With Opus heading into the sunset, some papers are starting to announce their replacement choices. You can see my earlier story on which papers have picked up the feature. Adding to that list include:
Flint (MI) Journal – Get Fuzzy, Champaign (IL) News-Gazette and Akron Beacon-Journal – Pearls Before Swine and the Albuquerque Journal is picking up Frazz. The Nanaimo Daily News (Canada) has narrowed down their choices to Get Fuzzy, Zits and Pickles. Readers to choose the final.
In other changes, Pearls Before Swine beat out Marvin in The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va after a poll was taken. The E&P story doesn’t mention it, but I’m guessing the poll was created to decide what to do with the new-running For Better or For Worse, which ironically, didn’t get the axe. Additionally, Zits and Pickles are the choices as replacements for Opus.
In the Oregonian, they ran a poll to see if the new/old For Better or For Worse was still a fav. It is and it stays. They’ve also picked up The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee in place of Safe Havens beginning on November 9. Edison Lee also takes Opus’ place on Sundays.
The Lake County News-Sun has picked up a strip called Pressed drawn by one of their employees, Ryan Pagelow. Ryan also does the feature Green Planet that runs on Sherpa. You can see Pressed examples on his website. It’s about a “razzled editor who is constantly disheveled, understaffed and on deadline in a post-Internet world.”
The Appeal Democrat (CA) has announced the winner of their recent poll. The winner? Pickles by 35% of the vote.
UPDATED: I neglected to add the news from the Boston Globe that I received via email. It is the same information as Brian Moore adds in comment #2.
I noticed when the Chicago Tribune redesigned their newspaper, they had already dropped Opus from the Sunday Comics effective October 5th. Tundra and Pickles replaced Opus in the Trib.
The Boston Globe launched a re-designed daily comics section last week, adding CUL-DE-SAC, THE PAJAMA DIARIES, and FRAZZ, and dropping MALLARD FILMORE. The daily strips now appear in color.
The Sunday comics were unchanged this week, though I’m hoping that when OPUS ends they’ll add the Sunday CUL-DE-SAC to the lineup.
Like what I see of Pagelow’s new strip. Enjoyed his “Green Planet” until it ended.
And nice to see yet another local strip, even if its created by the staffer at the paper.
The Seattle Times has dropped “Cathy” and moved “Doonesbury” from the editorial pages to replace it starting Oct 27. No poll was conducted(!), they just did it.
The Times has recently cut way back on their editorial pages, printing only one or two letters a day and directing readers to their web site for more. What used to be a two page editorial spread is now one page, so maybe they wanted to recover the space Doonesbury was using?
The Washington Post is replacing Opus with The Knight Life, sez Michael Cavna. Hooray!
When Opus ends in the Boston Globe, they will add Cul De Sac.