Messing With Sunday Funnies’ Paginators

D. D. Degg August 6, 2023 1 minute 8 comments

Because of my contrary nature I get giddy when I see cartoonists screw with the people laying out The Sunday Funnies. Any number of Sunday comic strips are reliably laid out in a nine panel grid making it possible for certain strips to be run vertically down the side of a page. Like Blondie, The Born Loser, Hagar, and Doonesbury.

But on occasion, like today, G. B. Trudeau makes my day by throwing out the nine panel layout.

I imagine paginators frantically having to rearrange their pages to accommodate the non-standard strip.

I’m perpetually perturbed at GoComics and Comics Kingdom for not running the full strips, either as the “half-page” format or skipping the title panels. Doonesbury here serves to soothe my annoyance.

Bill Watterson went out of his way so the layout guys couldn’t cut up his full Calvin and Hobbes pages.

Continuing with rerun strips…

The subject and the art by Richard Thompson actually got me a bit dizzy reading today’s Cul de Sac.

While Trudeau delighted, Batiuk disappointed. I was expecting Tom Batiuk to get permission from DC Comics to feature the comic book page referenced in Friday’s Crankshaft as one of his sideways Sunday pages.

Since that didn’t happen here’s page one of Green Lantern #4 from 1961:

Also Friday had Miles and Kevin paying tribute to a comic strip classic in Crabgrass.

So what happened to Pros and Cons?

Last week started off, naturally enough, with the Monday strip … and nothing since. ???

After spending the five Sundays last month being lazy and only giving us three punch lines per page,

Samson finally gets back to giving us a four gag Sunday in today’s Dark Side of the Horse.

Future Funnies.

Looks like a funny week of Andy Marlette making fun of his governor in this coming week’s Shrimp & Grits. Check it out at the Creators Syndicate site or at the Arcamax comics page.

_{feature image by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis}

Comments ⁸

James M. Delach Jr.

Re: pagination. The Tampa Bay Times swapped Doonesbury with Pickles on Sunday.

Darryl Heine

Did you talk with K. Meehan to find out if the Pros and Cons strip ended after July 31. 2023?

Tara Gallagher

The Seattle Times usually runs Doonesbury vertically; it has swapped places with Beetle Bailey if Trudeau did a full-panel or other variant.
This week, though, ST ran Doonesbury vertically–within a border, arranged on white space:
one box, one small box, two small boxes, one small, two smalls, one box.

Mark Jackson

Rochester NY /Democrat & Chronicle/ did something similar in the usual nine rows: title panel, large box, large box, not-quite-so-large box, small box, two small boxes, small box, two small boxes, not-quite-so-large box.

And thanks for raising the Pros and Cons question, D. D.

Aug 07,2023

Tod

According to Comics Kingdom, Meehan killed the comic strip.
(emailed reply to my request for help)
C.K. -doesn’t- say anything about Meehan himself (retired,dead,vacation,hiatus,etc.),
just that Meehan killed it.

Becky

So sad, I’ll miss it.

Aug 07,2023
Mark Jackson

Bummer. CK does still have and archive (https://comicskingdom.com/pros-cons/2005-09-05 looks like the first strip ever), but for how long?

Aug 07,2023

Donna

Batiuk disappointed. I’ve been reading that a lot. The worst thing that happened to ‘Crankshaft’ was the ending of ‘Funky Winkerbean’. Too many comic book-related story arcs. Ed Crankshaft appears to be relegated to wordplay gags.

Comments are closed.