The Gump family have been galumphing along in their daily comic strip for over 30 years. They first appeared in the Chicago Tribune. Chinless, blowhard Andy Gump, his long-suffering, last-wording wife Min, and their billionaire Uncle Bim became as familiar to millions of newspaper readers as the neighbors, and Andy's anguished cry for help ("O, Mini") was a byword of the '30s. When a minor character called Mary Gold was heartlessly killed off (the first U.S. comic-strip figure to die), thousands of readers protested.
The Gumps were conceived, named (after a favorite family expression,...