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 by: Dean Young and John Marshall 
Blondie has survived for seven decades through war and peace, boom and bust, sexual revolution and social upheaval. Why? Eating. Sleeping. Making a living. Raising a family. Loving and laughing. With these simple but universal themes, Blondie transcended its origins as a pretty-girl romance to become the most widely read strip in comic art history.
Today an estimated 250 million readers keep up with the Bumsteads' enduring domestic comedy seven days a week, 365 days a year. Fans rate Blondie among their top five "most popular comics" in newspaper reader surveys year in and year out. The list of newspapers carrying the strip has continued to grow steadily since Blondie first appeared Sept. 8, 1930. The comic now appears in more than 2,000 newspapers in 55 countries and is translated into more than 35 languages.
While the setting may seem quintessentially American, fans around the world have often expressed surprise to learn that it's not homespun material. Spanish-speaking readers, for example, know Blondie and Dagwood as Pepita and Lorenzo; in Paris, the Bumsteads are Les Dupont; readers in Sweden follow Dagobert to his job every day. The strip's popularity extends to places as diverse as Kuwait and New Guinea.
Blondie has also received phenomenal worldwide exposure through books, radio, television and film. And "The Dagwood Sandwich" has even become part of the language! It's described by Webster's New World Dictionary as "a thick sandwich with a variety of fillings, often of apparently incompatible foods" -- such as peanut butter, avocado, horseradish and a fish! And Blondie is featured on the first-ever U.S. postage stamps commemorating the first 100 years of the comic strip.
Produced today under the direction of the creator's son, Dean Young, the strip has continued to keep up with the times. And although Dagwood forsook his millionaire's inheritance long ago, he's been happy ever since. So has Blondie. And so have millions and millions of fans.
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