Tank McNamara

 

Tank McNamara from the brilliant adroit pen of Bill Hinds


Remember comicstrips? 

Remember newspapers?

Well, for those too young ➖ or too old ➖ to remember either of the above mentioned items, they used to run hand-in-hand. 

Legend has it they still do. 

Back in the day when handheld newspapers were all the rage (no, seriously, they used to be bigger than social media), countless numbers of people read the comics page before anything else. Comics pages were populated by comicstrips, essentially humorously drawn panels that told a clever story, joke or gag. These strips were produced by artists who generally worked for outfits who syndicated them to newspapers that subscribed to their content. 

If by chance you still subscribe to a handheld newspaper, don't forget to take all your daily medication and check the calendar to see if you're forgetting one of your grandchildren's birthday, because chances are you're, uh, old. And while you're at it, make a note to tell a young person (and by that I mean anyone under the age of, say ... 45) about how much fun it was to read the "funny pages."

A particularly awesome comicstrip, which is currently still being produced, is "Tank McNamara" drawn and written by Bill Hands. The strip debuted almost 50 years ago. Initially, the strip was written by Jeff Millar and illustrated by Hinds, however, after Millar died in 2012, Hinds took up the writing, too. 

The backstory is, Tank is a former NFL football player who eventually became one of those ex-jock local television sportscasters. 

Tank still appears in newspapers and online. Here's a link to the Tank McNamara page on Facebook. 

https://www.facebook.com/TankMcNamaraComic/

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