| Grin and Bear It | |
|---|---|
 For his Sunday feature,George Lichty often grouped four cartoons in this layout design of two horizontal cartoons between a circle and a vertical. (August 2, 1953) | |
| Author(s) | George Lichty (1932–c. 1974) Arthur Erenberg (1939–1974) Ralph Dunagin (c. 1974–2015) |
| Illustrator(s) | George Lichty (1932–c. 1974) Rick Yager (c. 1963–1992) Fred Wagner (1992–2015) |
| Current status/schedule | Daily and Sunday; concluded |
| Launch date | March 1932 |
| End date | May 3, 2015 |
| Syndicate(s) | Chicago Times Syndicate (c. 1935–1938) United Feature Syndicate (1938–1941) Field Enterprises (1941–1947) Sun and Times Company (1947–1948) Publishers Syndicate (1948–1967) Publishers-Hall Syndicate (1967–1975) Field Enterprises (1975–1984) News America Syndicate (1984–1986) North America Syndicate (1986–2015)[1] |
| Publisher(s) | McGraw-Hill Pocket Books Public Affairs Press |
| Genre(s) | Humor, Politics |
Grin and Bear It is a former daily comicpanel created by George Lichtenstein under the pen nameGeorge Lichty. Lichty createdGrin and Bear it in 1932 and it ran 83 years until 2015, making it the 10th-longest-running comic strip in American history. Frequent subjects included computers, excessivecapitalism andSoviet bureaucracy. Situations in his cartoons often took place in the offices ofcommissars, or the showrooms of "Belchfire" dealers with enormous cars in the background. His series "Is Party Line, Comrade!" skewered Soviet bureaucrats, always wearing a five-pointed star medal with the label "Hero".
For hisSunday feature, George Lichty sometimes grouped fourcartoons into a layout of two horizontal cartoons between a circular panel and a vertical panel. A similar approach was used byFred Neher with the layout of gag cartoons on his SundayLife’s Like That.
Lichty's cartoon style had a strong influence on the cartoons drawn by Joe Teller, father ofTeller (ofPenn & Teller fame), as evidenced in Teller's book"When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours!": Joe Teller—A Portrait by His Kid (2000).
Launched in 1932, the strip was first distributed byChicago Times Syndicate before moving toUnited Feature Syndicate, and then to theField Newspaper Syndicate beginning in 1941. Field Enterprises was sold in 1984 toRupert Murdoch'sNews Corporation, which then in turn was sold in 1986 toKing Features Syndicate, which distributed the feature until its last episode on May 3, 2015.[2]
Lichty worked on the panel until 1974. JournalistArthur Erenberg most likely wrote the gags from 1939 to 1974.[citation needed] After Lichty and Erenberg left the panel, cartoonists who worked on it includedFred Wagner,Rick Yager and Ralph Dunagin. It received theNational Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1956, 1960, 1962 and 1964. At the end of its run, it was drawn "by Fred Wagner and written by Ralph Dunagin".[3] The last Saturday episode ran on May 2, 2015, and the last Sunday on May 3.[2]
Lichty's cartoons were collected in three books,Grin and Bear It (McGraw-Hill, 1956), the paperbackGrin and Bear It (Pocket Books, 1970) andIs Party Line, Comrade (Public Affairs Press, 1965).
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