News briefs for June 30, 2008

Comments ⁴

1. David

   They have Peanuts books for a reason! They’ve been publishing the compete early years. No comic strip should be in reruns, (even when the artist is on vacation, get a temporary substitute).

   Yes Peanuts was great, but give someone new a shot! I think most people shout ‘keep Peanuts’ because it’s the only comic they’ve heard of. Go to any book store, Dilbert Fox Trot, Baby Blues, Far Side, Zits, and Garfield are pretty much all you can find.

   Newspapers are not like TV there’s no space for reruns. The comics page has the benefit of new content everyday, why go with reruns!?!

2. Mark Pebble

   If the Mail Tribune was going to eliminate Peanuts, they probably would keep the Sunday version. The reason why is because that paper has the same Sunday comics lineups as many of the other papers in the Western U.S. (this includes in no specific order: Peanuts, Garfield, B.C., Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Born Loser, Dennis the Menace, Dilbert, Doonesbury, Family Circus, For Better or For Worse, Frank & Ernest, Hagar the Horrible, Wizard of Id, and Zits). I wish the Mail Tribune would offer Hi & Lois, Mutts, Pearls Before Swine and Pickles on Sundays as well. I love the daily versions.

   Also, I found out that the daily Hi & Lois has been eliminated to make room for the daily Get Fuzzy in the Albuquerque Journal. This month’s comics shootout is Agnes vs. Frazz (the new comic). Next time, Retail will compete against the daily version of Mutts.

3. Mark R. Engel

   Right on, David. About time someone else made the comparison of legacy comics to television. I love a lot of no-longer-produced comics, but I expect if I want to read them I have to open a compendium book (like the Calvin & Hobbes I’ve recently been re-reading). I understand the syndicates trying to squeeze every last penny out of the old comics (doesn’t cost them any more), but for the newspaper editors to bow down to some old crackpot who threatens to cancel his/her subscription because of an old comic being given the boot just doesn’t —

   I could go on but it’s nothing I haven’t spouted off on before. Legacy comics are great, they just don’t belong in the daily paper anymore.

4. Mike Peterson

   A number of years ago (perhaps 6), the paper I was at redesigned their comics and, in the course of doing it, I found that those pre-fab comics sections no longer provide a cost benefit. Now that there is competition in the Flexo world, you can bargain for what you need and we ended up saving a few thousand by going from a canned selection to a custom section that included all our own strips.

   As it happened, we had room for a few strips that we ran only on Sunday — Prince Valiant, Mark Trail, Slylock Fox and Peanuts, which we had dropped when Schulz died, part of the 10 percent who didn’t decide to go with reruns.

   Most editors don’t pay enough attention to know that they can get their own Sundays for the same price — or even cheaper — than the canned KFS sections. Add that to the list of things editors haven’t figured out about comics. (You may need a second sheet of paper … )