The Menomonee Falls Gazette was a weekly tabloid that reprinted newspaper comic strips from the US and the UK. Each page typically featured a week’s worth of a daily strip or a full-page Sunday tabloid comic. Generally, these comics fell into the adventure or soap opera categories. Issue No. 1 was published on December 11, 1972. In all, there were 232 issues; the final issue was dated March 3, 1978. 

How comics found there way into the Menomonee Falls Gazette is unclear to me, but it appears a case of opportunism brought Kevin the Bold to the Gazette. A week after his 66th birthday, Collins died (January 8, 1974). Six days later, issue No. 109 featured a Kevin the Bold splash panel on the front cover and an episode of the comic from early 1955 on the back. Regardless of how he got there, Kevin anchored the back cover position for the next six months.

Issues of the Menomonee Falls Gazette featured as many as 50 comic strips and these strips took turns gracing its cover. Kevin the Bold earned the spot at least three other times (Nos. 150, 182 and 215). Essentially, all issues of the Gazette can be found online, where they can be viewed or downloaded.

Kevin the Bold continued to run in the MNF for as long as the tabloid was published. The only exception was No. 214, when the comic didn’t appear. This seems to have been a oversight, as  No. 213 ran a comic dated December 30, 1956 and No. 215 ran the January 6, 1957 strip. At this point, the Gazette must’ve been on its last legs: another glitch happened when the February 10, 1957 episode was skipped — Issue No. 220 jumped ahead to the February 17 comic. 

During the four years Kevin ran in the Gazette, twelve of Kevin’s adventures were retold. The final sequence is incomplete, which is a shame — it ends with a bang. For loyal readers of the Menomonee Falls Gazette wondering whatever happened to Captain Ben Defoe and Shark Donnelly, that sequence will run in its entirety starting next week.