Anniston Star to Print their Own Sunday Funnies

D. D. Degg December 30, 2018 1 minute 4 comments

Consolidated Publishing (the Anniston Star and the Talladega Daily Home) will begin printing its Sunday Comics Section locally. Their long time supplier of preprinted Sunday color comics has decided to shut down.

Beginning next Sunday, Jan. 6, Consolidated Publishing Company will introduce a new Sunday Comics section.

It will be called Hot Blast Comics and will feature 15 comic strips on four full-color pages inserted in your Sunday newspaper.

Continental Features, the company that, for years, has provided a printed package of Sunday comics for The Anniston Star and The Daily Home, announced back in June that it would be going out of business at the end of 2018.

We immediately began negotiating with vendors in search of a way to continue providing our readers with a full-color package of Sunday comics.

“Hot Blast” is a long time title of Anniston Star features, once being part of the newspaper’s name.

Consolidated Publishing, earlier this year, started streamlining their syndicated offerings and contracts.

Their printing service, Continental Features, publicly announced in the Fall that they would be closing down at the end of 2018.

Consolidated chose to use their press to print the Sunday color comics section rather than go with another preprint option. This meant they had to get a Sunday lineup of their own.

In November, we finalized a contract with King Features, one of the largest comics distributors in the country, to provide access to a selection of comic strips that we believe you’ll enjoy. The Star will take over printing of the four-page comics section, which will continue to be in full color.

The new lineup will include Popeye, Beetle Bailey, Blondie, BC, Mother Goose & Grimm, The Family Circus, Sherman’s Lagoon, Hagar the Horrible, Snuffy Smith, Dennis the Menace, The Lockhorns, Shoe, Bound & Gagged, Mutts, and Doodles, which features activities for kids.

Here is editor Anthony Cook‘s full column detailing the transition.

Comments ⁴

Will Henry

This is awesome

Charles Brubaker

I’ve always been confused by how Sunday comics are prepared. Is it more common for papers to buy pre-printed sections from a supplier, or does it depend on the size/circulation of the paper in question?

Mike Peterson (admin)

Pre-prints are handier and easier in part because you’re not running another shift on your press but also because they are done on a Flexo Press which is a water-based ink that doesn’t run and I think produces a brighter image. (It’s also why Silly Putty doesn’t work as well as it used to.)

You can use Flexo presses for the entire paper, but few small to mid-sized papers do. Many of the larger metros will have a Flexo as well as a line of off-set presses, however.

You can purchase a pre-set package of Sunday strips for less than a custom set of your Mon-Sat strips but it’s like those big bags of Halloween candy — it includes some stuff you didn’t really want and that might not exist if it had to be purchased a la carte.

And, BTW, if Consolidated doesn’t have a Flexo press, I suspect there will be readers complaining about ink coming off on their hands — that’s a high density for off-set printing.

But good on them for making the effort!

Richard Moskowitz

Great lineup. We’re these comics picked by Jimmy Carter’s administration?

Comments are closed.