Little Joe (comic strip)

Little Joe
Author(s)	Ed Leffingwell
Current status / schedule	Sunday (ended)
Launch date	October 1, 1933
End date	1972
Syndicate(s)	Chicago Tribune Syndicate
Genre(s)	Western

Little Joe was a Western comic strip, created in the early 1930s by Ed Leffingwell and later continued by his brother, Robert Leffingwell. Distributed by the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, this Sunday strip had a long run spanning four decades. It was never a daily strip.

Ed Leffingwell's cousin was Harold Gray, and he began in comics as Gray's assistant on Little Orphan Annie, which explains why the artwork on Little Joe curiously resembled Little Orphan Annie. Little Joe began October 1, 1933, but Ed Leffingwell worked on the strip for only three years. When he died in 1936, Bob Leffingwell (also a Gray assistant) stepped in, continuing the strip until its conclusion in 1974. The resemblance to Little Orphan Annie began to fade away during the 1950s.

Comics historian Don Markstein described the storyline:

Eventually, Ze Gen'ral became a topper strip above Little Joe.

Bob Leffingwell continued to work on Little Orphan Annie as well as Little Joe, which was reprinted in Dell's Popular Comics, Super Comics and Dell's Four Color Comics series (1942). A CD-ROM reprinting early Little Joe strips was released in 2002.

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