His illustrated stories such as Histoire de M. Vieux Bois ( 1827 ), first published in the USA in 1842 as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck or Histoire de Monsieur Jabot ( 1831 ), inspired subsequent generations of German and American comic artists.

The Little Bears ( 1893 – 96 ) was the first American comic with recurring characters, while the first color comic supplement was published by the Chicago Inter-Ocean sometime in the latter half of 1892, followed by the New York Journals first color Sunday comic pages in 1897.

Frank Stack's The Adventures of Jesus, published under the name Foolbert Sturgeon, has been credited as the first underground comic.

The rise of comic book specialty stores in the late 1970s created / paralleled a dedicated market for " independent " or " alternative comics " in the U. S. The first such comics included the anthology series Star Reach, published by comic book writer Mike Friedrich from 1974 to 1979, and Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, which continued sporadic publication into the 21st century and which Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini adapted into a 2003 film.

Nuestra Señora de los Vampiros is a black and white one-shot published in 1999 by Spanish comic publisher Dude Comics based on the story by Sheridan Le Fanu, but with a modern twist.

This 64-page story was adapted by Donald Duck comic strip writer Bob Karp from an unproduced feature, and published in October 1942 in Four Color Comics # 9.

This actually was not his first work in comics, as earlier the same year Barks along with Hannah and fellow storyman Nick George scripted Pluto Saves the Ship, which was among the first original Disney comic book stories published in the United States.

But to earn a living in the meantime he inquired whether Western Publishing, which had published Pirate Gold, had any need for artists for Donald Duck comic book stories.

The last new comic book story drawn by Carl Barks was a Daisy Duck tale (" The Dainty Daredevil ") published in Walt Disney Comics Digest issue 5 ( Nov. 1968 ).

He is a talented artist, and has worked on the Captain America comic book published in the Marvel universe.

The comic was published the same week as the death of Mother Teresa, leading to a huge backlash.

Dennis the Menace may refer to separate UK and U. S. comic strip characters that both appeared in March 1951 in their respective readership areas, and are still published as of 2012.

* Dennis the Menace ( UK comics ), the original title of a British comic strip which first appeared in " The Beano ", dated March 17, 1951 ; now published as Dennis and Gnasher