I read the Chicago Tribune (still read the dead-tree edition, in fact, because I’m old ). Every year or so, the Tribune adjusts the lineup in their comics pages, and they will sometimes ask for reader input on what should stay and what should go.
I wrote an e-mail to them a few years back, during one of those survey periods, and singled out The Lockhorns for removal. I gave my opinion, that it was a strip which simply recycled the same eight jokes, over and over again (the wife is a poor driver, the husband drinks too much, the wife burns dinner, the husband flirts with women, etc.), and that most of the strip’s humor was at least 30 years out of date. In that e-mail, I had also mourned several comics which I had loved, and which the creators had ended (The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, and Bloom County). The Tribune printed my e-mail, among others, in an article about the impending changes to the comics page.
A few weeks later, I got a letter in the mail – an actual, physical letter – from what was clearly an older woman, whom I had never met, but who had clearly read my e-mail in the paper. She told me that I was dead wrong – that The Lockhorns was very funny, and that the comics which I enjoyed weren’t funny at all.
Hmmm. The Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes are two of my favorite comics of all time, and I also like the Lockhorns. Bloom County - not so much. Not seeing a compelling trend or correlation here.
I admit and agree that the Lockhorns is pretty repetitive, but I think that complaint applies to all comic strips.
I do wonder what percentage of people buy newspapers just for the comics. Are there really people out there that are going to cancel their subscription if they don’t have Peanuts anymore?
I think (at the risk of speaking for the OP) it’s because it’s strictly reruns. Its as if, when they finally quit making new episodes of The Simpsons, Fox decided to keep rerunning old episodes, instead of giving that prime time slot to a new series.
Yeah, I’d be more inclined to agree with the OP if he could show me the next Bill Watterson who’s being kept out of the comic section.
Ah, Comics Curmudgeon! Remembering the glorious snark at the Foobpocalypse. The Foobiverse’s Journal is still running at LiveJournal, critiquing the Mostly Recycled strip.
(I haven’t read a dead-tree newspaper in years. Don’t miss them.)
Comic book readers hate changes to the lineup of strips, so dropping anything is going to get some complaints.
As for why the soap opera strips are still being run, most likely they’re part of a package deal. “If you want [new and exciting strip], you have to also take [dull soap opera].” Al Capprailed against this practice in 1947, and I doubt it went away.
Why shouldn’t some real estate on the comics page be given over to classic strips from the past? It’s a bit like saying bookstores shouldn’t carry Shakespeare or Mark Twain when the shelf space could be devoted to living authors. And Peanuts is the perfect candidate for the treatment: universally beloved, and the artwork is simple enough to survive being shrunk down to 2015 standards. (I’d love to see vintage Pogo brought back, too, but it would be ruined by being shrunk down.)
Although it’s one of my all-time favorite strips, I’d be more sympathetic to looking askance at the continued presence of Doonesbury reruns on the weekday comics pages. The references are dated, the dialog requires a magnifying glass to make out, and it certainly doesn’t hold the universal appeal of a Peanuts or a Calvin and Hobbes.
Crankshaft: It’s just not funny. I know plenty of old people. Their sense of humor isn’t that different from younger people, so I’m pretty sure it’s not just that I’m younger than the target audience.
The Lockhorns: As others have said, it’s been recycling the same small handfull of jokes for decades now.
Zippy the Pinhead: What drugs does this guy use? Whatever they are, it would seem they mess you up pretty badly.
Apartment 3G is going down the same path that Dick Tracy did a couple of years ago, when the old artist was retiring. If I recall it was a month or two of Tracy with the Bad Guy arguing in a grain barn during a 100-year storm. A month long storm. Sad. When the new “team” took over the sun burst out, floods were gone, the rescuers were there.
I haven’t read the paper version in a long time, but our local used to run a poll every few years to allow the readers to vote for their favorites, and Peanuts was always an overwhelming winner.
Though I suspect the demographic that was voting always voted for Family Circus, too, so…
I always get frustrated when people complain about Zippy, because the Bay Area-bred strip no longer runs in, of all papers, the San Francisco Chronicle.
(The first time the Chronicle axed the strip, there was a demonstration to protest the move with chants of “Bring back Zippy! Bring back Zippy!” The Chronicle immediately relented and announced that the strip would return. After a brief moment of confusion, the protesters switched to a chant of “Cancel Zippy! Cancel Zippy!”)
I read the comics maybe once or twice a year when I visit my ancestral home for the holidays. The Sunday comics have devolved to this pathetic one or two page affair with teeny tiny comics and I think the freshest comic they print is Dilbert which probably peaked 20 years ago.
Then again, I do have a number of web comics I visit (and occasionally even pay for), so there’s still a way for new artists to emerge.
Crankshaft isn’t really a humor strip; it’s a story strip, one of the few that deals primarily with story. They’ve been dealing with Ralph running for mayor (I haven’t read it in over a week, so I didn’t see the end). While there are amusing moments, it’s really about characters and plot.
I’ll also add that continuing strips after the creator has died or left the strip has been SOP for newspaper comics since Rudolf Dirks and the Katzenjammer Kids. The only difference now is that they rerun old strips; in the old days, they’d just hire a new artist. But things like Terry and the Pirates, Mutt and Jeff, The Gumps (whose creator died in a car crash at the height of this fame), Wash Tubbs (usually credited as the first strip with adventure stories), Popeye, Mickey Mouse, Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Snuffy Smith, and many others just switched artists and went on.
Indeed, it was noteworthy that King Features decided not to continue Krazy Kat after George Herriman died (though the strip was not that popular except for a small coterie of fans who understood it, and no one could duplicate Herriman’s genius).
Having someone new take over the strip is still the standard. What’s somewhat unusual about Peanuts is that Schulz insisted that no one else continue the strip after him (and insisted on doing all the work on the strip personally during its lifetime).
). Every year or so, the Tribune adjusts the lineup in their comics pages, and they will sometimes ask for reader input on what should stay and what should go.
