(Not Really) Obscurity of the Day: Citizen Kane

Here’s a strip that had me perplexed for a long time. I have had the above tearsheet for years, and hadn’t been able to find out anything about it. I did know a few things — the 1979 Sunday strip titled Citizen Kane is:

  • by Larry Wright, the editorial cartoonist and creator of Wright Angles and Kit ‘n’ Carlyle 
  • was distributed by United Feature Syndicate
  • had only seen one other tearsheet of it, photocopied many years ago for me by collector Gordon Campbell, and also dated 1979
  • that there is no record of the strip in the E&P yearbooks or in the United Features in-house database

Seems like an obvious obscurity, right? That’s what I thought for years. That is, until I did some microfilm research on the Miami Herald. What should I find there but a Larry Wright strip titled Citizen Kane running as late as 1984. Hmm, says I, that seems like an awful long run for such an obscurity. So I expended some further research time, and finally came up with the real explanation. The rarely heard surname of the family in Wright Angles turns out to be … Kane! So apparently the Miami Herald ran Wright Angles under the title Citizen Kane for some reason. Why? Well, that I still don’t know. Maybe the Herald already had a column or other feature called Wright Angles?

Why do I tell you all this? I just discovered that although I correctly noted this alternate title for Wright Angles in its listing in my book, I failed to remove the bogus listing for Citizen Kane. So if you have a copy of the book (and if so, bless you!) get out your magic marker and put a big X through listing #1172. Then Kyu!

…. Rosebud ….

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