Grin and Bear It
| 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) |
| Publisher(s) | McGraw-Hill Pocket Books Public Affairs Press |
| Genre(s) | Humor, Politics |
Grin and Bear It is a former daily comic panel created by George Lichtenstein under the pen name George Lichty. Lichty created Grin 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, excessive capitalism and Soviet bureaucracy. Situations in his cartoons often took place in the offices of commissars, 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 his Sunday feature, George Lichty sometimes grouped four cartoons into a layout of two horizontal cartoons between a circular panel and a vertical panel. A similar approach was used by Fred Neher with the layout of gag cartoons on his Sunday Life’s Like That.
Lichty's cartoon style had a strong influence on the cartoons drawn by Joe Teller, father of Teller (of Penn & 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).