Home / Section: Comic strips
Star-Ledger drops two pages of comics
According to Dave Astor, The Star-Ledger has shrunk its Sunday comics from eight pages to six
. The move resulted in only one dropped feature (39 to 38), but Dave says “many of the 38 strips ran very small on Feb. 17. Several of the pages had seven comics crammed into them — including a tiny, almost-unreadable “Prince Valiant” on page two.” Other papers such as the Modesto Bee and the Washington Post have already removed several pages from their offerings opting to squeeze more comics onto smaller sections.
Tools
Related Stories
- Spot the Frog, others dropped in KC Star shake up
- Boston Globe drops Garfield
- Cartoonists in the news: Patrick McDonnell
- Newspaper purge continues
- Kansas City Star dropping two Sunday comic pages
- Star-Banner to be making comic page changes
- The Clarion-Ledger shakes up funny pages
- Washington Examiner replaces their comics with puzzles
- SF Chronicle drops two pages of Sunday comics
- St. Petersburg creates new online comics page
© 2005 - 2008 The Daily Cartoonist. 
Community Comments
February/22/2008 @ 11:48 am
(sigh)
February/22/2008 @ 12:06 pm
Another reason to visit:
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComics.mpl
February/22/2008 @ 1:19 pm
“Several of the pages had seven comics crammed into them”
Seven Sunday comics on one page?! Why bother running them at all at this point?
February/22/2008 @ 2:04 pm
I can confirm this change. I live near Newark and I read the Star-Ledger every day. I was dismayed to see that the newspaper shrunk its Sunday comics section from eight pages to six last Sunday. As far as I can tell no comic strips were actually dropped. However, some strips were so small that they were barely legible, “Prince Valiant” being the obvious example. Someone I know was telling me about how, because comics were being crammed in side by side on the same page, she actually thought they were one strip at first. I know that the purpose of this is to save money, but it’s really disgraceful and I’m expecting it to prompt complaints. Yep, it’s a sad situation.
February/22/2008 @ 2:50 pm
Newspapers can easily increase the number of comic pages (reproduced larger & less per page) by simply cutting down the sports section.
February/22/2008 @ 3:53 pm
Wily Miller said, “Seven Sunday comics on one page?! Why bother running them at all at this point?”
Apparently you’ve NEVER seen The Hartford Courant in Connecticut. Their sunday comics section has only 6 pages with a total of 28 comics. The cover (Page 1) of this section only has 3 comics on it, Classic Peanuts, Dilbert and Zits. Each of these 3 comics measure 6″(H) by 11″(L).
The rest of this section runs approx. 5 or 6 comics per page, some measure larger than others. Most of the comics run horizontal, and a few run vertical.
I could never understand why they would run each comic so large. I guess they’re trying to fill up as much space as they can with as few comics as possible.
As if that isn’t bad enough, they wrap the comics section in a 4 page advertisement. So if someone isn’t really looking for the comics section, they’ll just pass right by it and eventually throw it away without even seeing it.
Join the discussion!
PLEASE NOTE: Please use your first AND last name when posting a comment. Please refrain from swearing. It's one of the rules that I enforce strictly. Thanks.