Do you still read the newspaper comics first, the way you did when you were eight? I do. Every morning, with my coffee, I flip (or scroll) straight to Dennis the Menace, Beetle Bailey, Popeye, and Blondie. In my home outside Washington D.C., these same four-panel worlds still make me chuckle out loud—exactly the way they did when I was a kid growing up in India in the 1980s and early 90s. Back then, the Sunday edition of The Times of India or The Hindu carried a full color comics page dominated by American syndicated strips. Dennis was forever in the doghouse, Sarge was forever screaming at Beetle, Popeye was forever reaching for that can of spinach, and Dagwood was forever building those impossible sandwiches. Beside them sat the brilliant single-panel Amul ads—the mop-top girl with her utterly Indian topical wit—but almost everything else felt deliciously foreign and, somehow, universal at the same time. I don’t remember a single Indian-produced daily comic strip in those...
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I love Scrabbulus (sp?) too, and believe it or not I had never played Scrabble in my life nor considered it. Imagine if Hasbro had the thought to actually advertise to the zillions of us playing on FB or the scrabulous site? Instead of being "bad guys" they could ride the wave and sell their old-style board game that is still pretty fun I imagine.