GARFIELD! NEVER!!!
NEVER!
Man, I loathe Garfield.
I just jumped in to say a big Fuck You to Bil Keane.
Seconded. Unfortunately, it looks as if the Family Circus will outlive him.
But there’s always a silver lining. See these threads on various incarnations of the Dysfunctional Family Circus.
This hits the finger on the nail, as my old man used to say. Newspaper editors are always getting new comic strip proposals, and they’ll test new strips occasionally. Small papers like the ones I edited tend to watch the bigger papers to see what gets picked up before they test a new strip. Of course, when you pick up a new strip, you have to drop an old one. So papers will test-run a new strip while holding out an old one the staff wants to see dumped and listen for squawks from the readers. If there are none, welcome aboard, newbie! If there are a lot of complaints, the old one returns, with an explanation that, “This has been only a test.” If enough papers drop a strip, the syndicate drops it, too.
Periodically, almost every newspaper runs a reader poll; the least popular comics get dropped and new ones are inserted, based primarily on syndicate sales pitches and newsroom preferences.
One side note: I never had much respect for a newspaper that ran **Mallard Filmore ** or **Doonesbury ** on the editorial page. Comics belong on the comics pages.
I stand corrected.
I believe Garry Trudeau actually prefers his strip run on the editorial page; it gets shrunk too much when it runs with the other comics.
Motion carried. Who whacks 'im?
Mallard Fillmore belongs neither on the editorial page or the comics page. It belongs in the toilet, returned to the shit from whence it came.
No mention of the Lockharts?
They’ve been in counselling for what? 40+ years?
Dondi
Nancy
Brenda Starr
Rex Morgan
Family Circus
Lockhorns
Beetle Bailey
Hi and Lois
Yes, Peanuts (anything post say, 1985 sucks, IMO)
all need to die. I’m sure there are more–and I just thought of some:
Blondie
For Better or for Worse–which used to be humorous and then got philosophical.
And why NOT let the damned kids grow up? Foxtrot, Baby Blues etc–I understand not in real time, perhaps, but come on!
And whoever it was is right re Garfield (which I have never found funny)–my kids loved him til about age 11.
I miss the Washington Post comics section 
Though the SF Chronicle is still running Boondocks now- I wonder if they’re reprints.
Used to be four. What’d they do, shrink 'em even more?
A stake through the heart. But you have to stuff the mouth with garlic and cut off the head to be sure.
If by “comics” you mean “very short political columns with pictures of a duck drawn with them”
At least the editorial page is better than the classified section. That’s where my local newspaper banished both strips so they could crowd in some more letters from right-wing cranks with too much time on their hands. (Granted, in the case of “Mallard Filmore” I really didn’t mind it being stuck there.)
Heathen!!!
I used to think so too, but I’ve been reading them again recently and I find that they are a lot better than I thought.
The kids in Baby Blues do grow up. Just at, like, half the speed of realtime, IIRC.
Close – the feature debuted in 1968. Until I read this article, I didn’t realize the original name was The Lockhorns of Levittown – an obvious reference to one of the suburbs developed by William Levitt to serve returning GI’s, their wives, and their Baby Boomer offspring after World War II. Leroy and Loretta (still childless after all these years) were apparently designed with social commentary in mind!
Am I the only Doper whose daily newspaper still subjects her to Gasoline Alley? Lately, the storylines have involved different characters being in various life-threatening situations. My kids and I believe it’s a ploy to get people to read it - because we all want to see every character in the strip die a horrific death.
Comics come and go; we continue to have to put up with B.C. and Hagar and Gasoline Alley.
Do Rufus and Joel and Melba still talk like . . . heck, I don’t know what they talk like! Not like any working-class types I ever met! For a strip famous for letting its characters grow and change, it sure seemed to be stuck in some kind of time capsule!
Imagine that shiftless, thieving, chronically unemployed Snuffy Smith and his family as a black family in the projects and see if it’s funny. Why is it still acceptable to perpetuate those stereotypes about Appalachian mountain folks?