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Today in 1918, Frank King’s comic strip “Gasoline Alley” first appeared in the Chicago Tribune. Still running to this day, it became the first strip to progress in ‘real time’. The cast of characters, centering around car aficionado Walt Wallet, his wife Phyllis Blossom and their adopted child Skeezix, have all aged, expanded and evolved to inhabit comics’ first soap opera. Phyllis even died in the April 26, 2004 strip. The strip, which has won multiple Reuben Awards and awards from the National Cartoonists’ Society, is currently drawn by Jim Scancarelli. Last year, comic publisher Drawn & Quarterly began reprinting the strip starting at 1921. Note: The actual ‘birth date’ of “Gasoline Alley” is not certain. Frank King was quoted as saying that he believed it first started in 1919. (Source: ComicsPage.com, Toonopedia and Wikipedia)