The Baltimore Sun ran a letter from a reader requesting replacement of comic strips in rerun status.
The “Get Fuzzy” comic strip that recently ran in The Baltimore Sun, a rerun from 2008, inspired me to send this letter (”Get Fuzzy” by Darby Conley).
I generally like the comics pages in The Sun, but I do not like that there are at least three strips there that are “zombie strips” — that is, comics where the creator has ceased to create new material and so the newspaper is just printing reruns.
The Sun has “Get Fuzzy” (which stopped doing new strips circa 2013), “Peanuts” (which stopped doing new strips in 2000 following the death of Charles Schulz), and “For Better or For Worse” (which stopped doing fully new strips in 2008, and has mostly been doing pure reruns or very slightly edited reruns since). I think all the other comic strips in The Sun are doing new material.
“Peanuts,” “Get Fuzzy” and “For Better or For Worse” were very good, perhaps even great, in their time. But their time has passed, and there are plenty of other comic strips out there that are producing new material. I’d much prefer to see some of those running in The Sun instead of endless reruns of these old strips.
The Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper runs the Pulitzer Prize winning comic strip on their op-ed page.
And to be fair, while all the strips above are syndicated by Andrews McMeel,
King Features and Creators also offer reruns to newspapers
(Tribune Content and Washington Post Writers Group do not offer reruns).
Below a recent Baltimore Sun comics page.
Doesn’t he know WPWG’s Pickles is a mix of first run and rerun?
I didn’t know Pickles was in partial reruns! I did notice that the letter writer left Doonesbury off his list…