Comics Page Changes in Winston-Salem
Skip to comments
A reader asks the Winston-Salem Journal, “Has the comic strip Marmaduke been canceled?”
And the answer comes back, “Yes.”
The Journal is switching out some comics and replacing them with others, resulting in no loss in the number of comics the paper is running.
The Argyle Sweater is now appearing in the Marmaduke spot.
…and it is the first of several changes coming to the comics pages. The Argyle Sweater is a gag-a-day panel akin to The Far Side. The change came about because of a change in the agreement between the Journal and the syndication company. (emphasis mine)
Three strips that run repeats are being dropped in late February – For Better or For Worse, Get Fuzzy, and the daily Doonesbury strips. However, the Sunday Doonesbury strips are new material and will continue.
The Journal is dropping some rerun comic strips and some second-generation (“legacy”) comic strips in favor of first-run/original-creators’ strips (with an exception):
In their places will be Luann, a strip about a young college student; Breaking Cat News, about a trio of housecats who report events around their home as if they were newscasters; and Nancy, a modern revival of a comic strip that started in the 1930s. Those strips, as well as Argyle Sweater, will be in the weekday and Sunday comics pages.
Also, a gag panel strip called The Flying McCoys will replace the panel Ziggy, starting Feb. 25.
All the comics, dropped and signed, are a part of the Andrews McMeel Syndication group.
The full Q & A item can be read here.
Before heaping praise on the newspaper for not dropping any strips, let it be noted that two years ago they cut 12 comics from their pages with no replacements.
The strips being dropped from the daily paper starting Monday are Lio, Pooch Cafe, Brevity, Hagar the Horrible, Close to Home, Rose is Rose, Wizard of Id, Dennis the Menace, Funky Winkerbean, Between Friends, Judge Parker and Rex Morgan.
They were selected because of a variety of factors, including the results of a comics survey the Journal ran last year. The Sunday comics will not change.
I don’t know the current roster of the Winston-Salem Journal’s comics page, but it was noted that after the 2017 slashing these strips were among those still running in the paper: Classic Peanuts, Garfield, Blondie, Family Circus, Doonesbury, Get Fuzzy, and For Better or For Worse.
If the paper still runs Peanuts, Blondie, and Family Circus then it is not getting rid of all rerun and legacy strips.
Comments 1
Comments are closed.