CHICAGO — Talk about a hard-knocks life: She has been jailed in North Korea, kidnapped repeatedly, accused of murder, trapped in a cave, roughed up by gangsters. And she’s just a kid — more precisely, a red-haired girl named Annie.
Over 86 years, the spunky (and forever young) orphan has endured hundreds of curly-hair-raising adventures, not to mention homelessness, poverty and other Dickensian hardships. She has even survived the death of the man whose pen and imagination turned her into a comic-strip heroine.
Annie, the character, might be indomitable. But Annie, the comic strip, is not. After today’s strip, Annie, her father figure and frequent rescuer, Daddy Warbucks, and her beloved pooch, Sandy, will disappear from the funny pages.
They will have a future, but for now, where that will be is unknown.
“Annie is not dying; she’s moving into new channels,” said Steve Tippie, vice president of licensing and new markets development at Tribune Media, which owns the license to the character. Annie, he said, has “huge awareness,” and possibilities include graphic novels, film, TV, games — maybe even a home on a mobile phone. “Annie is one of those iconic characters in American culture,” Tippie said. “If you stop 10 people on the street, nine of them will drop down on one knee and start singing ‘Tomorrow.’ “
