Gasoline Alley

Gasoline Alley
Frank King's Gasoline Alley and That Phoney Nickel (March 12, 1933)
Author(s)	Frank King Jim Scancarelli
Current status / schedule	In syndication
Launch date	November 24, 1918
Syndicate(s)	Tribune Media Services
Genre(s)	Humor, Gag-a-day

Gasoline Alley is a comic strip created by Frank King and currently distributed by Tribune Media Services. First published November 24, 1918, it is the second-longest-running comic strip in the US (after The Katzenjammer Kids) and has received critical accolades for its influential innovations. In addition to inventive color and page design concepts, King introduced real-time continuity to comic strips by showing his characters as they grew to maturity and aged over generations.

The strip originated on the Chicago Tribune's black-and-white Sunday page, The Rectangle, where staff artists contributed one-shot panels, continuing plots or themes. One corner of The Rectangle introduced King's Gasoline Alley, where characters Walt, Doc, Avery, and Bill held weekly conversations about automobiles. This panel slowly gained recognition, and the daily comic strip began August 24, 1919 in the New York Daily News.

The early years were dominated by the character Walt Wallet. Tribune editor Joseph Patterson wanted to attract women to the strip by introducing a baby, but Walt was not married. That obstacle was avoided when Walt found a baby on his doorstep, as described by comics historian Don Markstein:

Skeezix called his adoptive father Uncle Walt. Unlike most comic strip children (like the Katzenjammer Kids or Little Orphan Annie), he did not remain a baby or even a little boy for long. He grew up to manhood, the first occasion where real time was shown continually elapsing in a major comic strip over generations. By the time the United States entered World War II, Skeezix was an adult, courting Nina Clock and enlisting in the armed forces in June 1942. He later married Nina and had children. In the late 1960s, he faced a typical midlife crisis. Walt Wallet himself married Phyllis Blossom and had other children, who grew up and had kids of their own. During the 1970s and 1980s, under Dick Moores' authorship, the characters briefly stopped aging. When Jim Scancarelli took over, natural aging was restored.