The comics page has returned to The Washington County (Wis.) Daily News and The Waukesha Freeman.
A while back a reader described to me how she felt about the Comics Page we once had in the paper. She saw it as the “fun page” — a daily destination to find content on the lighter side. It was a place that stood in contrast to the more serious news. This was a page where she would regularly find items that put a smile on her face…
So that’s what we’ve done. We’ve brought back the fun page.
Some time in the recent or distant past The Washington County (Wis.) Daily News dropped most of their comics.
(By the looks of their graphic it may have been during the 1960s Batman TV show. Anyway…)
Now the funny pages are back!
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Bill Yorth brings the good news.
DAILY COMICS PAGE: In today’s paper, you will actually find two Comics Pages (Pages 4B and 5B). Because we don’t publish on Mondays, the first page will include comics and puzzles that would have been slated for Monday. The second page will include the Tuesday content. Every Tuesday paper will have two Comics Pages.
As far as comic strips, we have brought back Luann, Sally Forth, B.C., The Duplex and For Better Or For Worse. We also have added Charlie Brown and friends in the Classic Peanuts comic strip.
Speed Bump and Real Life Adventures — two cartoons that were still running in the paper — will move to the Comics Page and be joined by Bizarro and Non Sequitur in somewhat of a Rogues’ Gallery of edgy, single-panel comics.
SATURDAY COLOR COMICS: You will find two comics pages on Saturdays. In addition to the daily Comics Page, the Saturday paper also will include the color Weekend Comics Page.
The color Weekend Comics will include Frank & Ernest, Marmaduke, Heathcliff, The Lockhorns and Ziggy. You also will find the color weekend Dilbert cartoon (Dilbert also runs daily on the Business Page) and once again Charlie Brown and friends will pop up in the Classic Peanuts color weekend comic strip.
That’s seven Sunday comics on one color page, which isn’t out of the ordinary these days.
Instead of one syndicate they got strips and panels from Andrews McMeel, Creators, and King Features.
And they buck the trend in another surprising way:
The comics will no longer appear on our website now that they are back in the paper.
Unfortunate that two of the slots are being taken up by reruns, though.
When I was younger, polls of readers showed that the comics page was the most read section of the newspaper. Is that still the case? If so, why do they keep giving them less space, making them smaller, and even removing them entirely? It would seem to make no sense.