:eek:
I still read newspapers. And I admit I read Rex Morgan and Mary Worth in elementary school in West Texas in the 1960s. They were in our local paper. I forced myself to read them, because I thought this must be some sort of adult humor way above my tender age. By the time I finally figured out there was no humor, it had become a habit, and I couldn’t leave the comics page until I’d read them. They’re still around?
Doesn’t he only do the strips that are actually printed in his local paper? I don’t think he browses the entire King Syndicate catalog or anything.
Of course, I’d read the blog if all he did was Spider-Man because those are great. I don’t read it daily though; I enjoy a week’s worth on my Sunday afternoons.
this is a joke, right?
I recall Frank Cho calling loudly for Charles Schulz’s retirement because those old folks should get out of the way of the New Kids and their amazing big-boobed Bloom County ripoffs. Stay classy, Frank!
As far as I’m concerned Peanuts can stay in the papers as long as the editors feel like running it. There are precious few new strips that come anywhere close to Peanuts - I’m going to throw “Mutts” out there - and the up and coming artists of today, the 18 and 19 and 20 year olds, they could absolutely care less about newspapers.
Of course, if the newspapers would start running comics in color, larger, and with better printing and a better selection of strips, then maybe people might start buying newspapers again. It worked in 1900. Is it any surprise that circulation started dropping the minute editors started shrinking the comics?
By the way, check out who’s at #5 on the New York Times Best Sellers list of Hardcover Graphic Books - it’s Kate Beaton, who seems to be enjoying some degree of success without the assistance of appearing in newspapers. Hmmmm.
As mean-spirited as that sort of comment would have been, at that time, I wouldn’t have disagreed with him. Over the last years of the original Peanuts run, it was clear that Schultz was no longer even close to the top of his game. I certainly understand why this was: he was in his 70s, not in the best of health, and he’d been creating a daily strip for over 40 years.
But, the brilliance of Peanuts, and the joy it had brought me as a reader, was in the past. The Peanuts strips of the 90s weren’t nearly as witty or emotionally impactful anymore. Schultz’s run of brilliance had undoubtedly earned him the right to stay on for as long as he wanted, but the strip itself in those years wasn’t doing much to enhance his legacy. At that time, it reminded me very much of watching a beloved athlete stay on for a season or two too many.
The Peanuts strips which are currently running were originally written in 1968, and are still well in the strip’s golden age. I absolutely enjoy reading them, but if the syndicate was, instead, running strips from the 1990s, I’d probably feel differently.
(I’ll agree with you that Mutts is one of the bright spots among current strips, but even that “newer” strip is now over 20 years old. 
)
What has that got to do with your claim that syndication is a ‘gravy train?’
[QUOTE=Mavis Topholese]
By the way, check out who’s at #5 on the New York Times Best Sellers list of Hardcover Graphic Books - it’s Kate Beaton, who seems to be enjoying some degree of success without the assistance of appearing in newspapers. Hmmmm.
[/quote]
And Raina Telgemeier has both the #4 and #5 spots for paperback graphic novels.
Most comics are.
If an aspiring cartoonist can’t compete with somebody who died 15 years ago, full-time consideration of another endeavor might be in order.
Apt 3G talk reminds me of a golden girls episode:
Dorothy: I haven’t read Apt 3G since 1961.
Blanche: well let me catch you up. It’s later that same afternoon…
Luann by Greg Evans (currently being co-written with his daughter) seems to get a lot of commentary online. People get very worked up about it!
To me it’s not so much “what other strips is Peanuts keeping out?” as "Why do they run that and not other retired strips? I like Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side a lot more than Peanuts (which I always thought was bland and insipid), but I don’t know of any newspapers rerunning those.
The only strips I really like now are Bizarro and Dilbert. I think both Pittsburgh papers carry “classic Peanuts”, but not Dilbert. Sucks but oh well whatcha gonna do? Newspapers are all going to be dead within 5-10 years anyway, entirely replaced by news websites which don’t have comics.
But there are already tons of comics websites, so the art-form isn’t being eliminated or even really threatened. It’s just like everything else in the information age: highly competitive for our limited attention.
(I wish to hades I could follow more web-comics than I currently do. But time is just too damn short!)
This guy.
I don’t know, I don’t read newspapers any more. I haz Internetz lol. But upthread, people were asking who still reads Rex Morgan and Mary Worth, which kind of implies they are still around. Otherwise, moot point.
You *have *to be kidding.
both you and whoever suggested Cyanide & Happiness need to pull your noses out of your own asscracks. there’s no way in hell a mainstream newspaper would ever run either of those.
Dude I put it behind Far Side in my all time fav comics, think what he could do if it was a full time gig.
Great. Now I’ll never be able to sleep.
Well thats their problem then, keep catering to a dying market.