I bought the first three shortly after they came out. Very good stuff. I should revisit them.

The strip was never carried in hometown paper, so I never really looked at it much. I'm more of an Alley Oop man, for a strip of the same era; then specific characters and/or artists.

Oh, I am familiar with it and it was the first popular strip that allowed the characters to age.  However, the only time I got to see it was if someone had a Chicago Tribune, which ran it.  Kind of hard to get into a strip when you don't have the continuity.  By the time I was in high school and college, and saw the Tribune more, it was more of a gag strip than it had been.  Pleasant; but, not quite up there with Bloom County or that new one, Calvin & Hobbes, when it came to laughs.

I grew up near Decatur, IL and our paper carried a mix of gag, adventure strips and soap opera, with several Sunday-only strips.  Daily, we got Alley Oop, Peanuts, Blondie, Steve Canyon, Steve Roper & Mike Nomad, Apartment 3G, Frank & Ernest, and Doonesbury (that I can recall).  Sundays we also got Short Ribs, Tiger, Eek & Meek Our Boarding House and Captain Easy.

When I visited my grandparents, in Bloomington, their paper had Prince Valiant, The Phantom, and a few others.  You had to get the Chicago Tribune for Gasoline Alley, and not many did, downstate.