Norman Drabble hasn’t aged much over the years but “Drabble,” the comic strip that bears his name, turns 40 today — not that Kevin Fagan planned to make any fuss about it.
But his son, Brian Fagan, thought that if his truly modest dad wasn’t going to toot his and Norman’s horn he’d toot it for him, and emailed word that it was March 5, 1979, when the comic strip debuted, continuing ever since.
“I am reaching out in regards to my dad, Kevin Fagan, the creator and cartoonist behind ‘Drabble’,” Fagan wrote. “You wrote an awesome article about him a few years back. I just realized that the 40th anniversary of ‘Drabble’ is next week.
“I don’t think my dad has told anyone (that’s just his nature), so I am taking it upon myself to let you know since you previously covered him. He doesn’t know I am telling anyone :)”
Here you will find that 2017 profile of Fagan, which among other things covers the Mission Viejo resident’s early days as a super-fan of “Peanuts” and the role that its creator Charles M. Schultz played in Fagan’s life over the years that followed — including why Schultz’s widow gave Fagan the baseball glove used by the creator of hapless ballplayer Charlie Brown.
“He really is the modest cartooning legend who still gets excited to find out that someone has found joy in reading his cartoons over the years,” Brian Fagan said in response to our follow-up email about his dad and “Drabble.” “Cartooning can be a relatively thankless job because you don’t get to see or hear people reacting to your jokes.
“When it does come up (and never because he brings it up) I think it makes his day.
“And for whatever it’s worth, I’ll add that my dad is the best human being I know,” Fagan said. “He’s humble and generous, he is the best father and grandfather and husband you could imagine, and spends a ton of time serving the people in his community.
“And his job has been to make people laugh every day for 40 years. He gets to bring a small piece of consistent joy into people’s lives every day. There’s only a handful of people who can really say that, so he’s a hero in my book!
So happy birthday, “Drabble,” appears in all 11 newspapers of the Southern California News Group. Long may you run.
