Only two changes this weekend in the funny page line up. The Tribune Democrat ran a month long survey to find a couple of new features. The comics under consideration were Glenn and Gary McCoy’s The Flying McCoys, Carla Ventresca and Henry Beckett’s On a Claire Day, Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott’s Baby Blues, Rick Detorie’s One Big Happy, and Paul Gilligan’s Pooch Cafe. The winners are: One a Claire Day and One Big Happy. The survey netted 1,800 online respondents and nearly 500 clip and mailed ballots. The new comics won’t hit the funny pages until March.
Last week The Lincoln Courier yanked two written columns, Dilbert and Garfield from their comics page and then got flooded with 150 phone calls in protest. The editor vows to return the columns but is still evaluating the comics. He did mention that they will continue to run Julie Larson’s The Dinette Set. What I find interesting (read:offended) in this editor’s mea culpa was a shift in blame from himself to Bill Amend. Here’s what he wrote:
Replacing Annie and Horoscope with alien comic strips, yanking old standbys such as Dilbert and Garfield for more of the same can all be blamed on the retirement of Bill Amend, the creator of Foxtrot.
With Foxtrot gone, we had to replace it with something and you let us know right away you didn’t like “the something” we replaced it with.
Well, excuse Bill for completely messing with your life.
Bill Amend’s retirement forced him to yank 4 features? That makes absolutely no sense.
What did yanking Dilbert and Garfield have to do with FoxTrot ceasing dailies? So… when Lynn Johnston starts her hybrid strip he’ll have to start the comics page over from scratch? Man, what a pain to actually have to work instead of leaving the pages in auto-pilot.
Oh. I’m sorry that the end of Foxtrot… mad you remove… three other comics…?
However, I fully respect the move to remove Garfield. It’s time.