Johnston's strip began in September 1979, and ended its original daily black-and-white run on August 30, 2008, with a postscript epilogue (as a full-colour Sunday strip) running the following day. Starting on September 1, 2008, the strip began re-telling its original story, using a mixture of straight reruns and retouched strips which featured altered dialogue. This new format, however, was dropped after less than two years and in July 2010, the strip switched entirely to reruns (with some minor alterations). The strips seen in papers in 2016 were originally from 1987.