One of the longest-running marriages in the funnies is that of Blondie Boopadoop and Dagwood Bumstead. The couple first met in 1930, when Blondie was a flighty flapper and Dagwood was a somewhat dense rich boy, and they were married in 1933. They're still living a happy, though joke-ridden life, in close to 2000 newspapers around the world. The Blondie strip was created by Murat "Chic" Young, who'd begun drawing comics about pretty young women in 1921.

After several false starts—including such strips as Beautiful Bab and Dumb Dora —Young came up with Blondie and King Features began syndicating it in September of 1930. Initially Blondie read like Young's other strips. But after the couple married and the disinherited Dagwood took a sort of generic office job with Mr. Dithers, the feature changed and became domesticated. Blondie turned out to be far from flighty and proved to be...