Update: Gary and Lance returned for one final original cartoon to say goodbye to their fans on November 17.
original November 12, 2023 article:
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer comes news that Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich will come to an end at the end of this week:
Not even a month after the people behind the Spiderman comic decided to call it quits, resulting in us filling the spot with Hagar the Horrible, word comes that Real Life Adventures, a single panel comic, is going away, too. The finale from Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich will publish Nov. 17.
The daily panels of Real Life Adventures have been in rerun status since October 16, 2023 which means today’s Sunday strip will be the last original content for the feature – unless they throw us a curve and this coming week’s dailies are all new (it wouldn’t be the first head fake from the pair of cartoonists).
Notes:
That November 17, 2023 date mentioned in The Plain Dealer article is a Friday so I’m not totally on board with that.
Writer Lance Aldrich has just celebrated his 78th birthday, so he has earned his retirement from the daily grind.
Close to Home will replace Real Life Adventures in The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
To keep contracts in order, when one comic goes away, we replace it with another from the same syndication service, and the replacement for Real Life Adventures will be Close to Home, which John McPherson began in 1992. It does not have a continuing plot. It is a one-a-day gag. You can read it online at https://www.gocomics.com/closetohome.
The article hints at Advance Publications following the path of Lee, McClatchy, and Gannett in unifying their comics:
I’ve mentioned previously that we want to expand our comic offerings. To do that, we need to partner with our sister newsrooms to have a uniform comics menu. If we can build efficiency into our comics pages across the enterprise, we can offer more comics. We’re working on that.
From March 24, 1991 is the first Real Life Adventures:
Real Life Adventures
by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich
March 24, 1991 – November 17, 2023
(daily reruns October 16, 2023 – November 16, 2023)
Universal Press Syndicate/Universal Uclick/Andrews McMeel Syndication
[reruns continue on GoComics November 18, 2023 – on]
Yep, Real Life Adventures is officially ending, and it joins the other newspaper comic strips that ended in 2023 to date (R.F.D., Mt. Pleasant, Half Full, Pros and Cons, and even the lame duck of 2023 – Dilbert!).
Also _Fred Basset_, even if it is in eternal reruns.
is the comic itself ending or is it just not going to be in the Cleveland newspaper
I read The Plain Dealer news as saying the comic is ending for all papers.
Unknown if it will continue as a rerun panel on GoComics.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer doesn’t know how to spell Spider-Man. Well, I guess they’ve called it quits on “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.”