The Daily Cartoonist

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Comic Page changes for the week

Alan Gardner52 mins

Here are four changes that caught my eye this week. I suspect next week will have a lot more as Doonesbury returns.

» The San Diego Union-Tribune has a dilemma now that Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury is coming off sabbatical next week – which feature should they cut. According to E&P, the three that might be cut include: Judge Parker, Cathy and Wizard of Id.

» A London Free Press (Canada) editorial justifies why Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts will stay in its paper despite not getting the most favorable feedback.

» More than 4,400 readers voted in the Albuquerque Journal Comics Shootout (a vote between two comics) in May. The winner hands down was Brian Crane’s Pickles who beat our Gasoline Alley. The June shootout sports Hi & Lois versus Get Fuzzy.

» The Orange County Register’s comic poll resulted in a high number of strips that received both positive and negative votes. The paper decided not to include Cul De Sac and Family Tree which were tested out last year and they decided to cut Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy. The replacement strips include newly launched Deflocked and Pickles.

» One Daily Cartoonist reader wrote in to tell me that the St. Louis Dispatch has picked up Deflocked for both daily and Sundays. Brenda Starr was moved to the black and white section of the dailies.

» The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) has dropped Mary Worth and B.C. in favor of Zits and Pooch Cafe.

5 thoughts on “Comic Page changes for the week”

  1. According to today’s Orange County Register, both Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy will return to their comics’ section on June 11. Apparently, the reader backlash overwhelmed the paper & they are reversing their bone headed move to cut the two strips.
    Their handpicked replacements, Pickels & the lame De-Flocked, have been bumped off the page after two days.
    Perhaps this will serve as an example to newspapers as to why “reader polls’ results” aren’t an accurate gauge of a strip’s popularity with the REAL comics’ page readers!
    Gee, do you think old people might be stuffing the ballot box?

  2. “The June shootout sports Hi & Lois versus Get Fuzzy.”

    Once again, more evidence that editors have absolutely no clue about the very product they’re supposed to be editing. Imagine for a moment that they subjected columns to this same sort of lunacy. This would be like having a “shootout” between Dear Abby and George Will.

    This editor should be fired.

  3. Wiley is sooooo right. THis whole “shootout ” thing is just lazy and stopid. Read some of the comments on the page, they are classic. I like inkjet’s coment:

    inkjet:

    Wait a second OCR..

    You had 366 people who voted to KEEP Pearls before swine and you STILL decided to cut it?

    Are you morons?

    Classic!

  4. I’ve been a big fan of Mutts, but the London Free Press editorial’s argument basically sounds like, “Because it’s good for you!” FWIW, Krazy Kat survived largely because William Randolph Hearst loved it so — and thank goodness for that!

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