Editor and Publisher that Tom Ryan’s Western-flavored comic strip Tumbleweeds came to an end last Sunday after running in newspapers for more than 40 years. The Star Press offers a fond remembrance:
Ryan launched Tumbleweeds in September 1965, chronicling the humorous adventures of cowboy Tumbleweeds, man-hungry Hildegarde Hamhocker and Native American characters like Limpid Lizard and Bucolic Buffalo in an era when political correctness was unheard of.The strip was appearing in more than 350 newspapers by 1977. Five paperback book collections of Tumbleweeds comics had been published by 1972 and Ryan was twice named one of the year’s top humor artists by the National Cartoonists Society.
Tumbleweeds appeared in fewer and fewer newspapers over the years. At the time of a Star Press article in 2002, the strip appeared in just over 80 papers. The Star Press had stopped running Ryan’s strip by that time.
