Heathcliff Word-Find Puzzles

I'm not sure if Pennypress is still publishing bi-monthly "Word Seek" puzzle magazines devoted to Garfield the cat, but it was refreshing to find a "Word Find" puzzle devoted to that other comic strip cat, Heathcliff, seemingly tucked away at random...yeah, right. 

Wouldn't that be neat? Actually, here's what the magazine in question really looked like:

And the puzzle located therein:

Here's how you can tell the puzzle-maker at Kappa is a huge fan of the Heathcliff comic strip - he/she knows who Crazy Shirley is.

Shirley was a recurring character in the comic strip that appeared in the earliest Heathcliff cartoon series, Heathcliff and Dingbat:

She didn't appear in Heathcliff and The Catillac Cats, which came later:

But she continued to appear in the Heathcliff comic books and books that reprinted the older comic strips:

Actually, I don't know if she's in two of those examples - I have the Batman parody issue, there - she's not in that, either..I just like those pictures I found..I'm on a roll loading pictures right now.

I'd be curious if she appeared in the Nintendo Wii game, since it would need more characters for a racing game:

Back on topic - Crazy Shirley was likely a personal favorite of the strip's creator, cartoonist George Gately Gallagher, who worked under the byline "George Gately".  His nephew, Peter Michael Gallagher, took over the strip, under the byline "Michael Gallagher" which is the same name as another nephew, Michael Gallagher, who had worked as a writer on the Heathcliff comic books. Confused yet? No? How about this..I think Peter Michael's decision to not work under the name "Peter" was to avoid confusion with TV and film actor Peter Gallagher...

Of course, I'm sure people think they're all related to the stand-up comedian Gallagher who smashes watermelons..

Last I'd heard of him, he was feuding with his brother for stealing his schtick, also smashing watermelons...

(I think that's a picture of the same guy...I just found that amusing and wanted to share it)

Back on topic (again) - Peter Michael may or may not be a fan of Shirley, or just felt the jokes about her stalking Heathcliff to plant random kisses got old, since contemporary Heathcliff strips tend to veer more towards guest-star cameos..

Outrageous sight gags:

Observational commentary:

Dry pop culture references:

And all-out anthropomorphic cartoon cat mischief:

While Garfield is usually housebound, Heathcliff can pop up anywhere, with anyone, doing anything he feels like doing, so that zany spontaneity is appealing in its small, daily doses. I tip my hat to whoever it was at Kappa who got the itch to give Garfield's rival a puzzle..how's about a whole magazine next time, okay?