From The Daily Cartoonist: The Chicago Tribune is responding to reader complaints about the illegibility of some if its comics by increasing the size it runs several of those comics. Two features, The Argyle Sweater and Bliss will be enlarged by 15% and Baby Blues, Blondie, Cathy, Classic Peanuts, Dilbert, Doonesbury, For Better or for Worse, Frazz, Hagar the Horrible, Mr. Boffo, Prickly City, Shoe and Zits will be increased by 25%.
They’ve also picked up on two features, Dustin and Pickles and dropped six: Get Fuzzy, Lio, Raising Hector, Scary Gary, Sylvia and Watch Your Head. The changes are set to go into effect on Monday, February 8th.
This seems like some weird, circular logic thing. They go bigger, but they get rid of some of the best strips? What gives?
Which strips are they getting rid of?
Aren’t they getting rid of Lio, Get Fuzzy, Scary Gary, Watch Your Head, Sylvia and Raising Hector? Or, did I read that wrong?
Yeah, I read that too Lucas. I was most saddened to see Lio on the cut list.
Man I totally misread that. Lio and Get Fuzzy will survive easily. I feel bad for the younger strips that got axed.
So wrong. Cutting Lio so they can make Blondie bigger? Really?
I wish they’d stuff ALL those Legacy strips into a canon and fire them out into space.
Are they out of their @#$%&!! minds? Lio and Get Fuzzy (my personal modern/current fave) are two of the best strips ever. This is how they respond to a complaint of, “give us *more* comics?
Me too – clean sweep.
Just did an interesting recording with Alan Gardner of the Daily Cartoonist where we talked about the new iPad and the impact, if any, it’ll have. And one of the more interesting points for me is that suppose comics DO go to an iTunes sort of format…where maybe you pay a $9.99 subscription fee and you get 20 comics or something delivered to you in a beautiful format. I think this will hurt the legacy strips immensely. Sure, they run in a bazillion papers and claim that readership, but honestly…ARE people reading Blondie that much? Or more specifically, will the new generation read Blondie? No…if it’s done on an actual merit basis where people are choosing what they want, they’re going to gravitate to webcomics, but also “Pearls,” “Lio,” etc…the ones with real appeal. I would be most worried about the passing of the newspaper into legend and the rise of digital readers if I was doing a legacy strip, to be honest.
It’s a train wreck sometimes. They know that they will need to make a jump to a internet medium and even on their websites they make the strips hard to read and impossible to find. Now this.
Great it’s larger again today, but next week what will it look like.
I want to see a traditional funny’s page on my local newspapers website.
Tom: I’m speaking from a thin amount of experience, BUT the experience I’ve had with newspaper editors is that they tend to have a knee-jerk response to negative feedback. Like, “HOLY SHIT, someone hates us. We better bring back Fred Bassett or the sky will fall.” I can’t imagine too many people in the grand scheme of readership having heartburn over the demise of Blondie or strips like it.
You know, I love Charles Schultz as much as the next cartoonist, but why would you run a strip that has been over for years? Can’t we get something new up there? Though I don’t have personal experience, I have heard from other cartoonists what you said, Wit -the reactionary attitude of newspaper editors.
I know (one of) the guys at the Daily News who steers the comics page. He loves the art form and would love to do right by the strips. He’s got a framed Get Fuzzy in his house that I got to fondle. (Did I say that out loud?) But papers these days are all about not rocking the boat; about not offending readers. Hell, this guy is just hoping to be able to retire from the News. This is not exactly an atmosphere of innovation and it’s prevalent throughout the industry.
What we need is a mover like The Onion or something that believes in being different. That believes in entertaining. . .
Barb: I’m committing sacrilege here but I feel the same way about Calvin and Hobbes *GASP!!* Yeah yeah…get over it.
John: Stop fondling peoples fuzzy things.