I don’t intend to knock Charles Schultz or his legacy in any way. Peanuts was probably the most influential comic strip ever created and subsequent generations of cartoonists owe Schultz a debt of gratitude.
My beef is with the continued of running “Peanuts Classics” strips in newspapers everywhere. Schultz died 15 years ago and while many of his daily strips have aged reasonably well (notice they don’t run strips with Apollo mission references) the fact that they’re still occupying space on the funny pages means that’s space that isn’t otherwise allocated to new and upcoming cartoonists.
This is likely a problem that will ultimately take care of itself, as there won’t be newspapers for many more years, but in the meantime it’d be nice if they’d stop reprinting decades-old Peanuts strips and give the space to some new cartoonists.
Eh, I don’t know. For many people, “Peanuts” is a gateway drug. Kids who are familiar with Snoopy and Charlie Brown may be drawn to the comics page when they seem them there, and then get exposed to other strips that they might have ignored otherwise.
While I tend to agree with the OP, and think it’s a waste to rerun old Peanuts comics, that is a decision for newspaper editors to make. And in that vein, for the life of me I can’t figure out who reads strips such as Prince Valiant, Alley Oop, Mary Worth and other comic strips taking up valuable space.
I always wondered about their continued existence too. Especially the ‘soap opera’ strips like Judge Parker, Rex Morgan M.D., Mary Worth, or Apt. 3-G. WHO IS FREAKIN’ READING THESE? There must be a powerfully influential lobby comprised of little old ladies that have been following these strips since the Eisenhower administration, because otherwise papers wouldn’t run 'em if no one was reading them.
Hey, those soap opera strips are hilarious. I read them regularly, but that’s more out of a MST3K (and, more directly, Comics Curmudgeon)-inspired desire to mock them than anything else.
Word on the street is that Apartment 3-G will be ending in a couple weeks. Out of all of them, mocking A3G felt more like mocking an elderly person with Parkinson’s than good fun; the past couple years have found it to be dreadfully incompetent, in pretty much every aspect. It’s probably best for it to be put out of its misery.
I rarely read the comic pages in the newspaper anymore but if I ever do happen to look in I’ll just skim a trusted few like Dilbert and Peanuts. Its humor and insight ages well and still has relevance. I do agree that some of the soap opera type strips can be removed with little fanfare but Peanuts would be among the last on my list of ones that aren’t still due some space. I wouldn’t be predisposed take any classic books out of my library yet to make room for others for the same reason.
Don’t be dissin on my man Prince Valiant! Those are some wonderfully drawn strips and the adventures are at times quite well done, at other times not so much. But the artistry is first rate.
I like my Classic Peanuts in my Sunday paper. There is enough material there that they can run it and it still seems fresh since so few people remember the strip the first time it ran.
Want to talk about strips that lasted way beyond its time? I present to you Cathy. Case closed.
It would seem that, if your dream is getting syndicated in the newspaper funny pages, you have larger hurdles than Peanuts taking up real estate. For instance, the fact that fewer and fewer people are reading newspapers these days.
I love Peanuts! That’s the first comic I look for in any newspaper. Why are you picking on Peanuts when there is so much other old dull junk cluttering up the funny papers?
Gil Thorpe. Who reads that? Rex Morgan, M.D. (they brought in a new artist a couple of years ago and I didn’t even recognize the characters.) The Lockhorns - a crudely drawn middle-aged couple who prove every day, marriage is utter hell.
Blondie has beautiful artwork and attempts to keep up with the times, and Peanuts is a sweet, familiar classic. Get rid of them? Why?
Too much text, it wouldn’t be legible on a printed comics page today since they’re reproduced so small. It also wouldn’t appeal to the majority of people who still have newspaper subscriptions.
It’s not the job of a newspaper comics editor to give exposure to up-and-coming artists; it’s to run things their readers will enjoy to encourage them to buy newspapers. Peanuts characters are still probably the most recognized comics characters in the world. It makes perfect sense to run the old strips if they’re available to be run.
Yes. And no. By and large I think this view is (mostly) correct. OTOH if every comics editor felt this way and confined themselves exclusively to the tried and true we’d never see any new comics.
It does seem to be official that Apartment 3-G will be ending as of Nov. 21. I agree that the decline in quality of that strip has been sad to see.
The artist, Frank Bolle, is 91 years old, and his art has declined precipitously within the past couple of years, to the point where the characters are unrecognizable and often crudely drawn, the backgrounds don’t match the content of the strip at all (events said to be taking place in a hospital have a generic street scene background, a swanky restaurant scene appears to be taking place in the apartment, etc.), and pretty much everything is depicted in unchanging medium close up. It seems obvious that something has happened, probably health-related, to affect Bolle’s artwork. It’s an unfortunate end to a long and largely distinguished career.
I do note that The Comics Curmudgeon has mostly stopped making fun of Apartment 3-G, and when he does he seems to limit himself to comments on the writing. It really does start to feel pretty mean-spirited to laugh at Bolle. But yes, it’s probably time for Apartment 3-G to end. And perhaps it says something about the state of soap opera comics that even though this decline in quality has been evident for at least a couple of years, King Features apparently never felt moved in that time to do anything to address the issue.